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[Bookish Weekend] Live From the Moon
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Forty-five years ago this week, Americans were already growing tired of the moon. A month earlier, on July 21st, the landing of Apollo 11 had inspired universal awe. But the launch of Apollo 12, scheduled for November 14th, was marked by a sense of anticlimax—probably an inevitable feeling, the Times wrote, “considering the intense national emotion spent on the first moon landing.” “You can’t get as excited the second time you kiss the girl,” one man said.
四十五年前，也是这一周，美国人已经厌烦了月球相关的话题。那一周往前再推一个月，7月21日，阿波罗11号惊艳了全世界。但随后定于11月14日发射的阿波罗12号迎来的却是强烈的抵触情绪——这种抵触情绪可能无法避免，《泰晤士报》如是道，“毕竟第一次登月几乎耗尽了全美的紧张情绪。”甚至有人比喻说，“第二次亲吻梦中情人时，兴奋感就烟消云散了。”
Lunar fatigue wasn’t the only problem. Neil Armstrong’s moon walk had been conveniently scheduled for Sunday night, but Apollo 12’s took place at six in the morning on a Tuesday; few people were awake to watch. The astronauts hadn’t been properly trained as cameramen, and, shortly after the landing, Alan Bean, the lunar-module pilot, pointed the mission’s only television camera directly at the sun, burning out its circuitry. Left only with audio, CBS cut to a Long Island studio where two actors in space suits pantomimed what was happening on the moon; NBC used astronaut marionettes, created by Bil Baird, the puppeteer who performed “The Lonely Goatherd” in “The Sound of Music.” The next morning, when the first photographs of the My Lai massacre were printed in The Plain Dealer, the news from the moon couldn’t compete. “November, 1969 marked the beginning of the decline in commitment and resources covering Apollo by all three television networks,” David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek write in “Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program.” Ultimately, that led to a decline in voter commitment, too.
但第二次登月直播面临的不止抵触情绪这一个问题。尼尔·阿姆斯特朗的登月画面直播被巧妙安排在了周六晚，但阿波罗12号的登月时间，则是在周二的凌晨六点，能爬起来看的人没几个。阿波罗12号的宇航员摄像技术也没练好，在着陆后没多久，登月舱驾驶员艾伦·宾（Alan Bean）就把任务中唯一一台摄像机对向了太阳，把电路烧了。没了摄像机，剩下的只有音频传输。CBS直接把画面切到了位于长岛的演播室，让两个演员穿着宇航服，表演月球上的场景。NBC则用《音乐之声》里《孤独的牧羊人》的表演者Bill Baird做的提线木偶宇航员来了一场演示。第二天早上，第一批越南美莱（My Lai）大屠杀照片通过The Plain Dealer（一家地方性日报）见报，引发广发关注，登月的消息抢不到头条。“1969年11月是三家电视网开始削减对登月报道幅度和资源投入的开始，”David Meerman Scott和Richard Jurek在《营销月球：阿波罗登月计划推广》（Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program）一书中如是写道。最终，新闻报道焦点的转移也导致了选民意志的转移。
“Marketing the Moon,” written by two P.R. professionals and space enthusiasts— Scott has published eight books about marketing, including “Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead”; Jurek owns “the world’s largest collection of $2 bills that have flown in space”—chronicles the public-relations triumphs and disasters that, in many ways, determined the fate of the Apollo program. Usually, Apollo is presented as a story of technological derring-do. Scott and Jurek see it as a sales job: an attempt to convince America, and the world, of its own competence, intelligence, and courage. It was the astronauts and engineers at NASA who possessed those qualities, not the rest of us—and so it fell to public relations, and, specifically, to television, to help us share in them.
《营销月球》一书由两位公关专家所著，他们同时也是太空爱好者。Scott已经出版了八本讲述市场营销的书，其中包括《Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead》，而Jurek则收集有“世界上最多的曾进入太空的物品，价值20亿美元”。他们的这本新书给在某种意义上决定了阿波罗登月计划命运的公关事件做了编年。阿波罗经常被当成科技史上一次勇敢的冒险，但Scott和Jurek却把这次登月行为看成了一次营销：要登月就必然要说服全美乃至整个世界登月计划是可行的，说服他们人类有足够的技术、智慧和勇气来完成这次挑战。而实际上，拥有这些品质的人是NASA的宇航员和工程师，不是其他人类——所以要说服这些剩下的人，必须要靠公关营销，特别是电视营销。
Before Apollo, rocketry was rarely a spectator sport. Secrecy had characterized American space projects. In 1961, when President Kennedy announced the lunar program, he justified it in terms of the Cold War. But in fact Apollo, which was run by NASA, a civilian agency, was almost ostentatiously civilian in its sensibility. In tracing the program back to its roots, Scott and Jurek veer away from the desks of military planners, and toward the world of popular culture: a run of space-themed issues in Collier’s magazine, which appeared from 1952 to 1954; “Man in Space,” a “science-factual” film made by Walt Disney and Wernher von Braun, and seen by President Eisenhower, in 1955; Disney’s Tomorrowland, which opened the same year and featured a giant rocket as its centerpiece, the “TWA Moonliner.” Compared to the military operations of the past, Apollo would be an open book.
在阿波罗计划之前，火箭之类的事情很少成为公众关注的焦点。美国航天计划可以用一个词来概括，那就是保密。1961年，当肯尼迪总统向全国宣布将要实施登月计划，他把冷战拿来当做挡箭牌。但实际上，NASA是一个非军事机构，它所运营的阿波罗计划本质上也是一个非军事项目。Scott和Jurek追根溯源，不再盯着军事策划员的案头，反将目光转向了世界流行文化：Collier杂志1952-1954年间出版了一系列太空主题的杂志；迪斯尼1955年出了一部由华特·迪士尼（Walt Disney）和韦纳·冯·布劳恩（Wernher von Braun）合作的动画电影《Man in Space》，号称“在科技上实事求是”，连总统艾森豪威尔也看了；同一年，迪斯尼主题公园“未来世界”（Tomorrowland）开放，以巨大火箭作为公园中心，称为“TWA Moonliner”。相比于之前的军事行动，阿波罗计划几乎毫无遮拦地向公众公开。
Or, more accurately, a reality show: if there was a central pillar to the Apollo P.R. effort, it was live television. Scott and Jurek chart the continual battle within NASA over live TV. On one side were the engineers and military types, who viewed onboard television cameras as an unnecessary addition to the mission payload, or even as an invasion of astronaut privacy. On the other side were the administrators and public-relations specialists, who argued that television was, in some ways, the point of the mission. To the pro-TV faction, the medium had an ideological meaning: when faced with opposition from the engineering team, Julian Scheer, NASA’s director of P.R., said, “We’re not the Soviets. Let’s do this the American way.”
或者，更准确的说，整个阿波罗计划其实就是一场真人秀：阿波罗计划的公关活动只有一个中心，那就是电视直播。Scott和Jurek在书中用表格记录了NASA内部关于电视直播的争论。工程师和偏军方的人员认为，搭载电视摄像对发射任务来说是不必要的负重，更是对宇航员隐私的侵犯，而另外一方，管理层和公关专家，则认为电视在种程度上其实就是阿波罗计划的意义所在。支持电视直播的一派认为电视媒体有着意识形态意义：在面对工程师一派的反对时，Julian Scheer，NASA的公关部长说，“我们可不是苏联。要做就要按美国的方法来。”
The question was resolved, in part, through subterfuge. In 1967, Look magazine published a two-page spread, painted by Norman Rockwell, showing astronauts on the moon with a television camera. This was “very likely stage-managed,” Scott and Jurek write, by someone at NASA: “With the mass reproduction of this painting, the pro-television faction cleverly marketed to millions of Americans a dream that they, too, would be a witness to the monumental event pending in a few months.”
这一问题算是部分用花言巧语解决的。1967年，Look杂志出版了一份两页的传单，上面印着Norman Rockwell的画，两个宇航员在月球上扛着一台电视摄像机。传单的出现，Scott和Jurek认为“很可能是有人在幕后操纵”，这个有人，当然是指NASA的人。“随着这幅画作大量印发，支持电视直播的一派在几个月间巧妙地向千百万美国人描述了一个梦想，一个他们也可以亲眼目睹的历史性事件。”
When the dream came true, and NASA found itself in the television business, the stars among the astronauts revealed themselves. Wally Schirra, the disciplined, punctilious commander of Apollo 7, hated the idea of being on television—but, soon enough, he was leading televised tours of his spacecraft. Gags, stunts, and tableaus were devised. On Christmas Eve, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 read from the Book of Genesis while the Earth receded in the window and the largest-ever television audience looked on. (It was “an unprecedented marketing and public-relations triumph,” Scott and Jurek write, despite a lawsuit against NASA filed by the atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair.) During Apollo 10, mission commander Tom Stafford filmed the docking of Snoopy, the lunar module, with the command module, Charlie Brown; later, he showed television viewers what it was like to shave in space. The astronauts turned out to be the world’s most competent entertainers. Americans fell in love with them; the crews of Apollos 7, 8, 9, and 10 won an Emmy.
当梦想成真时，NASA已然在电视业崭露头角，而宇航员中那些有明星潜质的人，也受到了更多关注。阿波罗7号的指挥官Wally Schirra纪律严明，行事谨慎，很不喜欢上电视——但很快，他就开始在电视上领着记者参观自己宇宙飞船了。笑话，特技表演，设计过的画面悉数登场。1986年圣诞夜，阿波罗8号班组成员朗读福音书，整个世界都躲在窗户里，守着电视在听，观众人数之所，前所未有。（“这是史无前例的公关营销胜利”，Scott和Jurek在书中写道。当然，是除了无神论活动家Madalyn Murray O’Hair状告NASA案之外的成功。）在阿波罗10号计划进行过程中，指挥官Tom Stafford把登月舱史努比和指挥舱查理·布朗的对接过程拍摄了下来；此后，他还向电视观众展示了在太空中刮胡子什么样。宇航员变成了全球最棒的表演者，美国人民都爱他们；阿波罗7，8，9，10号的班组成员甚至赢得了一尊艾美奖。
Scott and Jurek devote a whole chapter of “Marketing the Moon”—which, it should be noted, overflows with beautiful photographs, drawings, and illustrations—to the broadcast and reporting of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The main thing, they show, was that it was live—and that its liveness embodied, in itself, the bravery and risk of the mission. Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the moon, describes it this way:
Scott和Jurek在《营销月球》中用了整整一章来讲阿波罗11号登月的广播和报道，应提到的是，这一章里有大量的优秀照片、画作和插图。他们要在这一章展现的核心内容是：整个过程都是直播——这直播本身就包含了登月计划的冒险精神和所承担的风险。Gene Cerman，最后一位登月的宇航员曾说过：
We didn’t say, ‘We’ll tell you about it in two weeks.’ We took you with us. The power of television is unbelievable. That’s what television does. What you are seeing is happening at this instant. … [T]he thing that brought so much prestige to this country is that every launch, every landing on the Moon, and every walk on the Moon was given freely to the world in real time. We didn’t doctor up the movie, didn’t edit anything out; what was said was said.
“我们不说‘两周之内告诉你’，我们带着你一起走。电视的力量强到令人无法置信。这就是电视的魔力。你所看见的正是这一刻在发生的。……给美国带来声望的，正是每一次在月球的发射、着陆，宇航员在月球迈出的每一步都免费向世界同时播出。我们没有修改过片子，没有剪掉任何内容；所见即真实。”
CBS covered the Apollo 11 landing for thirty-two continuous hours; it set up special screens in Central Park so that people could watch in a crowd. Ninety-four per cent of TV-owning American households tuned in. Without television, the moon landing would have been a merely impressive achievement—an expensive stunt, to the cynical. Instead, seen live, unedited, and everywhere, it became a genuine experience of global intimacy.
CBS对阿波罗11号着陆的报道连续进行了32个小时。他们在中央公园树了特别大屏幕，能让人们在人群中观看直播。百分之九十四有电视的美国家庭都收看了直播。没有电视，登月只不过是个令人印象深刻的项目——说不好听的，一次烧钱的特技演出。但电视直播未经剪辑在世界各地播出，使得这项活动成为了全球人类所共有的经历。
And yet, after Apollo 11, it was television that drew people away from the moon. TV news insured that there were other things to focus on. And NASA, Scott and Jurek argue, made a grievous mistake in scheduling later Apollo milestones for the prime-time hours, in a bid to pull in viewers. That raised the cost for the networks, who now had to preëmpt their most profitable programming. Coverage of Apollo dwindled, but NASA persisted. For Apollo 17, the final moon mission, NASA planned a spectacular nighttime launch. As it happened, the launch, at half past nine, conflicted with “Medical Center,” a wildly popular CBS drama. The network planned to cut briefly to the launchpad, then return to the show. But a technical problem delayed the liftoff for two and a half hours; many viewers went to bed without knowing what happened, in either case. (The plot developments on “Medical Center” were reported the next day, on “The CBS Morning News.”) Frustrated, the network devoted only six hours to the rest of the final Apollo mission.
但在阿波罗11号之后，也正是电视让人类不再心心念念着月球。电视新闻确保我们每时每刻都能关注新鲜的事物，而Scott和Jurek认为，NASA为了吸引观众，把之后的阿波罗登月计划中里程碑式的一刻放在黄金时段进行，是犯了一个巨大的错误。这一决定使电视网络不得不改变高收益节目安排，增加了他们的经济成本。对阿波罗计划的报道量因而有所下降，但NASA仍坚持这一做法。到了最后一次发射阿波罗17号的时候，NASA仍然把时间安排在晚上。结果晚上九点半的发射时间和CBS一档非常受欢迎的电视剧《Medical Center》相冲突。CBS原计划在电视剧播出过程中短时间切到发射画面，然后再继续播电视剧，但因为发射过程中出现了技术问题，发射推迟了两个半小时，很多观众直接睡了，没看到电视剧，也没看到发射。（第二天《Medical Center》的剧情在CBS早间新闻播出。）经过这一次令人沮丧的事件，CBS一共只对最后一次阿波罗计划项目进行了六个小时的报道。
There were other factors driving America’s disenchantment with Apollo: the civil-rights struggle, for example, and the Vietnam War. For most of the program’s duration, Scott and Jurek report, polls showed that a majority of Americans thought that it was too expensive, and possibly a waste of time. (The one exception was right after the Apollo 11 landing, when a majority supported it.) But they also point out that, in a fundamental sense, the program’s message was mixed. “When Apollo 8 escaped Earth’s gravitational influence and headed for the moon, taking photographs of the Earth was not a major part of the flight plan,” they write. But the photographs of the Earth taken from space during that mission—particularly the famous “Earthrise” photograph—turned out to be just as iconic as the images of astronauts walking on the moon. The never-before-seen views of Earth floating in the blackness, Scott and Jurek write, “made many wonder why we were spending so much effort and money to examine the cold, dead, and barren surface of the Moon when our gaze might be better focused on our home planet and what we were doing to it.”
美国人对阿波罗计划兴渐失不止是因为这个：举例而言，民权运动、越战，都可以吸引公众视线。根据Scott和Jurek所说，在阿波罗项目进行的大部分时间里，大多数美国人都觉得这个项目花费过高，而且很可能不过是在浪费时间（只有一次例外实在阿波罗11号着陆之后，多数美国人表示支持这一项目）。但他们也指出，本质上这个项目所传达的信息是很复杂的，“当阿波罗8号脱离地球引力影响，向月球行进，并拍摄地球的照片时，这并不是项目最重要的初衷。”但当从太空拍摄的地球被传回来后——特别是那张著名的“地出”照片——这些照片却和宇航员在月球行走的画面一样，成了阿波罗项目的标志性内容。人们第一次从这样前所未见的角度观看地球漂浮在黑暗中，“这让我们中的许多人开始思索花那么多精力和经费去探索冰冷光秃又毫无生机的月球表面究竟有什么意义，我们本可以更关注自己所在的美丽星球，专注于在地球上的事情。”
NASA planners tried to get people excited about lunar colonies or a mission to Mars. But they found it hard to compete with the turn toward Earth that their mission had inadvertently inspired. To space enthusiasts, the story of Apollo was about technology and exploration. To other people, it had turned out to be about the preciousness of the human and natural world. By April, 1970—less than a year after Apollo 11, and a period of environmental disasters like the Cuyahoga River fire—photographs of Earth taken from Apollo spacecraft were being incorporated into the iconography of the first Earth Day. It’s tempting to think that Americans just got bored with Apollo: “Reversing the inevitable downturn in a product’s life cycle is one of the most difficult jobs marketers face,” Scott and Jurek write. But they were also paying attention to what Apollo was telling them. They understood the program’s double meaning.
NASA曾希望能重燃公众对于月球殖民地或是火星之旅的兴趣。但他们发现，这些努力都无法与人们转向地球的兴头相抗争，而这正式他们计划本身的副产品。对于狂热的太空爱好者们，阿波罗计划的故事讲的是科技、是探险。对于其他人，它却只是人类和自然世界的瑰宝。1970年4月，阿波罗11号发射不到一年，霍凯加河（ Cuyahoga River）大火等一系列自然灾害发生——从阿波罗宇宙飞船上拍摄的地球照片被重新图解，用于第一次地球日。我们也可以认为，美国人就是厌倦了阿波罗计划，而已：“要逆转一个产品生命周期中必然出现的下滑是市场营销者所面临的最艰难的任务，”Scott和Jurek这样写道。但人们也注意到了阿波罗号所要向他们传递的讯息。对他们而言，阿波罗项目有着双重意义。
Reviewed by Joshua Rothman
Translated by Lauren Dong
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Post comment Comment (1 replies)
- Reply xingyue
- It is interesting to consider the moon landings according to marketing. It seems to be reasonable. With landing, man put forwards many new ideas to appeal to audiences, such as searching new Earth, the round-the-moon mission, and so forth. Besides, I think it’s somewhat unbelievable that “the crews of Apollos 7, 8, 9, and 10 won an Emmy.” It’s really a funny and cruel metaphor that “You can’t get as excited the second time you kiss the girl”.
