They never did find the Clangers

Today's the 41st anniversary of the moon landing (or if you spend too much time on the internet, of the faked moon landing).



It's one of those events which brings into conflict two sides of me. The romantic, childlike side of me will never stop admiring the decision to go to space, against all the odds. Likewise, the sadness of the missions is stamped on me: the pointlessness (Shepard played golf there, FFS), the danger, that photograph, the isolation.

The adult, rational, Marxist side of me is much more cynical. The moon landings achieved nothing other than to intimidate the Russians and develop more sophisticated weaponry. They were overseen by Wernher von Braun, a Nazi whose skills meant he never had to say he was sorry. The moon program can be seen as an expensive way of diverting Americans' attention from Vietnam, from the Cold War, from campus protester killings, from the mass starvation and environmental destruction which characterises day to day life.

Perhaps, too, the moon landings were the last hurrah of a technology-based superpower, of a nation which believed that new gadgets would give them freedom and domination for ever. Instead, the space program is a sad shadow of its former self - see J G Ballard's Hello America, Myths of the Near Future and The Terminal Beach for the heartbreaking melancholy of post-space America, all drained pools and ex-astronauts going mad under the derelict towers of Cape Canaveral. Technology is more democratically available than ever envisaged, and the Big Industry of the US is in dire straits, undercut by the Chinese and soon, by India (both of which want a space programme for bragging rights too).

The space program then was perhaps a fantasy of simplicity - the fragile men alone in the void - away from the complications and demands of everyday life and other people. But it's a fantasy I like to entertain in more emotional moments.

So -what do you think? Noble endeavour? Triumph of technology? Pointless diversion? All three?

If you believe… they put a man on the moon

Sorry for the REM reference

Today, as the Guardian's special section reminds me, is the fortieth anniversary of the moon landings. How do you feel about it? Ten years ago, I had nothing but awe for such an amazing achievement - and I still feel that way for the most part. However, in between, I've done a lot of reading. I've learned how the space programme was motivated solely by a need to dominate the Soviets, about how it was manned by pretty unrepentant Nazi rocket scientists drawing on the skills developed in the 1940s, about how it cost a massive chunk of the US GNP, and how its scientific benefits have been massively overexaggerated by NASA spinners.

The Soviets took a pragmatic approach: near earth orbits are great for science, there's nothing on the moon. So did the Europeans for that matter - manned space flight is like getting a taxi down to the shops. We might make Mars but that's as far as it goes, so let's put our energy into satellites, telescopes and probes.

And yet - the romance lingers, perhaps even intensified by the failure of our space race. Once the cold war ended, it turned out that the motivation (and money) dissipated. Instead, we're in the post-space age. Will our grandchildren remember that men walked on the moon? Will they have the energy to care, inbetween long treks for water and trying to eke out a subsistence living on a ruined earth? Perhaps the dominant mode will be anger, at the waste of multiple billions on a giant penis when millions of people starved.

Perhaps, though, the dominant mood will be melancholy. J. G. Ballard's Hello America and Myths of the Near Future depict a California and Florida of abandoned space centres, emptied pools, men and women spiritually hollowed out by the loss of technological purpose.