Beware the wackos who think the Apollo missions were a hoax.
This column isn’t about their conspiracy theories or interminable e-mails written in bold with billions and billions of exclamation points.
It’s about kids, wiser and more grounded than we realize, who know full well what happened on the moon 40 years ago but for whom the story is old news.
“First there were dinosaurs, and then there were the astronauts. You know, way back in the olden days,” said Cormack Cole, 9, checking out the space exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Back in the space age, before “moonwalk” brought to mind moves by a dead pop star, kids would pretend jungle gyms were rocket ships. We’d shape snow into moon craters, hopping between them like Neil Armstrong. No kid doubted that we — or at least our own children — someday would soar into space too.
Nearly every kid I spoke with at the museum’s “Space Odyssey” was far better schooled than we ever were in matters of gravity and anti- gravity. A 7-year-old explained that Jupiter “has, like, a million moons.” A 3-year-old pointed out that some twinkles in the sky “are planets, not stars” and that the first astronaut was actually a dog.
But as much as they know about space, they expressed little eagerness to explore it. Most said they barely notice when a shuttle launches, the space station orbits or the two crafts joined like they did with a record 13 astronauts Friday.
Since the Apollo program ended and two shuttles have blown apart on live TV, it seems that blasting off to infinity and beyond has lost some of its draw.
“It’s not like they’re actually going to send anybody but robots all the way to Mars anyway,” said Cormack, a soon- to-be-third-grader.
“They’re totally wasting gas,” added his buddy, Liam Fuller.
“It’s no duh that people used to be all excited about space and stuff,” said Analesa Sandoval, 9. “But we’ve got work to do right here fixing problems and stuff on Earth.”
“Like saving the whales,” said Theo McCallister, 8.
“And cancer people and people with no food,” chimed in his 5-year-old sister, Noelle. “Bumblebees, too.”
Added 8-year-old Logan Satterfield: “I want to do real things, not float around in orbit.”
Monday marks the anniversary of a triumph that still seems so sublime and futuristic that it almost makes sense why some continue to question it. The band R.E.M. memorialized its skepticism in a song saying, “If you believe they put a man on the moon.”
A generation after those lyrics were written, the question is no longer whether we believe. That’s, as Analesa might say, “no duh.”
What matters is what kids are dreaming about now.
Rather than racing to follow in Armstrong’s footsteps, their feet are firm on the ground. They dream closer to home of standing strong and steadily here on our own planet.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
