a government. It was the last thing we needed: a diversion of attention and resources from solving serious human problems like war, racial strife and poverty. And yet it was simultaneously a remedy to those problems, generating knowledge, technologies and opportunities for new thinking. It was the best of competition, mounted without military combat; and yet it was itself a sort of combat, extolling American virtues, sending active or recently retired Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine officers into space. It was a martial exercise, a science project, an engineering marvel.

It was the apogee of the arrogance and exclusiveness of white men, and yet it provided the most consequential opportunities in science and technology in the U.S. for women and people of color.


The era of actual moon landings,nation look back to that day, a half-century ago, as the apex of its greatness, and to every day since as a retreat?

U.S. scientists and engineers are now working on a human trip to Mars, and it may happen. Meanwhile, they have extended the human reach into space with wondrous rovers, probes and other instruments unimaginable a half century ago. Orbiting telescopes unlock the mysteries of the universe. Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” is traveling (along with music from Mexico, Japan, Zaire and a dozen other places) in interstellar space. There are plans to send a drone through the atmosphere of the Saturn moon Titan.

Remarkable as they are, these robotic voyages lack the drama or the romance of human spaceflight, and may fall short of the implied promise