AMERICA

Success story

JOHN GRAHAM

Washington—The Americans are simply an amazing people. If the qualities that the British pride themselves on show best under strain, then the qualities of Americans are most clear under the light of success. The last ten days in this country have been a strange time. But many of the personal and collective qualities that have made America what it is have been uncloaked by the simple but brilliant success of the Apollo 11 flight. And they make it easy to forget for a time the bad things and concentrate on the good.

There is first the technological power of this country, that so astonished Khrush- chev on his visit, and that has magnified almost beyond recognition even in the inter- vening few years. The Americans have just

completed an enterprise of greater techno- logical complexity than anything tried be- fore. They conducted the entire operation in the fullest publicity they could manage, and they brought it off with scarcely a hitch. There is a tendency to gloss over the sheer mechanics of a flight to the moon— the mathematics, the chemistry, the phys- ics, and so on—as old hat. But for those who like myself can hardly build a card- house of more than two or three stories without developing insuperable mechanical problems, it is worth continually reminding ourselves that the machinery that put two Americans onto the moon had literally mil- lions of moving parts.

That this machinery worked so well is not only a tribute to the ingenuity of the men who built it. but a comforting proof that

man can remain in charge of the machines he builds. The cybernetics of Apollo I I, the

logistic equations, the critical path analyses ... all these were about as far from the quadratic equations of our youth as the rockets Wernher von Braun made in his youth were from the Saturn 5. But the end result of this vast system was to enable two men to go and dance on the moon.

Controlling the technical creations of the cleverest nation of scientists were two of the most admirable human qualities: con- fidence and modesty. It may sound odd to talk of Americans and modesty in the same sentence, but really there has been very little boasting this week. There has been a lot of congratulation, naturally, but almost no gloating. There was even, before the flight, a considerable debate about whether the Stars and Stripes should be planted on the moon; a lot of people thought nothing so narrow should mark man's first extra- terrestrial visit, and that a United Nations flag would be more appropriate. That such a debate should even be started is to me astonishing: can anyone doubt that if the first men to go to the moon had come from another country, say England or France or Ghana, they would have taken their coun- try's flag? One dinner-party guest said to me on Saturday : 'You know, if you had been the ones to get there first, your astro- naut would have planted the Union Jack and said, "I name this moon Elizabeth."' The confidence was equally striking. Everyone knew that the mission was dan- gerous. No one had ever done it before,

and even if all foreseeable dangers were anticipated, there was always the a priori

argument that since the moon is an alien world man's powers of perception and de- tection, however great, just might not be of the type to detect the dangers. And yet, in the weeks that led up to the launch, and the days of the flight, scarcely anyone be- trayed that he believed all would not go well. The whole business was shrugged off with that coolness, that matter-of-factness, which Americans claim is the British char- acteristic they most admire.

It was in the spirit of the great adven- turers ... the 'Doctor Livingstone, I pre- sume?' ploy. This is to me the first and strongest impression of Americans, that they are the adventurers of the world. They started that way, they have continued that way. They pride themselves on it, and it doesn't look as if anything will stop them.

Sometimes their adventures end in tragic futility, as in Vietnam and Cuba: sometimes they end in glory. But their reach will al- ways exceed their grasp, and now that they have grasped the moon, they will reach for something else.

This, the underlying romance of humanity, is in permanent conflict with the practical side of their nature.

For they are a supremely practical people. They want to know whether some- thing can be done and what it will cost, and if possible what use it will be. Vague answers to these questions will not stop them trying a particular enterprise, but will provoke a wall of criticism. The space programme, and especially the moon programme, has been clear enough in the last few years, when there were, plain for the world to see, colossal problems inside the United States itself, which could have used the 525,000 million that the moon programme has cost. To this criticism, the best answer has been given, a long time ago, by Benjamin Franklin, who was at the time American ambassador to Paris. One of the earliest balloon experiements was in process, when he was asked : 'What is the use of a balloon?' He replied : 'And what use, sir, is a new-born babe?'

The use is because it is there; the rea- son for doing it is because it is there. Mankind has come a long way since a poor Greek scientist was clapped in irons for daring to suggest that the sun might be as big as the Peloponnese: everyone knew the sun was Apollo, and therefore could not be as big as the Peloponnese.

Now, the moon is as big as Apollo. We have gone on doing things and going places simply because they were there. And if you are at a loss for words to describe what has happened, you are in the company of the poet:

`And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind How time has ticked a heaven round

the stars.'

In space at least, the Americans are the Greeks of today. They have the two great characteristics of the Athenians, acquisitive- ness and inquisitiveness. They love to find practical uses for their knowledge, but they also love knowledge for its own sake. Like Ulysses, they journey and they fight.

And like Ulysses, they are not good at sitting still: `I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd not to shine in use.'

It would be a shame if the domestic pres- sure in America now forced a decline in the exploration of space. There is a spirit, 'yearning in desire to follow knowledge, like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.' This spirit must be served, or mankind will be the less.