Grand U.S. Flag
Curious minds from around the world make the United States great
(It should take about four minutes to read this 780-word essay. There are links to sources at the end. Thanks for spending time with Snack.)
Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin hit a hitch when they were planting a U.S. flag during the first human mission to the Moon in 1969.
The horizontal telescoping rod would not fully extend, leaving the flag with a bit of a ripple effect.
While this would prove to be fodder for later conspiracy theories about a faked Moon landing, it makes for a nice photo.
The flag appears to be blowing in a breeze brought from the Earth to the Moon, which does not have our planet’s atmosphere or weather.
The problem with the flag's horizontal rod was just a teeny glitch in an historic event.
The 1969 Apollo 11 mission captivated people around the world. NASA estimates 650 million people watched Armstrong’s televised image. He became the first person to set foot on the Moon, saying "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
But there were countless other glitches, major and minor, that had to be tackled through the decades of experiments that led to that Moon landing. Myriad teams of clever people, employed both by NASA directly and by contractors like Bellcomm, made Apollo 11 a success.
In recent years, we've learned more about the people on the ground whose work allowed others to leave the Earth.
For example, Margot Lee Shetterly's 2016 book, “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race" revealed the role of mathematicians whose contributions had not before been fully appreciated.
Another great story in U.S space history starts with an Egyptian immigrant who saw an intriguing ad.
“What do you know about the Moon?” …“Nothing, but I can learn.”
In 1964, Farouk El-Baz, age 26, earned a PhD in geology in 1964 from the University of Missouri. He then taught in Germany and returned to Egypt for a while before moving again to the United States.
In early 1967, El-Baz was on the hunt for a job in his field, expecting to land in academia. But most universities already had filled their posts. He broadened his search, and saw an ad from the contractor Bellcom, seeking geologists to work on a Moon project. He told his wife about it.
“She said, “And what do you know about the Moon?’ ” El-Baz recalled in a later interview. “I said, 'Nothing, but I can learn'.”
El-Baz took the job and did indeed learn.
He was in NASA Mission Control on July 20,1969 as part of the support team when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. In 1973 El-Baz joined the staff of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, where he established the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies. He later became director of the Center for Remote Sensing and Research at Boston University.
The story of El-Baz, who became a U.S. citizen around 1970, illustrates why his adopted country is great.
Of course people all over the world show perseverance and grit, but in the United States, these qualities are stepped up. The country benefits from having many people like El-Baz bring us their drive and energy, which in turn inspires those of us lucky enough to have been born in the United States.
For that we should be grateful.
Recommendations: If any of my fellow journalists have read this essay, they may have grimaced each time they saw “Moon” written with a capital letter. AP Style says it's moon. This is a rare case where AP is wrong. Paul Spudis made eloquent arguments on this topic in his 2009 Smithsonian article, "moon vs. Moon: A Study in Arrant Pedantry.”
To read about another person who had a great interest in Earth’s nearest neighbor, try “The ‘Serious Moonlight’ of Albert Pinkham Ryder” on Medium.
Sources: NASA materials: From Hidden to Modern Figures | Where No Flag Has Gone Before: Political and Technical Aspects of Placing a Flag on the Moon | Emily Furfaro, "Is There Weather on the Moon? We Asked a NASA Scientist: Episode 34,”Jan. 18, 2023 | Oral History Transcript Interview of El-Baz by Rebecca Wright, Nov. 2, 2009 |Kevin Wilcox, This Month in NASA History: The Lunar Orbiter Missions, Aug. 8, 2024| Apollo 11 Mission Overview
Smithsonian: Institution -El-Baz, Farouk papers | Magazine-Amy Stamm,"One Small Step for Man" or "a Man"?,Jul 17, 2019