Author: TheConversation

By Joe Essid, Writing Center Director at University of Richmond According to a Gallup Poll from 1999, only 50 percent of those surveyed could even name Neil Armstrong as the first man to land on the moon. The film “First Man,” starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, may boost public recognition of Armstrong’s name and career. But his fate after his “giant leap for all mankind” mirrored that of public interest in the moon landings and, broader still, trust in government, which has steadily eroded since the early 1970s. It may be hard to imagine today, but from the...

By Timothy Swindle, Professor of Planetary Sciences and Geosciences, University of Arizona At an International Astronomical Union meeting in 1955, noted astronomer Gerard Kuiper asked for suggestions and collaborators on a project to make a map of the Moon. At the time, the best lunar atlases had hand-drawn images, and Kuiper wanted to use state-of-the-art telescopes to make a photographic atlas. Only one person responded. That was indicative of the astronomical community’s general attitude toward the Moon. After all, telescopes were designed to look at distant objects, and the Moon is rather close, and boring as well, since its...

By Anne Collins Goodyear, Co-Director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Bowdoin College In the midst of the space race, Hereward Lester Cooke, the former co-director of the NASA Art Program, observed, “Space travel started in the imagination of the artist.” If the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing is an opportunity to celebrate a remarkable technological achievement, it’s also a good time to reflect on the creative vision that made it possible. Long before Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, artists and writers were crafting visions of extraterrestrial exploration that would make space flight possible....

By Jean Creighton, Planetarium Director, NASA Airborne Astronomy Ambassador, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Much of the technology common in daily life today originates from the drive to put a human being on the Moon. This effort reached its pinnacle when Neil Armstrong stepped off the Eagle landing module onto the lunar surface 50 years ago. As a NASA airborne astronomy ambassador and director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Manfred Olson Planetarium, I know that the technologies behind weather forecasting, GPS and even smartphones can trace their origins to the race to the Moon. 1. Rockets October 4, 1957 marked the...

By Anthony W. Fontes, Assistant Professor of Human Security, American University School of International Service From the Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban to its family separation policy, many Americans object to the White House’s hardline immigration policies as a historical aberration out of sync with U.S. values. Having explored the evolution of these policies and their consequences as both a practitioner of immigration law and scholar of U.S.-Latin American relations, I disagree. Rather than marking a stark departure, I see President Donald Trump’s approach as ramping up and expanding the U.S. government’s longstanding efforts to punish undocumented immigrants. His...

By Victoria W. Wolcott, Professor of History, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York Summers often bring a wave of childhood memories: lounging poolside, trips to the local amusement park, languid, steamy days at the beach. These nostalgic recollections, however, are not held by all Americans. Municipal swimming pools and urban amusement parks flourished in the 20th century. But too often, their success was based on the exclusion of African Americans. As a social historian who has written a book on segregated recreation, I have found that the history of recreational segregation is a largely forgotten one....