The Eagle Has Landed

As much as the counterculture wanted to believe it, the Establishment did not fail in all it put its hand to. Beginning with the launch of Sputnik I in 1957, the United States had consistently come in second to the Soviet Union in the space race. In 1961, President Kennedy made a speech in which he set a national goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade. At the time, few Americans thought this goal was realistic, but on July 20, 1969, at 4:17 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time), the people of a world shaken by a multitude of fears, gnawed by myriad acts of injustice, and racked by a terrible war in Southeast Asia, watched live television pictures of two American astronauts setting foot on the lunar surface, a quarter million miles from earth.

“That’s, one small step for man,” Neil Armstrong declared as he hopped down off the ladder of the lunar excursion module (LEM) Eagle, “and one giant leap for mankind.” The successful mission of Apollo I I was a national—and human—triumph in a time of bitterness, pain, doubt, and rejection of long-cherished values.