When America Went to the Moon
The cold war inspired it, big bucks backed it and Yankee ingenuity made it happen; 25 years later, the footprints in the lunar dust still inspire awe
But for space buffs, Apollo was never about politics or commercial windfalls. It was to be just the first step to the stars. In September 1969, a blue-ribbon committee chaired by Vice President Spiro Agnew recommended that the nation press on to Mars by the mid-1980s. But the Nixon administration, hamstrung by war and civil disobedience, had other priorities, and the proposal went nowhere. NASA lobbied mightily for a space station and a reusable shuttle to carry people back and forth, much like an airliner, but won funding only for the shuttle. Outside the Johnson Space Center in Houston, a giant Saturn V rocket lies on its side today, a rusting reminder of the glory days of space flight. A NASA employee, nodding at it, once remarked bitterly, "Someday people will ask, 'Whatrace of giants made such machines?'"
A quarter century after Neil Armstrong took "one small step for man" onto the lunar surface, the future of the human space program is in doubt. Congress came within a single vote of killing the International Space Station last summer, and its opponents are trying again this summer. Last week, the House of Representatives approved the station 278-155, but the Senate still must act. NASA's original justification for the space shuttle was that it was an all-purpose, largely reusable vehicle that could launch cargo from commercial satellites to space stations more cheaply than expendable boosters. But the shuttle turned out to be far more expensive than forecast. After the Challenger shuttle disaster, space policies were revised to require that nearly everything would again be launched on expendable rockets. That left the shuttle reserved for only those missions that require humans in space. "If we shut down the space station, we shut down human space flight," says Administrator Goldin, "because we won't have a destination for the shuttle."
As a measure of how much has changed, the Russians are now integral partners with the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan in the often redesigned space station. If it's built, the station will include a Russian laboratory module, Soyuz space capsules will serve as emergency lifeboats--and Russian spacecraft as well as the American shuttle will build and service it.
For astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, Apollo had a part to play in arranging the new world order that makes such cooperation possible. Aldrin recognizes that he flew his historic flight because of cold war exigencies. He recalls that the plaque on the lunar lander he and Armstrong left behind reads, "We came in peace for all mankind." And he asks, "Did we not promote peace by beating the Russians? Suppose they got there first?"
Apollo 11 First men on the moon On July 20, 1969, eight years after President Kennedy's promise, Neil Armstrong proclaimed his first, tentative step onto the moon a "giant leap for mankind." When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong lifted off from the moon's surface, they left an engraved plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."
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