July 20, 1969, just before 11 p.m. EDT, Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. On Earth, families huddled around the television, glued to the grainy image that transcended life as they knew it.
Joel Bregman, H.D. Curtis Professor of Astronomy at LSA, was 17. “Everyone had been focused on the space race for years. They’d stop school and stream video or audio of every milestone,” he says. “Landing on the Moon seemed like out of science fiction. We didn’t know if it could be done. That night, I watched with my family, including my grandmother, who was born in Ukraine in the last 1800s—she’d witnessed the first car, first airplane, and now the first Moon landing. It was absolutely astonishing. Like a dream.”
This moment was the culmination of an eight-year race against the Soviet Union to see who could land on the Moon first before the end of the decade. A lot has changed since 1969: The Cold War, one of the main drivers of the space race, has ended; Congress has dramatically changed the way it funds NASA in the era since the space race, with a greater focus on space stations; and technology has continued to advance, those bulky television sets replaced with sleek, high-resolution screens in our pockets.
During the space race, scientific research became integrated with public culture, with a sense of ourselves relative to the rest of the world, with a fundamental understanding of our national identity. But how relevant is the Moon landing to our lives as we know it now? Do Armstrong’s words still resonate with us today?
Lasting Impact
“Oh, it had tremendous impact,” says Bregman. Miniaturization, especially in electronics, evolved from the research of the space race. Modern-day satellites telescopes are direct descendants of that era. Rockets and airplanes, too.
But Bregman says the significance of the Moon landing goes beyond literal accomplishments.
“We were reminded that really hard things could be done at enormous magnitude. Like the Panama Canal or the Hoover Dam, things that seemed impossible. It required a lot of innovation, a huge amount of engineering, and a lot of work. There was tremendous pride in our ability to do this, which has had long-term effects.”
Although Bregman says a mission to Mars seems unlikely given the heavy resources required, scientific achievements like the Hubble Space Telescope of the 1990s and the more recent James Webb Telescope bring a similar sense of awe, wonder, and inspiration to our daily lives today.
“Now, the space race and Moon landing are historical,” Bregman says. “It’s hard to appreciate the gravity of that moment, of the Cold War, of how urgent landing on the Moon felt at the time. But seeing Armstrong walk on the Moon, and now seeing those amazing images from the James Webb Telescope, reminds us that Earth is a limited object,” Bregman says.
“To actually see what the universe is like does greatly impacts people,” he continues. “It opens our perspective. We’re reminded that life is bigger than us.”
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