The Next Moonwalker

If the Vision for Space Exploration survives the coming change of administrations, if the myriad technical challenges of returning to the Moon are met and overcome, and if the project is adequately funded, the next Moon landing will occur in ten to twelve years. It is possible that the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11 will be celebrated on the lunar surface.

It seems incredible that a person who watched the first Apollo Moon landing as a child on a fuzzy picture on an analog television will be a senior citizen when watching the Altair (as the new lunar lander is called) touch down on the lunar surface via digital transmission, perhaps through virtual reality technology. It speaks perhaps ill of our civilization that forty seven years will have passed between the last Apollo mission to the Moon in 1972 to the first Orion/Altair mission, perhaps in 2019.

The new lunar effort has been called "Apollo on steroids" and by some derided as just a replay of Apollo. "Been there, done that," goes the sneer, forgetting that most of the people on this Earth were not even alive during that magic, summer night in 1969.

In any case, the Orion/Altair expeditions will not be so much a replay of Apollo as a continuation. The last Apollo mission kept a crew of two for three days on the lunar surface. The first Orion/Altair mission will keep a crew of four for a week exploring a portion of the Moon. By the early third decade of this century, if all goes as planned, people will live on the Moon on a permanent basis.

The next moon walkers are already alive and in their adulthood. Assuming that the next person to walk on the Moon will be the same age, 38, that Neil Armstrong was when he said, "That's one small step..." he or she is in his or her late twenties. If the NASA tradition of choosing a military pilot holds true, the next moonwalker is probably already flying high performance aircraft, perhaps on patrol over war torn Iraq or Afghanistan, unaware as yet of the destiny that awaits.