edgar-mitchell

48
The Way of the Explorer
the brain, the software and firmware programs analogous to the mentality
that used the machine. Though brain evolution takes place on cosmic
timescales, computer simulations of both computer and mental processes
were progressing so rapidly that it would startle any eye that was open to
observe. Though we did not recognize it then, humankind was going into
space primarily to discover itself.
In December of 1968, we took that first step into deep space when
Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders left Earth orbit for the first
time in human history, and struck out for the moon with the intention of
orbiting that luminous gray world and returning safely to Earth. The timing
of that flight was hurried, as there was new intelligence suggesting that
the Soviets were ready to send men to the moon as well. Nevertheless, this
was the first human foray into deep space. Seven months later, after the
two additional build-up flights of Apollo 9 and 10, Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin both set foot on the lunar surface, with Michael Collins minding
the store above them. In July of 1969, men were walking on another
world for the first time in the history of our civilization—or any civilization,
as far as we knew. When Armstrong announced to the world that the
eagle had landed, it was tantamount to that unceremonious yet monumental
flop of the first sea creature that beached itself on dry land, and lived.
Through the course of a few hundred thousand millennia, creatures of all
description would then roam the forest, plains, and deserts, because the
sea from which they sprang was no longer suitable for their kind.
So it seemed, and so it is, that humankind was embarking on an adventure
that would take them throughout the cosmos, just as those first
amphibians had led living matter throughout the dryer parts of the home
planet. More than a quarter of a million miles away, as the astronauts’
images were being transmitted from that rocky, dead world, the inhabitants
of Earth seemed to grasp the weight of this notion, either consciously
or unconsciously, and the astronauts themselves sensed the audience
through the immense and empty distance. Giving weight to this assertion
is the fact that during the intervening years since the moon landings, the
photographs of Earth taken from deep space continue to appear daily on
the pages of Earthbound periodicals and television, to stir in each of us a
deeper sense of the larger reality.
Soon after becoming America’s first man in space on the historic
15-minute flight of Freedom 7, Al Shepard had been grounded due to the
diagnosis of an inner-ear disorder that caused nausea, vomiting, and a sense
of vertigo, known as Meniere’s syndrome. For many sufferers of the disorder,
the symptoms clear up on their own, but for most there was little to