One small step back to where we started

向出发点回跨一小步

The Apollo missions were supposed to reveal the truth about the Moon. In fact, they taught us about the Earth – and ourselves

阿波罗登月计划本意是用来揭示月球上的真相。事实上，他们教给我们的是地球——和我们自己。

Mark mason

             马克•梅森

In July 1969, soon after their return from the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were shown footage of the world’s reaction to the lunar landing. They saw the US newscaster Walter Cronkite wiping away his tears; people gathered around televisions from China to Brazil; pavements outside TV shops crammed as people watched in awe. Aldrin turned to Armstrong. “Neil,” he said, “we missed the whole thing”.

1969年7月，从月球回来不久之后，阿姆斯特朗和奥尔德林观看了全世界人们对登月镜头反映的影片。他们看到美国的新闻主播沃尔特•克朗凯特抹去了眼泪；从中国到巴西，人们都聚集在电视机前;电视商店的外人行道上挤满了在敬畏观看的人。奥尔德林转向阿姆斯特朗，说道“尼尔，我们错过了这整个过程”。

That comment (reminiscent of George Harrison’s complaint that the Beatles felt left out because “We were the only people who never got to see the Beatles”) reveals the surprising truth about the Apollo missions: they weren’t about the Moon. They were about the Earth.

评论（乔治•哈里森的回忆录里抱怨道，披头士感觉被忽视了，因为“我们是仅有的没去看披头士表演的人。”）揭示出阿波罗登月计划的惊人真相：它们不是关于月球的，而是关于地球的。

The clues had been there from the start, when the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to leave their home planet’s orbit. Orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968, fulfilling dreams as old as mankind itself, their real wonder was not at the dead grey planet beneath them, but at the vibrant blue globe in the distance. The first three men to see the Moon up close soon realised — with a much deeper sense of reverence — that they were the first three men to see the Earth from a distance. Witnessing an earthrise made them feel humble. They read the opening chapters of Genesis to a worldwide audience of millions, signing off with, “Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

从阿波罗8号的宇航员成为第一批离开自己的家园——地球轨道的人类时，线索就已经有了。1968年圣诞夜的绕月飞行实现了人类自古以来的梦想。然而真正的奇迹并不是在他们脚下的死气沉沉的灰色星球上，而是在那个遥远的充满活力的蓝色星球上。最早静距离看到月球的三个人很快意识到----带更深刻的崇敬感----他们是最早从远处看到地球的三人。目睹地出，令他们感到自己的卑微。他们给全球数百万观众朗读了《创世纪》的开始章节，在结束时说道“圣诞快乐，愿上帝保佑你们大家，所有美好地球上的你们”。

 Over the next four years, Apollo taught us what it means to be human: in a word, restless. Curiosity is never satisfied, it merely finds new targets. Quite how quickly the shift can occur was learnt by Pete Conrad, the third man to walk on the Moon (and the first to fall over on it). Once Armstrong and Aldrin had claimed the prize, no one was interested in Apollo 12. Conrad later appeared in an American Express advert of famous Americans nobody recognised. (Others included Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny.) Yet in many ways Conrad’s was the most interesting Apollo mission of all. His fellow moonwalker, Al Bean, never the most naturally gifted astronaut, compensated with sheer hard work. Finally standing on the lunar surface, he threw his silver Nasa badge into the distance, knowing that the moonwalk had earned him a gold one. But as they flew back to Earth, he turned to Conrad and admitted disappointment in the Moon itself: “It’s kind of like the song Is That All There Is?” Another timeless truth: achievements themselves aren’t what count, it’s the fact that you worked for them.

在接下来的四年多时间里，阿波罗告诉我们这对人类的真正意味着什么：一言以蔽之，永不停止。好奇心从未得到满足，它只是找到新的目标。皮特•康拉德，意识到这种变化速度是如此之快。他是第三位登上月球的人（也是第一位在月球摔倒的人）。当阿姆斯特朗和奥尔德林得到奖励时，没有人对阿波罗12号感兴趣。康拉德后来出现在美国运通公司美国名人的广告里，没有人认得他（其他名人包括为兔八哥配音的梅尔•布兰克）。然而，在很多方面来说，康拉德执行的是所有阿波罗任务中最有趣的。他的同事艾伦•毕恩不是最有天赋的宇航员，以勤奋工作的弥补。终于登陆月球表面时，他把银美国宇航局的银质徽章扔到了遥远的地方。因为他知道月球漫步已经为他赢得了一枚金质的。不过，他们一飞回地球，他就转而向康拉德承认对月球本身的失望：“这有点像那首叫《一切不过如此？》的歌曲。另一个永恒的真理是：成就本身并不是最重要的，重要的是你们为此做的工作。

 When Bean returned to Earth he would sit in shopping malls, simply to marvel at the variety of human life. And he has never again complained about the weather: “I’m just glad there is weather.” As so often, a journey into the unknown had revealed more about the traveller’s home than about the destination.

当比恩回到地球以后，他愿意坐在大型购物中心里，简单地惊诧于生活里的各种变化。他不再抱怨这里的气候：“我很高兴这里有气候（变化）。”像往常一样，一趟通往未知地的旅程揭示了更多关于旅行者家园的信息而不是目的地的。

  Virtually every Apollo astronaut came back with a deep sense of the Earth’s fragility. Ed Mitchell, Moonwalker No 6: “When we see ourselves in this bigger perspective — call it the ET point of view, the God point of view — a shift takes place in your perception and you start to think quite differently.” Apollo 16’s Charlie Duke describes Earth as “hanging in space like a jewel”. “People are always asking what we discovered when we went to the Moon,” says Dick Gordon, of Apollo 12. “What we discovered was the Earth.”

几乎每个阿波罗宇航员回来后都对地球的脆弱性有了更深的理解。埃德·米切尔，第六位登月者说：“当我们在这个更大的视角去看我们自己——称之为外星人的视角，上帝的视角——认知角度的不同，你的想法会开始变得十分不同。” 阿波罗16号上的查理·杜克用“像宝石一样悬挂在太空中”来描述地球。 “人们总是在问我们去月球的时候发现了什么，” 阿波罗12号上的迪克·哥登说：“我们发现了地球。”

The discovery gave a big boost to the nascent Green movement. Sir Jonathon Porritt cites the “deep and lasting effect” that Apollo had on “many environmentalists — including me”. Friends of the Earth was founded in the same year that man first walked on the Moon. The inaugural Earth Day happened a year later. Everyone seemed to agree with Michael Collins’s thought as he splashed back down into the Pacific with Armstrong and Aldrin: “Nice ocean you got here, planet Earth.”

这个发现给了初期的绿色运动很大的推动力。乔纳森·波利特爵士称阿波罗登月计划对“很多环保主义者——包括我”产生了“深远而持久的影响”。“地球之友”组织于人类首次登月球的同年成立。一年后，“地球日”创立。当迈克尔·柯林斯与阿姆斯特朗及奥尔德林一起溅落到太平洋时，说道：“地球，这是你美丽的海洋。”似乎每个人都赞同他的想法。

Politically, too, there was a shift. The Earth from space looks just like a map — except without the national borders. Collins remembers people of every nation saying to him, “‘We did it’ — it was a wonderful thing.” Ed Mitchell, on his way back from the Moon, realised that “the molecules of my body and of the spacecraft and of my partners were manufactured in some ancient generation of stars — and that was an overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness”. Inspired by the landings, René Dubos coined the phrase “Think globally, act locally”. T minus zero for Apollo was T plus one for globalisation.

政治上也有转变。从太空上看地球只不过像一幅地图——除了没有国界外。柯林斯记起各国的人都对他说“我们做到了——这事太棒了!” 埃德·米切尔在从月球回来的途中意识到：“我身体的分子，宇宙飞船的分子以及我的同伴们的分子都是在某个古老的星球上制造出来的——这是一种势不可挡的合一和联接的感觉。” 受到登月计划的启发，雷诺·杜博斯提出了“思想全球化，行动地方化”的说法。阿波罗登月计划的开始为全球化掀开一个新篇章。