• Originally published July 14, 2008 at 9:18 p.m., updated July 14, 2008 at 9:18 p.m.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God;

for you as yet but knock;

Breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

Trinity.

That’s the name that master physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer gave to the 36,000 acres of barren lava field where he chose to detonate the world’s first atomic bomb.

Twenty years ago, when I made the seemingly endless drive south from Colorado to the Trinity site in New Mexico, I had already read a lot about July 16, 1945, the date on which daylight came early to that desert near Alamogordo, and we all had to start living with the specter of total annihilation.

Later, I learned that on the same date, but almost a quarter-century later, came the second of the achievements many believe to be humankind’s greatest of the 20th century.

That’s the day in 1969 when the mighty Saturn V rocket, with its 7.5 million pounds of thrust, blasted Apollo 11 toward the moon. Four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would press the first footsteps into the loose lunar soil.

First, we can take a look at the end of the Manhattan Project, which climaxed with that pre-dawn blast.

Oppenheimer called the place Trinity after meditating on the poem by John Donne that I quoted at the beginning of this article.

But Spanish Conquistadors had given another name to this valley four centuries earlier: “Jornada del Muerto – Journey of the Dead Man.”

When Coronado came to this area in search of the Seven Cities of Gold, he instead encountered hardships like this valley, which was named because of the extreme difficulty involved in crossing it alive.

But Dr. Oppenheimer and his brilliant crew made the trip easily in their trucks and cars. They built a 100-foot tower and put their “gadget” – which contained the force of 20 thousand tons of TNT – on top of it.

Most of the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project would grow to deeply regret their part in the creation of this bomb. Three weeks later, two atomic bombs would kill possibly a quarter-million Japanese people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, either instantly, or slowly, from radiation poisoning.

Oppenheimer, it is said, came to reflect on another writing, this one from an ancient Hindu text: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

In an interview years later, he said of that morning in New Mexico, “I suppose we all thought that one way or another.”

As for the crew of Apollo 11, which included Michael Collins, who orbited the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on it, they left a plaque behind, close to an American flag they had implanted.

“We came in peace for all mankind,” it said.

Two great scientific achievements, a quarter-century apart, but so very different in nature.

Jim Bishop is a senior editor for the Advocate. Leave him a message at 361-574-1210 or jbishop@vicad.com or comment on this column at www.VictoriaAdvocate.com.

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