To the Moon and Back chapter sampler

To the Moon and Back

it was possible at all. How could a human being possibly survive the cold, the vacuum of space, and the massive forces needed to lift a spacecraft off this planet? Those were the days of the Space Race — the competition between the United States and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) to dominate space for world supremacy and power. But there was more to it than that. Behind the vast amounts of money poured into the Space Race by the two superpowers there lay dreams and ideals. President Kennedy was a young man of energy and vision, and he had a young man’s dream. He and other young scientists, technicians and dreamers of the time weren’t intimidated by the thought that what they were attempting had never been done before. There was no direct tactical advantage in being the first man to walk on the Moon, and collecting moon rocks and discovering how and why they were so different from those on Earth would not help you build bombs to kill people of other nations. The 1960s was a time of incredible idealism. It was a generation where young people wore flowers in their hair and dreamt of a world of peace and love. Scientists imagined a world where technology would solve all the world’s problems and robots would serve us breakfast before we jumped on a hovercraft to get to work. It seemed as though human beings could

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