Jim Clash for Forbes
Who can forget the image of
American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos atop the medals stand at the
1968 Mexico City Olympics, heads bowed with black-gloved fists in the air,
protesting for civil rights? Or Grace Slick, with her counterculture sex, drugs
and rock ‘n’ roll attitude, belting out “Somebody To Love” to the youth at
Woodstock?
Then there’s the most iconic
image of them all: Neil Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface on July 20,
1969, uttering his iconic “One small step for a man, one giant leap for
mankind.”
The 1960s was the perfect
amalgam of protest, cultural revolution and feats of extraordinary exploration.
It was a decade like no other set up by the post-WWII prosperity of the 1950s.
And Armstrong’s 11 words perhaps best sum up the collective baby-boomer
enthusiasm at the time: The universe is limitless — and so are man’s
possibilities.
Bill Anders’ iconic “Earthrise”
photo in 1968 symbolized the endless possibilities of the baby-boomer
generation. (Photo courtesy of NASA)
A half-century later, do aging
boomers still feel that way? Some would argue yes (the internet), some no (the
internet). But what is not in question is that we want to feel that way, as
evidenced by nostalgia for the sweet spot of the 20th century.
Occupy Wall Street, the
1960s-like protest over income disparity, took the world by surprise a few
years ago. And on television, the popular series “Mad Men” attempts to
romanticize a “simpler” time.
Perhaps most interesting,
though, is an attempt by wealthy private individuals to equal or break
exploration records set by the government. Some of this activity is due to the
fact that 50-year anniversaries of such achievements are upon us, and that
makes a good media story.
But there is more to it, says
Dick Bass, owner of the Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort and the first to climb
the Seven Summits (highest peaks on each continent). “I know a lot of people
who wake and say, ‘There’s got to be more.’ They want to win the self-respect
that comes from doing something that really lays it on the line. To participate
is to live, while spectators only exist.”
“Titanic” director James Cameron sure was
living in 2012 when he equaled Don Walsh’s 1960 dive to the deepest point on
Earth, seven miles below sea level in the Mariana Trench. That same year, Swiss
daredevil Felix Baumgartner, backed by Red Bull Red Bull, broke Joe Kittinger’s
1960 parachute jump record of 102,800 feet. Baumgartner leapt from 128,100
feet, on the way down becoming the first parachutist to break the sound
barrier.
With an even higher calling,
entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX is one of only two private companies to carry
cargo to the International Space Station. And Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic
Airways plans to inaugurate commercial operations next year, taking boomers
into suborbital space – for $250,000 a ticket. A half-century ago, NASA sent
its first astronauts into suborbital space.
Earlier exploration wasn’t all
pie-in-the-sky altruism, though. “What people forget is that my flight was
largely a part of the Cold War,” says Sen. John Glenn, the first American to
orbit the Earth, in 1962. “The Soviets were claiming technical and research
superiority. We look back now and say, ‘Oh, that was just a small incident,’
but in those days there were serious writings about the future of communism —
whether it was going to be a dominant world factor.”
Bill Anders, the Apollo 8
astronaut who snapped the famous “Earthrise” photograph while orbiting the moon
in 1968, echoes Glenn’s practical sentiments. “People think Apollo was a
program of exploration and yet, as [my flight commander] Frank Borman was fond
of saying, it was just another battle in the Cold War.”
“To people who weren’t born
then, it is hard to imagine the U.S. and Soviet Union poised on the brink of
mutual annihilation,” Anders continues, “and that things like the missile gap,
who got into space first, whose education system was better were such strong
political drivers of the 1950s. President [John] Kennedy was grasping at ideas
to show the world that America wasn’t a second-rate country, that capitalism
wasn’t a flawed theory. The moon happened to be the line Kennedy drew in the
sand.”
Just as quickly as they came,
though, the sixties ended – metaphorically on Dec. 6, 1969, at California’s
Altamont Speedway. A Hell’s Angels member, while “protecting” the Rolling
Stones at a rock concert, infamously stabbed to death an innocent female fan.
The event was a dark counterpoint to the peace-love vibe of Woodstock just four
months earlier.
Then a few years later, in the
early 1970s, an entire country’s faith was shaken when President Richard Nixon
was forced to resign in disgrace over the lengthy Watergate scandal. An era of
creativity and protest had been replaced with a time of corruption and
disillusionment.
History, of course, is
cyclical. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Just when is the
next sixties, we boomers are dying (some literally) to know?