The race to the moon
During this Christmas/New year break, I’m been reading a book on the space race which engulfed the United States and the then Soviet Union in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s.You can read my review here.
I was a young man at the time and found the whole enterprise incredibly exciting. It seemed as if every few months there was a new space spectacular whereas today space travel is of very limited interest.
As we know, the Americans won the race to the moon and, in fact, the Soviet Union never did land a man there. The USA’s Apollo programme involved six lunar landings, but the last was Apollo 17 as long ago as December 1972.
In the intervening 35 years, nobody has been to the moon and the next planned human lunar landing – Orion 17 – is not scheduled until 2019. So, thrilling though it was at the time, I guess one has to ask what was the purpose of the space race and do we still have any intention of journeying to other parts of the solar system?
January 4th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
have you read rocket boys ? by homer hickham
January 4th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
No – but thanks for the tip.