The Greatest Adventure of Exploration and Discovery

Armstrong preparing to step off the LEM.

"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind," Neil Armstrong said on July 20, 1969 after stepping off the ladder of “the Eagle,” NASA’s Lunar Module, onto the powdery surface of the Moon. Those immortal words, the first spoken by a human being standing on a celestial body other than Earth, was the result of a commitment, a challenge made by John F. Kennedy in a speech to Congress just eight years, one month and 26 days before that historic date in human history. Nearly a half a century has passed, and it's Americans, representing all of humanity, that are the only ones that have ever been to the moon and walked on its’ surface of “fine powder,” as Armstrong described it 45 years ago.

Human beings are by nature, explorers. Our ancestors were explorers, who had in turn evolved from explorers before them. Our descendants will be explorers, the realms of that exploration seemingly endless. Without exploration, humanity would not exist, and would cease to exist in the future.  Exploration is humanity's passport because that act leads to migration, which is necessary in order for our civilization to advance, and in many cases an absolute, in order for this species of man to survive beyond the life cycle of our home planet and its solar system, or the many possible types of extinction level events that have occurred before and will again occur at some unknown point in the years to come.

Imagine for a moment, if man’s ancient ancestors had elected not to migrate at the dawn of the last ice age. Suppose that those Stone Age primitives had remained in the northern latitudes instead of looking for new sources of food in the southern, warmer regions. By remaining in their caves they would have stayed warm perhaps, but limited food would have made life dreadful, if not impossible, and therefore mankind might very well have been doomed for extinction. Without the exploration, which led to sources of food that included migratory herds of bison, deer, antelope, and other animals also seeking warmer climates, human beings might very well have gone the way of the wooly mammoth, or saber-toothed tiger.  All species that survive do so because of their ability to explore, and migrate, prior to settling and adaptation. Exploring came first, and we as a species champion our explorers, we always have and we always will.

Throughout recorded history, prior to, and including the 20^th century, great explorers have not just been championed, they have been heralded, lionized, knighted, and made legendary, and in some cases, unfairly demonized as well. Mankind builds monuments to their great explorers, and names holidays in their honor, and many other things. Although there are many great explorers in the history of mankind, let’s take a look at three notable explorers from the early days of the Age of Discovery, commonly defined by historians as those three centuries or so from the 15^th to mid 17^th century, Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Ferdinand Magellan, three of the greatest ever. 

Born in Genoa in 1450 or 1451, Christopher Columbus, or Cristoforo Colombo (Italian), or Cristóbal Colón (Spanish), was an Italian explorer, credited in many a history book as being the discoverer of the Americas, a debatable assertion no doubt, that is of course depending on the interpretation of the word "discovery." Columbus has also been ridiculed by those that choose to misinterpret that definition, if not completely rewrite history, misguided non-scholars who often cite the explorer as being the spark for the torch of colonialism, and the Spanish conquistadores, wiping out the newly discovered continent’s indigenous populations, and stealing their land; another claim easily refutable. Nonetheless, in order to set the record straight, it was nomadic explorers from Asia that had originally discovered the North and South American continents tens of thousands of years before Columbus. Those ancient hunters crossed over land now covered by water, following their sources of food, which were those great herds of animals mentioned before. 

Now fast forward to just five hundred years before la Niña,  la Pinta,  and la Santa Maria set sail in 1492, the Norse explorer Leif Ericson became the first European to set foot in North America. But what came of it? How had those discoveries prior to Columbus translated into tangible advancement of our civilization? Certainly human sacrifice, beating hearts being cut out of a living victim, their body then cast down the steps of a bloody altar, weren't doing wonders for generations to come in the Inca and Aztec world of that time. Of irrefutable fact however, is that Columbus, while employed by Crown of Castile (Queen Isabella and the Spanish Empire), completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean.

Christopher Columbus

Reducing it to the most simplistic basis, while sailing west to the Bahamas on the semi-permanent winds called the “easterlies” seemed to work adequately, Columbus had a different notion. Drawing on his years of experience as a sailor, Columbus concluded that the “westerlies” that blew onto the coast of northern Europe, the fierce onshore winds, must get their start on the new continent’s northeastern shore. Columbus was a smart sailor, and his assumptions proved accurate, thus becoming the basis for future trans-Atlantic trade for many centuries going forward. Those voyages, and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola, may have in fact initiated the Spanish colonization of the New World, but it also led to a general European awareness of the American continents, which has had a very positive impact on the world in which we live today. In proper deference to the man that "discovered America," the Command Module on Apollo 11’s first manned mission to land on the Moon, as well as the United States’ first Space Shuttle were both named Columbia in honor of Christopher Columbus.

  

A late 15^th and early 16^th century Portuguese explorer, and contemporary of Columbus, Vasco Da Gamma, born sometime in the 1460s, was the first European to sail directly from Europe to India, seeking both the eastern route, and safe passage around the Cape of Good Hope at the same time Columbus sought India from the route the going west. Perhaps not as well known, particularly in North America, as Columbus is today, certainly not as infamous, Vasco da Gama was during his lifetime a household name in the seafaring countries of Europe, especially his native Portugal. He was the Age of Discovery’s superstar, a celebrity with such fame and notoriety that his country had a national epic poem written in his honor. The honors for da Gama have at least lived on with the people of Portugal, as well as Brazil, where there are three football clubs named after the famous explorer.

Vasco da Gama

Before da Gama, trade with India and Asia meant first sailing through the dozen overlapping territorial waters and pirate kingdoms that made up the Mediterranean, then slogging across the Arabian peninsula, either bribing or fighting past various barriers of corrupt fiefdoms. Da Gama changed all that by establishing new trade routes, which meant a reliable, and relatively safe journey by ship, resupplied along the way by friendly or neutral ports, and ultimately arriving at Calicut to stuff the holds for their ships with pepper, cinnamon, and a vast assortment of other exotic spices that Portugal had managed to monopolize upon.

Da Gama’s route skirted North Africa before veering out almost to the the shores of the South American continent, where took advantage of the westerlies, blowing him back to the southern tip of Africa (the Cape of Good Hope) and then sailing north between Madagascar, before finally departing Mombasa for a straight-line dash east to Calicut. Later expeditions simplified the route and cut down on the number of stops as sailing technology and experience improved with each successive expedition. Da Gama's initial route, particularly the long detour southeast, was at the time the longest anyone had ever spent at sea, and his first trip to India is widely considered a pinnacle of world history, as it marked the beginning of the first wave of global multiculturalism. Not surprisingly Vasco da Gama has been honored with his very own impact crater on the western limb of the Moon, just south of the “Einstein” walled plain.

Lastly, in this trio of explorers from the Age of Discovery, is another great Portuguese discoverer, Ferdinand Magellan, who became the first to organize, plan, and depart from Europe, successfully sailing west to Asia. Funded again by Spain, Magellan’s voyage was a success, the first expedition to round South America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the passage now named the “Strait of Magellan,” arriving in Asia as planned, with one vessel from the expedition ultimately circumnavigating the entire globe. Magellan himself unfortunately did not live to see the triumph, having been brutally killed by natives in the Philippines who weren't particularly fond of Magellan's instance of their conversion to Catholicism. 

Magellan's gift to the world that cost him his life.

Magellan’s expedition gave civilization vast amounts of new important knowledge. His expedition being the first to circumnavigate the Earth and the first to navigate the strait in South America connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, the name Magellan gave to the largest body of water on the planet. For the first time in man’s history, the full extent of the Earth, its size, and vastness of its oceans, had been realized. In addition, the expedition showed the need for an International Date Line to be established. Surprisingly, upon their return the Magellan expedition discovered that they were a day behind the actual date, although they had faithfully, and painstakingly maintained the ship's navigation log. It was concluded that one entire day, a 24 hour period, had been lost because they traveled west during their circumnavigation of the globe, opposite to Earth's daily rotation. The discovery of this travel peculiarity caused such excitement at the time that a special delegation was sent to the Vatican in order to explain the idiosyncrasy to the Pope in person. The legacy of Magellan of course, goes beyond the Earth.

Using the spelling "Magelhaens," three craters, two located on the Moon and one on Mars have been named after Magellan, the names adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1935 (Magelhaens on the Moon), 1976 (Magelhaens on Mars), and 2006 (Magelhaens A on the Moon). Fittingly two of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way galaxy, the Magellanic Cloud in the southern celestial hemisphere, were named for Magellan. Even more apropos, the Magellan Space probe, which mapped the planet Venus from 1990 to 1994, was named for the famed explorer.

As significant as the expeditions, explorations, and discoveries of Columbus, da Gama, and Magellan were, none stand near to the stature of man setting foot on the Moon in 1969, to date the greatest adventure and achievement by man, for mankind, involving a man.  In all of human history, sending a man to the Moon, and returning him safely to the Earth, just as John F. Kennedy had foreseen, is mankind’s most difficult, most expensive, yet the greatest single achievement in exploration and discovery. Landing on the Moon, and the subsequent five successful Apollo missions, as Apollo 13 had “a problem,” taught us not just about the origins of the Moon, but of the Earth as well. The success of Apollo 11 has enabled mankind to learn vastly more about the basic origins of not only us, but also the universe. In a secure facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, sits the most tangible results of the Apollo lunar missions, 380 kilograms of lunar rock samples, held under perfectly sterile conditions for study by current and future researchers and scientists.

Crew of Apollo 11 - Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin. 

Unlike the Earth with every changing weather patterns, continental drift, ice ages and earth quakes, and erosion, over the last several billion years the Moon is pretty much the same. The surface bears the scars of the early epochs during the formation of our planets and the solar system. The extensive record of meteorite craters on the Moon, when calibrated using absolute ages of rock samples, provides a key for unraveling time scales for the geologic evolution of Mercury, Venus, and Mars based on their individual crater records. Photo-geologic interpretation of other planets is based largely on lessons learned from the Moon. Before Apollo, however, the origin of lunar impact craters was not fully understood and the origin of similar craters on Earth was highly debated. Going to the Moon has ended that debate. And since the Earth and Moon are genetically related, formed from common material, it is now thought that the Moon was a result of a massive impact on early Earth from a “Mars-sized” planet, that was angled just right to propel the material in the resulting new planet’s orbit. That material coalesced within a very short period of time, less than a century, creating what we have today, only the Moon being much closer than we see today. The impact also caused the Earth’s tilt and rotation, two things essential to life on this planet.

The Eagle on its decent as viewed by Michael Collins.

Discovery through exploration, therefore is essential for the civilization known as man, and during the course of the last fifty years, America has been at the pinnacle of leading that newest and boldest of exploration – space. We are in the Space Age, and will remain there until man either evolves to something different, or ceases to exist at all. As with times before, and as with times in the future, mankind’s desire to succeed as a civilization will fuel the need to explore.

Buzz Aldrin as photographed by Neil Armstrong.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." American exceptionalism united the world 45 years ago today when one quarter of Earth's population watched those images, and heard those words beamed live from the Moon via U.S. satellites to millions of television sets around the globe. Those words were heard live by perhaps just as many on radios. Half of the population of the planet had stopped what they were doing in order to follow one event, glued to every second, as if all humanity's hopes and aspirations were on the shoulders of the three astronauts of Apollo 11. Never before and not since, has one single event had such an impact, and not just of substantial importance for the entire world, but substantial, deep personal importance for all that watched and heard as well.

And everywhere, those watching televisions, be it in the comfort of their home, with friends at their neighborhood bar, or standing amongst strangers on sidewalk watching TVs in a storefront window, or on a European square, or listening on a radio along with a hundred others in a village in India, or with other GIs in the jungles of the Southeast Asia, America was being thanked. American exceptionalism gave the world hope, and American exceptionalism will unite the world again, because as President Kennedy also had said following his address to Congress, speaking at Rice University in Houston, Texas less than seven years before that monumental day on July 20, 1969, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." Yes, “and the others, too.”