The greatest historical analogue to the manned lunar mission is probably the early years of English polar exploration — those heady days when, as Francis Spufford argues, hard men put their will in the service of a literary mania for feelings of remoteness, hugeness, and brooding oceanic emptiness. What a shame that we have been able to produce no great lunar literature to succeed the writings by Byron, the Shelleys, Tennyson, and Melville that both immortalized and inspired the great hypothermic pioneers. (I’m still holding out hope for science fiction.) Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were were like Coleridge’s ancient mariner, “alone, alone, all, all alone” on a sea of stars. It is only by an accident of chronology — like the 12 years that prevented us from hearing Lincoln’s voice — that their achievement did not become the subject of a tone poem by Strauss.
Which brings us back to the moon. The primarily aesthetic nature of the first Apollo mission becomes clearer when one considers it from the perspective of both the participants and the spectators. The lunar landing was not a scientific announcement or a political press conference; it was a performance, a literal space opera, a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk that brought together the efforts of more than 400,000 people, performed before an audience of some 650 million. It was a victory, as Armstrong immediately recognized, not of Western democratic capitalism over Soviet tyranny, or of America over the rest of the world, but for humanity. It belongs to the United States no more than Michelangelo does to Italy or Machu Picchu to Peru. “Gladly, like His suns fly / Through the heavens’ grand plan / Go on, brothers, your way, / Joyful, like a hero to victory,” Schiller begged over Beethoven’s trumpets. The entire world saw three men obey.
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