I feel it is fitting that I am beginning my STEAM related blog in July 2019, almost 50 years to the day of the Apollo 11 mission’s landing on the moon. Like most people who were children during the 1960s, the Apollo space program was a big part of my childhood backdrop. Before the landing in 1969, my cousin and I often played astronaut. We would lay the metal lawn chairs in his yard on their backs. After much pretend preparation, we would get positioned on our backs in the capsule (lawn chairs) and start our count down. Even though we hadn’t seen the moon landing yet, we would land and make our own moon walks, not realizing the differences the low gravity would make.
One of my clearest childhood memories is watching the moon landing on our TV while seeing the moon through the bare windows of the house we had just moved into. Even as a child of ten, I was in complete awe. Later we watched more rocket launches, more landings, astronauts riding in lunar rovers and hitting a golf ball. I don’t remember learning very much about science in school until I got to high school. I know the space program definitely increased my interest in science, though my goal was vet school instead of astronaut training. I finally landed in a science class room, hoping to inspire my students to appreciate and understand science, and maybe even choose science as a career.
I remember it being said back in the 1970s (I am not sure of the source) that our space program would be a success when people quit paying attention to every detail of every launch. Most people now have no idea how many times we landed on the moon (six ), how many people have walked on the moon (12), how many space shuttle missions there were (135) or whether there are US astronauts presently at the space station (yes there are). I think we can say that the space program has been a success and the spin offs of that success still impact our lives. We are now talking about going back to the moon, and eventually to Mars. Other countries are talking about going there too. It will be interesting to see where the next decade takes us.