GIANT LEAP THE BATTLE FOR SPACE
For millennia, mankind has gazed up at the stars in the hope that they might provide a greater understanding of our place in the world. Entire societies were built upon the natural clockwork of the Sun, Moon and stars. We literally worshipped them as gods. Key to the allure of the celestial bodies was the very fact that they were untouchable; twinkling back at us from afar, yet tantalisingly out of our grasp. But what if mankind could indeed reach out and touch them? Moreover, what if one superpower could conquer a celestial body, stick a flag in it, assert its superiority, and use the feat to pursue its own ends? Speaking in September 1962, President John F. Kennedy laid down a challenge to the American people to do just that. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” And while the space race was well under way, with this statement Kennedy had rung the bell of its most important final lap.
At 2.56am EDT on 21 July 1969, 600 million people eagerly watched their TVs worldwide as Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the Moon’s surface and uttered those immortal lines: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was a monumental technological achievement.
Meanwhile back on Earth, mankind was locked into an ideological battle for supremacy, fronted by two world superpowers. At the
