Moon Race

When I picked up Dayna at the Dayton Airport on Friday, I asked her if she wanted to go to the Wright Patterson Airforce Museum to see the Airforce One planes (she of course agreed since really it was me that wanted to go).  While touring the four Airforce One planes was fun, the memory gates flooded in to my mind when we walked to the section of the museum where the missile and space exhibits resided (rockets and the actual Apollo 15 command module). Apollo 11 was actual first moon walk mission (July 20, 1969).  The virtual tour of the museum is almost as good as being there!

I remember the excursion Dad and his work buddy took me on at the Mississippi Test Site - where 13,500 acres  (and surrounded by 125,000 acres for acoustical protection) were acquired by  NASA to test the first and second stages of the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo missions to the moon. We drove around the site of abandoned houses and farm areas where pigs and other animals ran wild.  It was like riding through a ghost town.

I called Dad to ask him what stage was being tested at the site - he said stage one but somehow my memory was  stage two.  We were both correct - but the picture I have in my garage I'm sure is stage two :)

It was a fun time growing up during the race to the moon.  It just proves how a project can mobilize a generation and create a national peace time goal (although the "energy" was generated out of the cold war competition with the USSR).  It created a younger generation of space addicted kids (like me) and probably fostered a growth in science and technology in those young baby boomers.  Even the TV comedy sitcoms added to the "brainwashing" - with "I Dream of Jeanie". 

K.C.  (or was it J.D.) and I mused about this 1960's national project in conversation  over a year ago.  The nation needs another audacious goal like putting a man on the moon to ignite and unite the people of this generation to a purpose beyond daily political stalemates. 

What goal do you suggest?