Flying Ace Roland Garros Crosses The Mediterranean in only 8 hours!
Last week, NASA finally launched its Artemis rocket headed for the moon.
This mission was unmanned, but if all goes according to plan, NASA expects to put people back on the moon by 2025.
The last time anyone was on the moon was in 1972, and when you look at the Artemis mission, it looks pretty much the same as the Saturn V rocket that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon in 1969.
It’s a bit peculiar, this whole moon mission. You would think that in the intervening 60 years since the Americans first landed on the moon, the technology might have improved just a bit. It has in every other aspect of travel and transportation, particularly aircraft.
If all goes according to plan, it will have been 56 years since the first moon landing. If we go back 56 years from the launch of the Saturn V in 1969, it takes us to 1913. Same distance.
If trips to the moon have not changed much in the intervening 56 years, flight certainly has. In 1913, Roland Garros, the French ace pilot broke the world record for non-stop flight by crossing the Mediterranean Sea in an airplane (see photo above). The flight lasted 8 hours. Today, you may still recognize the name as France, in honor of his great achievement, named the tennis stadium where the French Open is held after him.
It would have been inconceivable to think that in 1969, the apex of flying would have been a second attempt at crossing the Mediterranean in a small plane in only 8 hours. But that is where we are, moon-wise, so to speak
So it is fair, I think, to raise the question of why, after successfully landing on the moon in 1969, we simply stopped going.
The answer, I think, is that it was….boring.
That is, it was bad television.
The first lunar landing was watched with riveted attention by one of the largest global TV audiences in history, more than 600 million people tuned in to see Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface, live, no less. Broadcasting live from the moon in 1969 was in itself a major technological achievement.
Yet with each successive Apollo launch, (excluding Apollo 13, which made a better movie that a live TV transmission), the television audiences dwindled down to nothing.
So much nothing that the remaining 3 Apollo flights to the moon were cancelled altogether. Lack of funding driven by a lack of interest on the part of the viewing public.
OK. That was great, but what else can you do?
Well, we can drive this car on the lunar surface.
Boring.
Well, we can hit golf balls on the lunar surface.
The PGA has nothing to worry about.
Nope, by the time of Apollo 17, the last trip to the moon, no one was watching at all.
In effect, the Amazing Race To The Moon show was cancelled for bad ratings.
Now, like Return to Gilligan’s Island, NASA is hoping a re-tread of the original show will bring in the much needed audience that makes Congress write checks. I would not count on it.
In 1969, given the choice between watching people walk on the moon and watching Captain James T. Kirk pilot the Starship Enterprise across the galaxies, viewers in overwhelming numbers voted for Star Trek and then Star Wars. What difference does it make if something is real or fake – as millions of TikTok fans who believe the earth to be flat can attest.
The problem with real science, like real life, is that it is fundamentally boring as entertainment.
Watch live as Thomas Edison, live from his laboratory in New Jersey attempts to invent the electric light. Look, he’s trying out another filament. And there goes the switch! Nope, didn’t work either. That would be the 1,435th try. But stand by, in a few hours we’re going to try it again.
If we had to depend on TV ratings for the invention of the light bulb, we would still all be sitting in the dark.
If you found this interesting, be sure to check out my new book THE RISE OF THE MEDIAVERSE
