It wasn't just the astronauts who'd changed; the world was changing, too. As the Apollo program wound down, the wild & happy experimentations of the 60s gave way to the cynicism and self-doubt of the 70s, and the Moonwalkers faced what was, in some ways, their greatest challenge: how to find meaning in life when the biggest adventure you could possibly have was a memory. Some traded on past glories; others tried to move on. Some found God; some sought oblivion; some reinvented themselves & discovered a measure of happiness in a completely unexpected place. Smith sees them thru the eyes of the boy who flung down his bike on a summer evening to hear Neil Armstrong utter his fateful words--and through the eyes of a grown man balancing myth against reality and finding the truth infinitely richer and more moving. A thrilling blend of history, reportage and memoir, Moondust rekindles the hopeful excitement of an incandescent hour in American history and captures the bittersweet heroism of those who risked everything to hurl themselves out of the known world--and who were never again quite able to accept its familiar bounds.
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Background Information
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was established by Congress in 1958 to guide American research in space. The Apollo program was designed to put an American on the moon, and was successful in that objective in 1969.