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Top Story Space - 'One Giant Leap': As Apollo 11 Moon Landing Turns 45| Forty-five years ago today, humanity took a giant leap from its birthplace onto the surface of another world.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong clambered down the ladder of the Apollo 11 lunar lander and pressed his boot into the moon's gray dirt — a simple if clunky step, witnessed by billions from afar, that stands as perhaps the most memorable moment in all of human history. "The whole world stopped to watch what was taking place," space historian Roger Launius, assistant director of collections and curatorial affairs at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, told Space.com. "I think it would not be an overstatement to say that." […] This stunning achievement required the investment of about $25 billion, experts say — well over $100 billion in today's dollars. (During the height of the Apollo program, NASA's share of the federal budget was about 4 percent. Today, that figure hovers around 0.5 percent.) |