Friday, Nov. 28, 1969

Lunar Atavism

The impossible, if performed a second time, seems mere repetition. Thus millions of Americans were content to sleep through the Apollo 12's landing on the moon. They missed a diverting incident. The Apollo 12, with a price tag of roughly $375 million, represents a refinement of hundreds of years of scientific experiment and theory, the most intricate hardware of a technological civilization. Yet when the television camera fritzed out on the lunar surface, Astronaut Alan Bean had a moment of atavism. Like any other 20th century man confronted by the perversity of nonfunctioning machines, he whacked it with his hammer.

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