20/07/2025
UPDATED TO (hopefully) IMPROVE LEGIBILITY. It’s a Big File.
LUNAR LANDING: JULY 20, 1969, 4:18 P.M. ET — 56 YEARS AGO TODAY. Yuri Gagarin and the Soviet Vostok rocketry program had beaten the United States. In April 1961, Gagarin was launched into a single low-Earth orbit, leaving the recently-formed NASA trying to play catch-up, with huge Cold War propaganda stakes in play. President John F. Kennedy was a technical realist. He new the U.S. efforts to develop reliable booster rockets were going to lag seriously behind the Soviet capability for several years, so he decided to play a longer game. Addressing Congress on May 25, 1961, Kennedy laid out a more grandiose goal in space: landing men on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. Kennedy would not live to see the success of NASA’s Apollo program in reaching that pinnacle. On July 20, 1969, the men of Apollo 11 flawlessly met his lofty target. The entire world stood awed in a greater awareness that a boundary forever thought absolute had been crossed. Humans had stepped onto the surface of another planetoid body. Nothing after that could ever be considered to be quite the same. Here’s how it happened.
