3 - Beyond Apollo: Space Fictions after the Moon Landing

Summary

Millions of viewers had watched the footage of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon on 20 July 1969, an event that marked the climax of the space race. The physicist Gerard K. O'Neill notes: ‘Apollo was begun at a time when the mood of the nation was vastly different from now [1976]: then we had confidence in our abilities, we saw our living standards increasing rapidly, our money was sound and we did not yet see limits to our continued growth’ (1978: 128). John F. Kennedy's assassination on 22 November 1963 meant Apollo lost its champion – his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, had to continue the programme in homage to his predecessor. Richard Nixon, elected in 1968 and in office in 1969, had no such burden, and was overseeing what had become an expensive land war in Vietnam in addition to other financial problems. O'Neill argues: ‘The late 1960s and 1970s [became] a time of disillusion, of slow economic growth coupled with inflation, and of living standards improving only slowly. [… We] passed through a distrust of anything technological’ (1978: 128). The moon landing was undeniably an American triumph, but repetition dulled the spectacle. Apollo 12 reached the moon on 19 November, but Apollo 13 in April 1970 was nearly a disaster as equipment failed. The days of the programme were numbered. Joe Haldeman recalls: ‘After the first couple of moon shots, Americans were pretty blasé; NBC were showered with complaints when it dared interrupt the Super Bowl to show two clowns walking around on the Moon’ (1993: 156–57).