This week, Wired celebrates NASA’s 50th birthday with NASA: 50 Years of Towering Achievement. The six-page article is filled with cool photographs and a complete history of the revered but equally criticized space program. A worthy tidbit:
Americans used to appreciate this [NASA’s achievements]. Rare was the school in the early ’60s that didn’t stop the day’s activities so student and teacher alike could gather in front of a grainy, often wavy, black-and-white picture of an Atlas booster rising heavenward from the smoke and fire, while Uncle Walter, live from the Cape, told us what it all meant.
It meant a lot. The U.S. space program was a cultural touchstone as much as a scientific or political one. Astronauts were heroes, as revered as any ballplayer or movie star of the time. You’d have to be living in a cave not to know what NASA was, and byproducts of the space program touched almost every corner of American life.
See also the galleries, including NASA’s Most Amazing Extraterrestrial Vehicles and NASA’s Most Embarrassing Goofs.
[Note that some of these links may take a while to load; be patient—it’s well worth the wait.]