Lunar trajectory

(c) NASA

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of the Lunar Excursion Module in 1969 I remember a feeling a wonder, awe and hope.  I was eight years old and had followed the Apollo program from Apollo 8, the first manned flight crewed by astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders who were the first men ever to fly around the moon. 

In what seemed an eternity later but was in fact only six months, Armstrong and Aldrin planted the American flag on the lunar surface.  The Apollo program was only three years old, and less than a year since the first Apollo astronauts had left earth^*

Five more moon landing were made until the program was terminated after the flight of Apollo 17 in 1972.  It had taken only three years from the first manned flight of the Saturn V to the sixth lunar landings. In hindsight, the speed with which the program moved forward was astonishing. That was fifty one years ago. 

In 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed and the "space race" effectively ended. The Space Shuttle never seemed to fulfill its original promise and didn't capture the public's imagination as the moon landings had. America turned inwards to become increasingly consumed in what we now think of as the culture wars. 

Existential challenges confront the country and the world yet America's increasingly chronic inability to tackle anything consequential, at least with any success, imperils the country and the wider world. Two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, failed to achieve their objectives, the wealth gap has widened and trust in institutions has all but evaporated. 

The feeling I had as I watched man set foot on the moon, the sense that there was almost no limit to what could be accomplished, has given way to the realization that America's sclerotic politic and societal dysfunction has turned the dream of a bright future, brimming with possibilities, into to a bleak and deeply depressing nightmare         

^*Tragically Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, the crew of Apollo 1, died in a fire on the launch pad in Feb 21st, 1967.