50th anniversary of the moon landing wasn’t the time to complain about NASA’s ‘white, male’ gender bias

The all-male Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969, from left to right: Neil A. Armstrong, Commander; Michael Collins, Module Pilot; Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Lunar Module Pilot.

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” What was your reaction when you first heard the immortal words of Neil Armstrong as he walked on the moon’s surface? I was too young to appreciate the significance of those grainy images transmitted across the world via Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station in the Australian Capital Territory, but now I feel humbled to have witnessed this historical event. To this day I am not sure what I find most incredible: the fact humans had walked on another celestial body or that something useful had resulted from Canberra’s doing. Let me get back to you on that.

The Apollo 11 mission was not just a stupendous achievement, it was humankind’s finest achievement. Fifty years later that remains the case. For the foreseeable future nothing will surpass it no matter how breathtaking the attainment, whether it be curing cancer, ending poverty, reversing global warming, or even getting the ABC to comply with its statutory charter. In an era of great social upheaval, disunity and unrest, three intrepid and remarkable men — Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz’’ Aldrin, and Michael Collins — mesmerised 600 million viewers.

Americans could be duly proud. After all, this was not only the ultimate pioneering triumph: the nation had finished a fight another superpower had started. The communist hegemon that overawed the world by putting the first satellite and the first man in space was the master of psychological warfare; now it had been bested at its own game. The American flag on the moon was also well and truly planted in the Soviet rump, for there was no question now about which country enjoyed technological and economic superiority.

The lead-up to the 50th anniversary should have been a time for all Americans to unite and reflect, but I suppose it was too much to ask that those on the lunar left could, just for once, not usurp the occasion. “If we do not acknowledge the gender bias of the early space program,” wrote author and puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal in The New York Times last week, “it becomes difficult to move past it”.

Kowal was referring to the predecessor of the Apollo program, Project Mercury, the subject of Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff and the film of the same name. NASA had mandated candidates be test pilots, which effectively excluded women from the program. There is a time and a place for raising these grievances, and the 50th anniversary of the moon landing was not it. Also joining in to diss the commemoration was The Washington Post, which bemoaned that “The culture that put men on the moon was intense, fun, family-unfriendly, and mostly white and male”.

The culture that put men on the moon was intense, fun, family-unfriendly, and mostly white and male https://t.co/x5vQBuU4IN

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 16, 2019

“Cosmonaut diversity was key for the Soviet message to the rest of the globe,” gushed author Sophie Pinkham last week as she noted the USSR had been the first to put a woman, an Asian, and a black man into space. “Under socialism, a person of even the humblest origins could make it all the way up.” Diversity was also key for the 10 million Soviet citizens sent to the gulags, but putting a few token minorities into orbit is a good enough reason to overlook socialism’s most heinous crimes, surely?

To be clear, I do not have anything against those wretches who were born utterly miserable and remain so until the day they die; if anything, they are to be pitied. What does raise my ire is when these muppets appropriate a monumental occasion to spoil it for everyone, usually doing so by purporting to speak on behalf of the oppressed and the disenfranchised.

As for NASA’s supposedly discriminatory selection criteria, we should be grateful that it rigorously assessed its candidates. If left to the affirmative action and social justice zealots, the rockets would never have got off the ground, and the applicants would have been graded according to the principle of intersectionality. Unlike Mercury’s requirement that candidates hold a STEM degree, only those who had successfully completed gender or sexuality studies would be eligible.

Members of the Kennedy Space Center control room team rise from their consoles to watch the liftoff of the Apollo 11 mission on July 16, 1969.

The misandrists of today would have angrily insisted that a philosophy of phallus-worshipping inspired the design of the rockets, the anything-but-white crowd would shriek upon seeing the shade of the spacesuits, the hardcore feminists would argue the laws of physics are based on patriarchal constructs of logic, and the disability advocates would complain the space capsules did not provide for wheelchair access.

In this black comedy alternate history the Soviets inevitably win the space race, upon which Lenin’s useful idiots in academia would proclaim this as a vindication of Marxist principles. If Wolfe were inclined to document this sorry saga, it would be titled The Right Huff.

That said, it is not inappropriate to acknowledge what NASA could have done better in the Apollo 11 project. My beef is the design of the Saturn V rockets, each of which had five F-1 engines capable of generating 3.4 million kilograms of thrust. As powerful as these rockets were, they are incapable of escaping the pull of wokeness, that powerful and parasitical force which drags everything back to Earth.

On the subject of wokeness, let’s give a big shout-out to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which is hearing a complaint from Canadian Jessica Yaniv, who, notwithstanding the fact she is equipped with a set of Jatz crackers, lawfully identifies as a woman, which can be done simply by completing two forms and submitting a supporting letter from a psychologist.

One proud lesbian. I'll never give up fighting for human rights equality. #LGBTQoftwitter pic.twitter.com/sKyjJ0Um39

— Jessica Yaniv (@trustednerd) June 16, 2019

The subject of the complaint is Maria Da Silva, a home-based beautician who until recently performed Brazilians for women, or should I say women with vaginas. Yaniv, who is also a lesbian, claims Da Silva’s refusal to perform the service for her amounts to a violation of human rights.

It is one thing for a biological male to wear a dress and take on a female name, but another for that person to demand a woman give his nether regions a number one against her will. Not that long ago those who behaved so would have been called a creep and hit around the head with a handbag; nowadays anti-discrimination officials indulge them. Incidentally, Yaniv allegedly has a history of making similar complaints against other immigrant women with poor English.

Da Silva, who has young children, has given evidence she has had to close her business as a result of Yaniv’s complaint. According to John Carpay, the President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, the cost of defending these cases, even if the respondent is successful, is between $10,000-$30,000. To paraphrase Armstrong, it is one small step for a man to initiate this process, and one giant backward leap for mankind.

The American flag heralded the launch of Apollo 11, the first Lunar landing mission, on July 16, 1969.

Nonetheless this incident did prompt me to re-think the recent complaints that the Mercury and Apollo programs marginalised would-be astronauts. We should atone for this by henceforth banning white cisgender and heterosexual men from going into space until further notice. Let’s face it, we’ve put mice into space, as well as chimpanzees, monkeys, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, frogs and even fruit flies. It is time to lower the bar and give the perpetually aggrieved a go.

What I propose is a one-way voyage, the first interplanetary diaspora if you like. I’m talking Yaniv, vegan activists, race discrimination commissioners, diversity consultants, GetUp! representatives, climate change alarmists, Bono, tofu-eaters, male feminists, Daily Life columnists, academics who insist students acknowledge their “white privilege”, people who habitually whine about being the victim of “structural oppression”, and anyone who has tweeted they are “ashamed to be an Australian”. This endeavour will cost hundreds of billions, but it’s our treat I insist.

In short, shift the disempowered from their oppressors, and they will be liberated. A lunar utopia awaits you. We shall provide the transport, and the aiming point will be in the centre of the aptly named Sea of Tranquillity. The rest is up to you.

For those of you remaining on earth who will work on this project, I say let us heed the apocryphal words of NASA’S legendary lead flight director, Gene Kranz: “Failure is not an option”. By the way, forget what I said about nothing surpassing Apollo 11.

Finally, there remains the question of what to call this project. We should keep the tradition of naming missions after a Graeco-Roman god, while ensuring the designation reflects that aspect of humanity who will be departing forever. Uranus 1, you are go for launch.