Sometimes when I see the Brooklyn Bridge, I wonder whether we could build another one if we wanted to.
“Of course, we could,” an engineer who knows about such things once told me. His answer made sense. We have steel and concrete. No doubt we’ve learned a lot about bridge building in the 136 years since the span between Brooklyn and Manhattan opened.
It’s not so much I wonder whether we can build a bridge. But could we build one that combines the beauty, function and sturdiness that characterizes the bridge built by Roebling
That’s a bit how I feel on the anniversary of the moon landing by Apollo 11, a half-century ago today. Could we do it again? Of course, we can, all the evidence suggests. The software, science, materials and communications that took humans to the moon and back in 1969 all have improved by orders of magnitude since then. NASA is planning to send astronauts to the Moon by 2024.
I was 6 years old when Neil Armstrong stepped off the stairs of the Eagle and onto the Moon. I remember playing with my friends earlier that evening at the end of the street in the subdivision where we lived. The July evening gave way to a summer night. My parents told me I could stay up late to watch the lunar landing. I liked staying up late.
Later, hours after my bath, I crawled into bed with my parents, who had a TV in their room. It was nearly 11 p.m. as we watched those grainy black and white pictures of Armstrong against the white lunar surface.
And then I remember feeling sleepy. It was way past my bedtime. I like to think about the next Moon landing. How will we experience it? Will we stay up late? Will we hold our collective breath? What will it be like?