Responding to Apollo: America’s Divergent Reactions to the Moon Landings

Abstract

The Apollo program of the 1960s and early 1970s cast a long shadow over expectations for the exploration of outer space, a shadow that has yet to be overcome. This chapter focuses on five major responses to Apollo that gained credence in the United States in the 1970s: first, the memory of Apollo and its triumphalist, exceptionalist, nationalistic history; second, a waning of technocratic faith at the same time as the Apollo moon landings; third, disappointment among spaceflight true-believers after Apollo; fourth, denials of the moon landings altogether; fifth, an Apollo nostalgia as Americans looked back toward an increasingly distant time and glorified a past in which society, culture, economics, politics and other attributes of the public sphere seemingly worked better.