mass
r
Distance between the centres of the masses
This is a quite brilliant simplification, and perhaps more importantly, the pivotal discovery of the deep relationship between mathematics and nature which underpins the success of science, described so eloquently by the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell: ‘Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.’
Nowhere is this sentiment made more clearly manifest than in Newton’s Law of Gravitation. Given the position and velocity of the planets at a single moment, the geometry of the solar system at any time millions of years into the future can be calculated. Compare that economy – you could write all the necessary information on the back of an envelope – with Ptolemy’s whirling offset epicycles. Physicists greatly prize such economy; if a large array of complex phenomena can be described by a simple law or equation, this usually implies that we are on the right track.
The quest for elegance and economy in the description of nature guides theoretical physicists to this day, and will form a central part of our story as we trace the development of modern cosmology. Seen in this light, Copernicus assumes even greater historical importance. Not only did he catalyse the destruction of the Earth-centred cosmos, but he inspired Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and many others towards the development of modern mathematical physics – which is not only remarkably successful in its description of the universe, but was also necessary for the emergence of our modern technological civilisation. Take note, politicians, economists and science policy advisors of the twenty-first century: a prerequisite for the creation of the intellectual edifice upon which your spreadsheets, air-conditioned offices and mobile phones rest was the curiosity-driven quest to understand the motions of the planets and the Earth’s place amongst the stars.
AT THE CENTRE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Matching the observations of the wandering stars – the planets – of the night sky with the idea that the Earth was at the centre of the solar system required extremely complex models. In the case of Venus, combining the Earth at the centre with the observations meant that Venus had a circular orbit around a point midway between the Earth and the Sun, so-called epicycles, with all the other planets having similar complicated orbits around various points scattered around the solar system. Placing the Sun at the centre of the solar system, with the planets arranged in their familiar order, with the Moon orbiting the Earth, gave a much simpler system.
1968 was a difficult year on planet Earth. The Vietnam War, the bloodiest of Cold War proxy tussles, was at its height, ultimately claiming over three million lives. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, prompting presidential hopeful Bobby Kennedy to ask the people of the United States ‘to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world’. Kennedy himself was assassinated before the year was out. Elsewhere, Russian tanks rolled into Prague, and France teetered on the edge of revolution. As I approached my first Christmas, my parents could have been forgiven for wondering what kind of world their son would inhabit in 1969. And then, as Christmas Eve drifted into Christmas morning, an unexpected snowfall decorated Oakbank Avenue and Borman, Lovell and Anders, 400,000 kilometres away, saved 1968.
Apollo 8 was, in the eyes of many, the Moon mission that had the most profound historical impact. It was a terrific, noble risk; a magnificent roll of the dice; a distillation of all that is great about exploration; a tribute to the sheer balls of the astronauts and engineers who decided that, come what may, they would honour President Kennedy’s pledge to send ‘a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to Earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 40,000 kilometres per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the Sun – almost as hot as it is here today – and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out’. If I heard that from a leader today I’d be first on the rocket. Instead I have to listen to vacuous diatribes about ‘fairness’, ‘hard-working families’, and how ‘we’re all in it together’. Sod that, I want to go to Mars.
To set Apollo 8 in context, Apollo 7, the first manned test flight of the Apollo programme, was flown by Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham in October 1968. Apollo 8 was supposed to be a December test flight for the Lunar Lander, conducted in the familiar surroundings of Earth orbit, but delivery delays meant that it was not ready for flight and the aim of meeting Kennedy’s deadline looked to be dead. But this wasn’t the twenty-first century, it was the 1960s and NASA was run by engineers. The programme manager was George Low, an army veteran and aeronautical engineer who knew the spacecraft inside out and had the strength of character to make decisions. Why not send Apollo 8 directly to the Moon without the Lunar Lander, proposed Low, allowing Apollo 9 to test-fly the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) in Earth orbit in early 1969 when it became available and pave the way for a landing before the decade was out? Virtually every engineer at NASA is said to have agreed, and so it was that only the second manned flight of the Apollo spacecraft lifted off from Kennedy on 21 December, ten short weeks after Apollo 7, bound for the Moon. The crew later said that they estimated their chance of succeeding to be fifty-fifty.
Borman: Oh my God!
Look at that picture over there.
Here’s the Earth coming up.
Wow, is that pretty.
Anders: Hey, don’t take that,
it’s not scheduled.
Borman: (laughing) You got a color film, Jim?
Anders: Hand me that roll of color quick, will you …?
Lovell: Oh, man, that’s great!
Precisely 69 hours, 8 minutes and 16 seconds after launch, the Command Module’s engine fired to slow the spacecraft down and allow it to be captured by the Moon’s gravity, putting the three astronauts into lunar orbit. Newton’s almost 300-year-old equations were used to calculate the trajectory. This was a spectacular, practically unbelievable engineering triumph. Less than a decade after Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth, three astronauts travelled all the way to the Moon. But the mission’s powerful and enduring cultural legacy rests largely on two very human actions by the crew. One was the famous and moving Christmas broadcast, the most-watched television
