On April 20, 1961, eights days after the Soviets propelled the first human being into space, just one day after the Bay of Pigs ended in America’s humiliation, President John F. Kennedy wrote a memorandum to the man who would one day succeed him, then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, outlining a series of questions to help shed light on the state of U.S. space exploration.

With that memo, Kennedy cranked up the ponderous mill of federal decision-making that would ultimately send the United States on its way to the moon, spend more than $25 billion of public money, harness the adventure and test the faith of some, arouse the doubt and anger of others.

As a matter of national conscience it had begun nearly three years and four months before John Kennedy took office. It was then that a bewildered but lethargic America watched as its own puny space rockets fizzled on the launch pads while the Soviet Union, supposedly a rural autocracy, seemed to fill the air with satellites.

October 4, 1957. Sputnik. A miracle and a threat all in one. Sputnik brought cries of shock from Congress, from Republicans and Democrats alike, shouts for action, for reappraisal, damning the American preoccupation with material things, with the height of a car’s tail fins, with the depth of pile on a new broadloom rug.

April 28, 1961, just another eight days after President Kennedy’s memo, the National Aeronautics and Space Council submitted a tentative report to the president. It said in essence: “The moon is a good target for us.”

The moon, strange silver ball in the sky, full of romance and superstition, keeping the same face toward the earth as it circled, as if taking the measure of man, had become the focus of a nation’s pride.

Finally, in July of 1969, after eight years of transient triumph and recurrent despair, an American would set foot on the moon, the first human to test its sun-baked soil. In this lunar desert with its blinding white surface, its stark black shadows, American astronaut Neil Armstrong would plant a flag and thrill the world. It would be man’s first step into the starry night of space, to a kingdom he had always relegated to the gods. Now it was, as well, the realm of man.

By that time, the moon was no longer a total mystery. As Armstrong said, Apollo 11 would not be a flight into the unknown. The moon had been measured, compared and poked at. For all the small physical facts, there was a larger question that persisted. How did it all begin? Despite theories, this question remained unanswered as Apollo 11 readied for flight. It was part of the reason for going.

Thus in July, 1969, against the new images of her bleak craters and mountain ranges the world considered three men — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins — to reach out and touch the sky.

The trip back to earth was quiet and restful, if not quick. With hardly a problem, Columbia flashed through earth’s sky and splashed down in the warm Polynesian waters of the Pacific at 12:50 p.m. Thursday, July 24, eight days, three hours and 18 minutes after it took wing at Cape Kennedy, Florida. It landed just nine miles from the aircraft carrier Hornet and the eyes of President Nixon, on hand to greet the astronauts even if he could not shake their hands. They immediately went into the elaborate quarantine system, in which they would remain until August 11, to protect the earth from any possible contamination from germs on the moon.

Stretching endlessly beyond the moon is the ordered disorder of space. Nearest are the planets that keep earth company in shadowy orbits around the sun; and beyond them, the stars and the other solar systems of the Milky Way. And beyond, countless other galaxies yielding billions and billions of other suns. How far can man reach? How far does he dare dream?

Beyond Apollo 11 at least, 10 more men, Americans, would tread the lunar surface, the only ten in history. The future of space exploration, though dotted with sacrifice, would open doors to new understanding of life on earth and the mysteries beyond. Man would put the most powerful telescope into space, beyond the distortion of earth’s atmosphere. He would discover new states and forms of matter. He would even safely shuttle men and women to and from a space station hurtling at nearly five miles per second around the earth. And the future today puts man on Mars, and perhaps even further.