Echoes Among the Stars: A Short History of the U.S. Space Program by Walsh Patrick J

Author:Walsh, Patrick J. [Walsh, Patrick J.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Published: 1999-12-28T16:00:00+00:00

“The Greatest Week”

In those first few moments back on earth, however, the smiles came easily. The astronauts received the president through the large glass window of their quarantine cell, and he joked informally with them before delivering some prepared remarks.

“It is the spirit of Apollo that America can now help to bring to our relations with other nations,” Nixon said, speaking with obvious emotion. “The spirit of Apollo transcends geographical barriers and political differences. It can bring the people of the world together in peace.”17

Given the situation in Vietnam and the serious wave of national unrest about the conduct of the war, the president’s comment about peace seemed incongruous at best, or even disingenuous or insincere. But in reality, the moon landing had freed him, if even for a short time, from the daily warfare of politics at home and abroad.

Years later, in his memoirs, Nixon himself seemed amazed at how caught up he had become in the spirit of the moment. After recounting his comment that the Apollo 11 mission marked “the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation,” Nixon self-deprecatingly recalled the Reverend Billy Graham’s comment that he had been “a little excessive” in his characterization.18

That tendency toward easy wit had come far more naturally to John Kennedy when he’d faced Nixon years before, in the 1960 presidential campaign. That election seemed very distant by the time of the moon landing. Nixon had brilliantly reinvented himself after his loss to Kennedy and his subsequent defeat in the California governor’s race in 1962. He had created a “new Nixon” in the intervening years, and as he stood on the deck of the USS Hornet alongside the crew of Apollo 11, he looked like a new man, pleasant and happy and speaking earnestly of peace.

Richard Nixon welcomed the returning crew; Lyndon Johnson had nurtured the program through its worst days. But for many who felt something was irretrievably missing from the national political scene, who still mourned a young, vibrant president whose fascination had started it all, the Apollo 11 moment was indelibly associated with the legacy of John F. Kennedy.

It had been his challenge to the American people, and his courage in the face of Soviet superiority, that had committed the United States to the course that was now finally, elegantly complete. NASA had met the president’s challenge, landed men on the moon before the decade’s end, and, most important, returned them safely to the earth.

In all that it said about the human spirit, and all it meant to those who understood it as having a meaning larger than science or technology or national pride alone, the first moon landing came to represent something inexpressibly personal.

At the same time, it was the high-water mark of American achievement in an era that also witnessed a wasteful foreign war and enormous division, anger, and bitterness throughout the nation. It gave the country’s incumbent president an opportunity to demonstrate the buoyant humanity that was the essence of his

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.