Excelsior! We're Going to the Moon! Excelsior!

"Excelsior! We're Going to the Moon! Excelsior!" is an article first published in The New York Times Magazine on July 13, 1969, one week before the Apollo 11 moon landing. It was followed by an article by Issac Asimov. Several replies, both dismissive and supportive, were printed in the Letters to the Editor section on August 3, 1969. The piece was reprinted in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons in 1974.

Summary

James E. Webb, 1966

Vonnegut's brother Bernard once witnessed a space launch from Cape Kennedy, remarking that if you're actually there, it almost seems like a billion-dollar thrill—the ultimate firework, especially the noise. The exploration of space has shown humans that we are all fellow astronauts on a spaceship called Earth. Some, like James E. Webb in his introduction to Exploring Space with a Camera, focus on the nationalistic aspects of space exploration, and how new technologies affect a country's future, strength, and security. This has certainly been true of armor, gunpowder, navel warfare, and modern rocketry, as well as the colonization of the so-called "New World" with its millions of inhabitants already living here, and the African slave trade. Most mastering of new technologies has been used for greed and cruelty.

Present day masters are often quickly supplanted in their power, while the damage they do lives on much longer. So far the United States has spent $33 billion on space instead of cleaning its own problems on Earth. There is no urgency to get to space, no matter how much Arthur C. Clarke, one of the best public relations men for space exploration, wants to learn more about radio signals coming from Jupiter. His artistic impulses align with many people's commercial interests. Other fundamentally innocent scientists want to learn about craters on the Moon, with money gathered from taxes paid by, among others, some of the poorest Americans, in order to bring back fifty pounds of rock and dust.

Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the Moon, July 20, 1969

If Harry Houdini had access to $33 billion, he would have produced an impressive act of escape showmanship, thrilling people by putting his own life on the line "with strength, courage, tools, and engineering". It is this dangerous aspect of the space program that actually most interests common Americans, who care nothing about craters and radio signals. Even most scientists care little about scientific work unrelated to their fields, so the space program looks to most of them as well like very expensive show business. It has produced amazing photographs of Earth as a clean, beautiful ball of blue—without showing the hungry, angry humans and the environmental damage that has been done—while Clarke discusses exploring the solar system. Another science fiction author, Isaac Asimov, has perceived three stages in that genre's development: a focus on 1) adventure, 2) technology, and 3) sociology, the last of which Vonnegut interprets broadly as "respectful, objective concern" for the real Earth and its inhabitants.

Most of the people in Vonnegut's home of Cape Cod pay little attention to the space program unless a particularly dangerous launch or landing has taken place that day. They may then express vague relief that "the short-haired white athletes" involved are safe. Interestingly, the same is done for Russian cosmonauts, who are granted more identity than the generic body counts from Vietnam of soldiers and enemies produced daily on the evening news. While the first human footprint on the moon could become a sacred image to the young of this generation, it will almost certainly be commercialized immediately. Perhaps the Creator really does want human beings to travel through space, although generally when humans think they know what the Creator wants, terrible and cruel things follow. A young man arrived at Vonnegut's home recently to talk about his books. He said there was no future for his generation, since the planet was being destroyed, but he does his best by trying to live day by day.

Responses

The article resulted in several replies, collected in the Letters to the Editor section on August 3, 1969. Mary Lou McLoughlin of Glen Ridge, New Jersey, in a parody of the article's style, compares Vonnegut's position to that of someone objecting to Queen Isabella's funding of Christopher Columbus, on the grounds that "a new route to the East" is always going to be there anyway. She asks if Vonnegut, who clearly "disdains progress", enjoyed chiseling his article on stone tablets. Elva R. Maltz of Lexington, Massachusetts praised the article, not only for its "penetrating inquiry into our national goals", but also its "rhythmic cadences", which inspired her and her husband to read it out loud to their 18 month old son, who may have no future in this world. Edgar M. Cortright of NASA appreciated the reference to Exploring Space with a Camera, and notes a new recent printing of 50,000 new copies is available for $4.25 each.

Arthur C. Clarke, 1965

Peter B. Gillis of Elmsford, New York calls the argument that the world has too many problems to spend money on space an old one. Vonnegut's dismissal of Clarke—whom Gillis sees as a superior writer—as a mere pitchman is a simplistic blindness to the possibility that space advocates may have good reasons for their support. Humanity cannot live in the "cradle" of Earth indefinitely, and perhaps our recent increased mobility through technology and mass population explosion are signs that we have become "too big for Earth". Vonnegut's proposal that money be spent on our current problems ignores the already enormous amounts of money invested in government programs that accomplish nothing. Space colonization is valuable in case of global catastrophe on Earth, since the species will survive elsewhere. It is also a superior method of scientific innovation than war, which is most commonly what causes investment in technological development. If something other than warfare can produce progress and national excitement, then Gillis says he favors it.

See Also

• "The Last Tasmanian", which makes reference this article and the responses to it
• Between Time and Timbuktu, which features a much-hyped rocket launch as an initial plot device