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Reflections: Watching the Apollo Drama Unfold on the Ground
By Victor Dorff
Special to SPACE.com
posted: 06:41 am ET
16 April 2000
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apollo13_teen_reflection_000331 Thirty years ago, the world held its breath, then heaved a collective sigh of relief. It had never really done that before, and it's difficult to think of a time when it has happened since. To me, that is the enduring legacy of Apollo 13, although I'm not sure it will ever be written that way in the history books. Neil Armstrong tried to position Apollo 11 as "One small step for [a] man; one giant leap for mankind," but he was really just being gracious. In fact, when he set foot on the moon, the U.S. won an intense, decade-long race against its mortal enemy, the Soviet Union. Planting the American flag was just the exclamation point on, "We won; you lost!" From a mid-20th-century standpoint, Apollo 12 was a non-event. Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Alan Bean had their work cut out for them, trying to make returning to the moon as exciting as going the first time. Then they blew it completely by pointing their television camera at the sun, burning out some key component and eliminating any chance of live pictures from the lunar surface. At that point, NASA learned one of the most important lessons of the time: if it's not on television, it's not really happening. Plenty was happening on the TV news in those days, and the common themes were conflict and division: the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, student rebellions and campus disturbances. A casual trip to the moon just couldn't compete with stories like those, especially without live pictures. I was almost 15 then, and the future didn't look too bright from where I was standing. Space exploration was one of the only promising things on the horizon. It would always be a big deal for me, but for most of the public, the romance of lunar travel was already fading. During the first days of the Apollo 13 mission, play-by-play coverage of the trip had captivated only the hard-core space junkies. Then, BOOM. Everything changed. 
Media outlets around the world covered the Apollo 13 drama as it unfolded. The explosion in space brought all the middle- and light-weight space junkies back to the television, where they sat riveted, sopping up details of the unfolding drama. After a few days, unfolding drama reached nearly everyone, everywhere. The cliffhanger evolved into the world's first global/local news story. The miracles and wonders of space travel had been compressed into a familiar story with universal appeal: a three-man crew was facing death in space, while a team of tireless rescuers were working around the clock to save their lives. Everyone could relate. This was about life and death. How the victims got into their predicament wasn't important anymore. They could have been a cat stuck in a tree, a child caught in a well or a ski-party trapped by an avalanche. The community was united in wanting the safe return of those poor men. And the community, for the first time, was the entire planet. It was a watershed moment for the people of Earth. We were all suddenly united in purpose...and helplessness. All we could do was watch and wait, and that's what we did. Billions of us. All at the same time. Knowing that, around the world, we were all on the same side. It didn't last long. Once those astronauts were safe, everything returned to "normal." But if you were paying attention, something had changed. The Age of Aquarius did not usher in the "peace, love and understanding" promised in the popular culture of the time. On the other hand, it did provide subtle, but inescapable proof that humans are capable of unifying for a common cause.
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