July 20 marked 56 years since Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first walked across that “magnificent desolation,” to borrow the words Aldrin radioed back to millions of television viewers on Earth.
From the summer of 1969 to the end of 1972, through six Apollo Moon landing missions, the United States of America placed no less than a dozen human beings on the surface of the Moon.
The rest of the world could only watch in awe – or, in the Soviet Union’s case, envy.
With the lunar dust kicked up by those first explorers long since settled, Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind” is at risk of reverting to merely “one small step.”
That will be the case if America retreats from its admirable legacy of lunar exploration.
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