Covered Bridge: US Flag Raised In Cuba As Apollo Moon Mission Turns Forty-Six

By

Covered Bridge
The Batram's Covered Bridge, near Willistown Township.

The American Flag is flying in Havana once again, as the American Embassy officially reopened this morning. The Guardian has put out some interesting history on this day of official diplomatic restoration:

Diplomatic relations were broken off by Eisenhower in 1961, after the deterioration in relations that followed Fidel Castro’s revolutionary insurrection. That was the same year that Barack Obama – the driving force behind secret talks with Cuba that culminated in his announcement of a new era of cooperation – was born.

Obama agreed to the precise timing for normalisation of relations, which will also involve the opening of a US embassy in Havana, in an exchange of letters with the Cuban president, Raúl Castro, earlier this month. The embassy opening will be an important milestone for Obama, whose second term in office is becoming defined by a recalibration of foreign policy that has enraged his conservative critics.

NASA
“Margaret Hamilton standing next to listings of the actual Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) source code.”–via Time

Perhaps Obama timed the re-opening of the American Embassy in Havana to borrow powerful symbolism from the moon landing, which celebrates its 46th anniversary today. Time magazine has the story on an enterprising young woman who was an integral part of the moon mission:

It was on this day, July 20, in 1969, that the Apollo 11 astronauts reached the moon and Neil Armstrong took his famous small step. People celebrated the world over, though few were more relieved than Margaret Hamilton.

“I remember thinking, Oh my God, it worked,” the pioneering software engineer tells TIME. “I was so happy. But I was more happy about it working than about the fact that we landed.”

The “it” that worked was Apollo 11’s on-board flight software, which Hamilton, as part of the MIT team working with NASA, led the effort to build. There was no guarantee things would play out so smoothly. In fact, just before the lunar landing was supposed to happen, alarms went off indicating that there wasn’t enough room on the computer for the landing software to work effectively. Turns out a radar was sending unnecessary data to the computer, overloading it with superfluous information.

To consider that, until today, the American flag had been raised on the surface of the moon more recently than at an embassy in Cuba is a little disorienting. But it’s absolutely true.

Connect With Your Community

Subscribe to stay informed!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Advertisement
Creative Capital logo