The Right Stuff author himself proclaims July 20, 1969 a “giant leap to nowhere.” Harsh, but is he wrong in his assessment of space program staleness and decline? That the lunar landing is still seen as such a momentous occasion, THE pinnacle of space exploration, would suggest not. But I also tend to think we overlook the knowledge gained from unmanned research in the romanticization of the astronaut. One thing’s for sure though. Nobody would have guessed in the Summer of ’69 that four decades on a manned Mars expedition would be a (more) remote possibility, a far(ther)-away dream.

Mr. Wolfe:

“Why, putting a man on the Moon was just the beginning, the prelude, the prologue! The Moon was nothing but a little satellite of Earth. The great adventure was going to be the exploration of the planets … Mars first, then Venus, then Pluto. Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus? NASA would figure out their slots in the schedule in due course. In any case, we Americans wouldn’t stop until we had explored the entire solar system. And after that … the galaxies beyond.

NASA had long since been all set to send men to Mars, starting with manned fly-bys of the planet in 1975. Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who had come over to our side in 1945, had been designing a manned Mars project from the moment he arrived. In 1952 he published his Mars Project as a series of graphic articles called “Man Will Conquer Space Soon” in Collier’s magazine. It created a sensation. He was front and center in 1961 when NASA undertook Project Empire, which resulted in working plans for a manned Mars mission. Given the epic, the saga, the triumph of Project Apollo, Mars would naturally come next. All NASA and von Braun needed was the president’s and Congress’s blessings and the great adventure was a Go. Why would they so much as blink before saying the word?

Three months after the landing, however, in October 1969, I began to wonder …”

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