The space agency hopes to establish a prolonged presence by building a lunar base that may support trips to further destinations like Mars and beyond. NASA’s plans to return humans to the Moon involve more than just the lunar touchdowns of the Apollo program. Illustration of NASA astronauts on the lunar South Pole. But they also think that NASA should have achieved more with the money it has already received - and cast doubt on the agency’s grander ambitions for the next phase of lunar exploration: a permanent human base on the Moon. Meanwhile, a you.gov poll of 1,000 Americans conducted in July 2022 asking about space exploration suggests that, while the economy and crime may be the top priorities, Americans are more or less happy with NASA’s efforts to send astronauts to the Moon and the level of funding afforded to them to do so. In more recent polls, Americans identify their top priorities right now as both economic and domestic: Polls from ABC News, the Pew Research Center, and FiveThirtyEight conducted this year all suggest that the public’s top priority for government action is inflation (including rising gas prices and health care costs), followed by gun violence and tackling the budget deficit. In 2021, a Morning Consult poll involving 2,200 Americans found most people would rather that NASA focus its efforts on Earth, putting money toward studying climate change and defenses against incoming asteroids. The clock is ticking - and every step along the way costs.Īmerica remains divided on what the top spending priorities for the government should be in a time of rising inflation, dramatic wealth gaps, and a renewed push for racial and social justice in the face of the climate crisis. Before astronauts can walk on the lunar surface, the agency plans to test its new rocket in August or September of this year with the uncrewed Artemis I mission (with a price tag of over $4 billion). Now, NASA is prepping to send humans back to the Moon as soon as 2026. Reverend Ralph Abernathy, flanked by associate Hosea Williams, standing on a mockup of the lunar module on the eve of the Apollo Moon launch. “They were built to put men on the Moon and satellites in orbit.” and train people for the workforce,” he adds. “NASA was not built to be an anti-poverty program, they weren’t built to build public schools. “The priorities of civil rights leadership, the priorities of folks who are trying to make a more equitable America, those priorities bumped up against the stated priorities of the federal government,” McKinney says. Back in 1969, concern over NASA’s Moon landing centered on whether government spending accurately reflected American society’s priorities, Charles McKinney, a professor at Rhodes College who focuses on the Civil Rights Movement and African American history, tells Inverse. In the decades till today, wage inequality and other measures of inequity in America show a widening chasm between the richest and the poorest Americans, with rising inflation compounding the disparities.
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Meanwhile, on our planet, the tensions around social and economic injustice and racial inequality continued to rise to a fever pitch. On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission achieved the first-ever human landing on the Moon, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin taking the first steps on the rocky soil in the name of Earth. Today, of course, we know that NASA pushed the button.
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We could feed a starving child for $8.”Īccording to contemporary accounts, then-NASA administrator Thomas Paine headed outside to speak with the demonstrators, declaring, “If we could solve the problems of poverty by not pushing the button to launch men to the Moon tomorrow, then we would not push that button.” “NASA was not built to be an anti-poverty program.” “I’m here to demonstrate in a symbolic way the tragic and inexcusable gulf between America’s technological abilities and our social injustice.” “I have not come to Cape Kennedy merely to experience the thrill of this historic launching,” Abernathy told the press that day.
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In less than 24 hours, it will launch the Apollo 11 mission to land humans on the surface of the Moon for the first time in history.īut braving the humidity just beyond the Space Center’s chainlink fence are hundreds of protestors with more Earthly concerns on their minds - they carry signs reading, “Billions for space, pennies for the hungry.” Their leader? No less than civil rights titan Ralph Abernathy, one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest aides, right-hand man, and apparent successor. Shining like a beacon in the sticky Florida heat, a Saturn V rocket sits on the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center.