The rat race and humans

Over the Christmas Eve and the days to follow I was on a binge watching mission of a HBO TV series called ‘From the Earth to the Moon’. Intriguing as the concept is, based on one of man’s greatest ambitions since the dawn of time the series was complete in the sense that it did not focus so much on the lunar landings alone- but the whole saga that unfolded in the political corridors, scientific community and the public at large after JFK made that bold statement to put a man on the moon within 8 years. This came at a time when all that NASA was doing then was well short of even taking a man into space, something the USSR had already managed. Just one of the reasons why I see projects involving Tom Hanks in a very different light than the rest- the research, the perspective and the narrative is most unique and comprehensive.

So just to paint a picture of the times: USSR is leading the space race and the president has made a bold public statement. Man in space is still a distant dream; both in terms of technology and achievement. But still within a gap of 7 years from the presidential address, the brickwork of probability was turned into the flights of possibility. Aircraft test pilots were now trained to go beyond the stratosphere and aircraft builders where building space crafts. Every person in every single department was in a run up against time and every failure was costly in terms of money, time, political ideology and at times even human life. Till the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon, everyone was eager to know the answer to the question; can man actually do it?

So at the cost of sounding filmy- who was the first man on the moon? Yes, Neil Armstrong. Who was the second??? And I guess there might be still be a few who will name Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. But what do we know about Michael Collins, a man who sat there closest to these two men a few miles above and was pivotal in their safe return. How come Apollo 11 has become legendary and only two from the crew of three is who we recognize? How many of us know about any lunar mission from Apollo 1 to Apollo 17; or the fact that the Apollo programme was built on the learnings that came along from the Mercury and Gemini missions that were like test flights for the lunar landings.

The simplest explanation to all this came to me in an astonishing manner the human mind and memory actually works.  We as human are trained to be rats running a race to go from point A to B. The winner takes it all and there is no medal for coming in second. We have actually been tuned to be more oriented towards attaining goals and once achieved, we fail to recognise all the people and their efforts that went into reaching the goal. The worst is once the goal has been reached, our level of interest in the details dwindles and no level of achievement that might follow has any relevance in our minds. We at times tend to forget that there is a larger bunch of people and their sacrifice that hides behind the achievement of the larger goals.

Imagine the number of people who work behind the scenes to make every single flight possible. There are the ones who built the actual space crafts, the ones who built the simulators and prototypes. And then there were those who sat in the mission command in Houston not even blinking an eye lid when missions like Apollo 13 went haywire. We as people simply refuse to accept the people behind the larger picture. And this is not an American phenomena- even in a movie like Swades, SRK is asked if he is in NASA, is he an astronaut. Not in the same league, but the moment people know I worked in radio, I’m asked if I was an RJ… cause astronaut or an RJ- they are the face and that’s what matters to people.

The series also brought to the fore another aspect of human nature- something we call the short span of the public memory. After Apollo 11, possible Apollo 12 and Apollo 13 were missions where people were still attached to the TV with a curiosity of what happens next. When the last two missions got down to some serious scientific research, public interest and limelight both just vanished. In fact, a near flawless Apollo 17 was not even telecast as the romance of space had ended and the swinging 70’s were no longer having the attractions for it.

Today, no NASA missions actually attract notable mentions. India had a boom once the Mars probe Mangalyaan entered orbit; but on January 2^nd 2015, hardly any media carried its 100 days in orbit - nor has ISRO posted anything special on its site. This is what we should accept is our instinct of a rat race… we are all tuned till the first step; the ones that follow just never seem to matter.