Man in the Moon

ON this day in 1972, Apollo 17 became the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon. Today, it is hard to remember the moon missions (beginning in 1969) ever took place. I was just a pimpled-face kid at the time. Millions of Americans under age 45 have no physical memory of them at all.

Just think, in 1972 Hewlett-Packard’s first scientific “pocket calculator” (HP-35) wasn’t even a year old yet, and it cost $395. Two months before Apollo 17 touched down on the rim of Mare Serenitatis, ARPAnet – a precursor to the Internet – was unveiled publically for the first time. World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee was still in high school. In 1972, Atari released its first arcade game (“Pong”). GPS did not exist. There were no PCs, laptops or cell phones. Wireless referred to electronic devices unplugged from a wall outlet. Microsoft and Apple did not exist. Steve Jobs was auditing a calligraphy class at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Bill Gates -- who looked distressingly like a cast member from Revenge of the Nerds -- hadn’t graduated from high school yet. The future founders of Amazon.com and Yahoo were ages 8 and 3, respectively. The founders of Google, Facebook and Twitter were not born yet. Neither was the inventor of Blogger.com, the space in which I'm writing this. (That's actually kinda scary.)

Your smartphone is more powerful than the entire Apollo Guidance Computer. And yet, we somehow managed to land men on moon and bring them home alive, all six times. Beyond technology, it was a magnificent triumph of American vision, determination and gumption. I hope we still possess those qualities. But it’s been 38 years since the last boot print on lunar soil. That sad fact makes me wonder.