One large misstep

The space program’s human focus led to its much-lamented decay | Janie B. Cheaney

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

"We choose to [do these things] not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept," said John F. Kennedy, in one of his signature "moon speeches." NASA's Apollo program was young, but would eventually consume the greatest dedication of resources of any peacetime project in history: 400,000 people, $24 billion, 20,000 corporations and universities. Forty years ago, the quest ended with one giant leap for mankind—and a series of faltering footsteps afterward.

Apollo rose like the sun and set likewise, with a peculiar sense of anti-climax. Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, characterizes the space race as the single-combat phase of the Cold War, begun by the launch of Sputnik in 1957. The USSR's ability to place a satellite in orbit raised a cry of alarm about the "Space Gap" between superpowers—how had we let American resolve become so flabby? One result was a federal imperative to improve high-school science education—which led, not incidentally, to evolution instruction being mandated across the board.