"First Man" ...revisited: YouSuck-MZ

Huge week this week with Elon Musk's announcement that Yusaku 'YouSuck/MZ' Maezawa is slated to be SpaceX's first paying customer on the BFR to fly to the Moon.

Here is a question that I am intrigued by, yet no one asks...

Who was the first person on the Moon who didn't kill anyone?

Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first person to step on the Moon.. And he did this, famously, as a civilian. And of the 12, the very last one to step onto the Moon, Jack Schmitt, was the only person to walk on the Moon to have never spent a day as a military person.

24 people flew out to the Moon, and Schmitt was the only one of them who had never been in the military. Yet Schmitt did receive military training. About a years worth.

With Monday's announcement, we are now in anticipation of having the first human beings with absolutely no military training to fly out to the Moon. And one of the most amazing things about Yusaku's announcement was that he wants to go with a bunch of artists. He sees this to be a mission that can inspire World Peace. And he is so committed to this vision that he has made the astoundingly generous offer to pay for the seats of the artists who will join him.

Of course, art is something that is available to any and all human beings. Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean was a Navy fighter pilot turned professional artist. And Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden was an Air Force fighter pilot who published a poetry book on his experiences. As that generation completely dies off, it is possible that we will learn of even more artistic endeavors by those who have been to the Moon.

In other current Space Policy news, there is the push by Donald Trump to create a separate US Space Force. And this has received backing by prominent people like Neil deGrasse Tyson.

It is ironic that NdT shares the same first name as the first person to step on the Moon. Neil Armstrong is one who is remembered for promoting world peace with the iconic words he chose to speak with his first step. He recognized it as being far more than an accomplishment of one single person, or even one single nation. He told the world that his first step was a singular accomplishment for all of mankind.

'-kind' is right there in the word he used. It harkens to the concept of kindness, and treating each other with mutual respect. It harkens to the concept of how all human beings are of a kindred spirit.

Yet there was a mixed message. Neil & Buzz planted the American flag. And that act served as a reminder of how the Space Race as a whole was a contest for the very survival of polarized nations. Nations with thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other, ready to vaporize millions of fellow human beings at a moment's notice.

Neil & Buzz themselves had military backgrounds where they lived as warriors flying missions with the goal of killing human beings of the Korean variety. Buzz got his first taste of fame by appearing in Life Magazine a full decade before he got selected as a NASA astronaut. It showed his gun camera footage of him destroying a Korean fighter pilot's jet aircraft. One of the famous Korean War stories about Neil Armstrong is how during one bombing mission he got shot at and he ended up flying into anti-aircraft wires which sliced off a section of his jet's wingtip. His aircraft was too badly damaged to land, so he had to eject.

It is told as a survival story of Neil. But no one talks about all the people he killed by dropping his bombs on them that day. And no one talks about the people Neil & Buzz killed on their many other combat missions.

Astronauts are upheld as some of the greatest heroes in our society. And the astronauts who went to the Moon, and walked on it, are upheld as the greatest of astronauts. Yet the simple fact that moonwalkers killed other human beings on their career path toward getting to the Moon is not something that is talked about.

Next month we will get the broad release of the movie First Man. Will it depict Neil Armstrong killing other people? It's easy to guess that yes, it will. Will it show the suffering that was inflicted by the bombs he dropped? Here it is easy to guess that no, it will not. Will it have any scene where Neil takes a moment of introspection to examine his emotions about having killed other human beings? It's obvious to guess that he killed soldiers with wives and children. But it is also quite likely that his bombs killed women and children themselves. Surely one of the heartwrenching scenes will be when Neil & Jan's two year old daughter Karen died while Neil was a test pilot at Edwards, in the same year he was selected by NASA to the Apollo Program. Will the grief of that toddler dying because of a medical condition be contrasted with the grief that a Korean family felt after having one of their beloved members killed by one of Neil's bombs? It's hard to imagine that any Hollywood director would choose to delve into that angle..

Is this an aspect to the psyche of the moonwalkers, amongst those who experienced combat, that anyone is interested in looking into? Did anyone ever ask that of Neil Armstrong, in the thousands of interviews that he has had? Surely this is a relevant topic given the words of peace he promoted during his most famous mission.

"We came in peace for all mankind."

It is easy to guess who the first person was to step foot on the Moon without having killed anyone beforehand. You simply look at whether or not they were involved in combat, and then if so, you look at the chances that the stretch of their combat experience did not include taking anyone's life. And if the astronaut did not have combat experience, you look at other ways they might have been involved in causing the death of another human being (akin to the simple analysis that Laura Bush killed more people than Charles Manson - accurate history often goes against the tide of conventional wisdom).

It seems clear that Jack Schmitt, as the only one of the 24 who flew to the Moon without having been a member of the military, is one who did not kill anyone. And it also seems clear that there is more than one in this subgroup of the 24, or the 12.

But it is also clear that the entire Apollo Program was driven by the base instinct within human beings to kill, and threaten to kill, when we feel that our own life has been threatened. As the United States felt threatened after Sputnik. This homicide-justified-for-the-sake-of-self-preservation meme is an intensely powerful one, and Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C Clarke dramatically illustrated how far back this goes, all the way back to that first ape-like human who had learned to use tools as weapons to kill their fellow ape-like humans.

Monday was a breath of fresh air.

We were treated with Yusaku Maezawa's vision that we, as a species, can rise above this legacy. It may be our history. But it does not need to be our future.

For those today who believe that a military Space Force is needed, we have been given a resounding reply:

YouSuck.

He told us that his nickname is 'MZ'. That is like taking the Korean DMZ that was the legacy of Neil & Buzz and others, and whittle away at that barrier in order to make it more permeable. In order that we can relate to our fellow human beings that were once seen to be enemies, but with one less letter in that barrier. DMZ becomes just MZ. And MZ's motivation for his flight is to help whittle away at that barrier even more. Perhaps after his trip around the Moon, humanity will be left with just 'Z'. Helping us toward a Singularity like the Omega Point of the Alpha-Omega, and we will all be able to more clearly see each other, not as enemies, but as kindred spirits, all striving toward similar goals in each of our lives.

We will see that actions we take every day have the potential to raise the standard of kindness that we treat each other with. Even through each thought we choose to entertain, we can further emphasize the '-kind' in mankind..

This has the potential to be a radical shift. To paraphrase Neil,

"That's one small step for a human being, one giant leap for manKind."

~ CT