Sarah Cruddas - Look Up

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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright Sarah Cruddas 2020

Sarah Cruddas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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Ebook Edition September 2020 ISBN: 9780008358297

Version 2020-08-19

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For Agatha Reeves, the brightest star in the sky.

I n 1969, when I went to the Moon as part of the crew of Apollo 11, it was a dream come true. I had somehow lucked into being one third of the team that was going to do this wonderful thing. I had stumbled in at the right time, at the cusp between the old and the new.

We crew felt the weight of the world on our shoulders. We knew that everybody friend or foe would be looking at us. We wanted to do the best we possibly could. I wasnt scared, but I was worried. How could you fail to be, when you are undertaking something so extraordinary?

I always think of a flight to the Moon as being a long and fragile daisy chain of events. No matter how well things were going, I couldnt just relax and pat myself on the back. The flight was a question of being under constant tension, worried about whats coming next, and asking ourselves, what do I have to do now to keep this daisy chain intact? There were so many people involved in this mission, so many people counting on us and working for that same goal.

As I reflect on the work of a new generation of space technology, and the story that Look Up tells us, I feel the sense of that daisy chain still. Its our responsibility to keep that mission that daisy chain intact and moving forward; inspiring the next generation of adventurers.

As we prepared for Apollo 11, we spent a lot of time in simulators to be as ready as we could be for what wed encounter. These simulators were at the heart and soul of our training. They were very powerful instruments and we couldnt have made it to the moon without them. But their one failing? They couldnt duplicate the view that we saw out of the window. To see the Moon up close is indescribable. It filled our window with its gigantic presence. Its belly bulging out towards us, bigger than you thought possible. Sunlight cascaded around its rim. The dark was somehow darker. The light was lighter. It was a magnificent spectacle. One few of us have had the honor to see.

If our story with the stars has taught us anything, its that humankind has an innate desire to be outward bound, to continue traveling. People dont want to live in a box. They want to look up into the sky. They want to see things that they do not understand, to come to know them better, perhaps even physically go there and examine them. To see, to smell, to touch, to feel. We are wanderers. And eventually humans are going to leave and go places and live there. When I look up to the sky, I see all these miraculous, marvelous things. All I can think is we ought to lift the lid of that box and get going. On the occasions when I look at the Moon, I think, been there, done that! I regard the Moon, not so much as a destination, but as a direction for humanitys migration.

Its Mars that excites me the most, now. It was my favorite as a child, and still is today. When I came back from the Moon, I joked that NASA sent me to the wrong planet. Mars is the one we should have our eye on. Though it is inhospitable, it is the closest thing in our solar system that we have to a sister planet and going there would be a fascinating new frontier.

After the flight of Apollo 11, I remember so vividly the around the world trip that the three of us Neil, Buzz and myself took. We were surprised that everywhere we went, every city we visited, we were greeted not with oh well you Americans finally did it. But we were greeted with we did it. We humanity. We human beings. I think we have to build on that spirit as we continue to explore.

Because if there is one thing more extraordinary even than seeing the Moon, it is seeing the Earth. As Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders pointed out, when you are up there, if you put your thumbnail in front of Earth, you could totally obscure it. But I found every time I removed my thumb, the Earth popped back into my view. It wanted to be seen. It was the whole show. It was my home, everything I knew. The white clouds and blue of the ocean. Background totally black. I will remember that all my life. It leaves one to consider, well, is it really so pretty? Is it as quiet as it looks? Is it really so pristine? As I looked at it, the word fragile came up out of the murk somehow. I thought, its a fragile little thing, isnt it?

And I dont think we are treating its fragility properly. Technology has brought us great benefits, but it has also come at a cost. We are using the Earths resources at a rate unseen before. It seems that nearly every advance in our civilization has had some undesirable side effects, and its up to the next generation of engineers, explorers, and thinkers, to forge a path that will help our planet, so that it can truly become the beautiful, tranquil gem it seems to be when viewed from the Moon.

During Apollo, the words of JFK helped us so much in our preparation for the first lunar landing. We had these succinct, wonderful instructions. And Id like to transfer the spirit of President Kennedys words from where we are today, to where we might go. The simplicity of his mandate of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth motivated those of us working to get to that goal. Future spaceflight can be limitless; using Kennedys model, the What, When, and How will be determined by new generations. Whether thats a flight to Mars to take our next steps to the frontier, or to meet that challenge of climate change and our planets finite resources head on, more people should be privileged to fly in space and get the chance to see the fragile earth as it appears from afar. I am happy to see the younger generations excitement at continuing the legacy of outward bound. Sarah Cruddas is a gifted writer and Look Up is an inspired book. I am hopeful that we will never stop looking up.

Michael Collins, Gemini 10 and Apollo 11 astronaut, July 2020

I am tormented by an everlasting itch for things remote.

Herman Melville