The Dark Side of the Moon

"The American space program, the greatest, grandest, most Promethean—O.K. if I add 'godlike'?—quest in the history of the world, died in infancy at 10:56 p.m. New York time on July 20, 1969, the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the Moon."

Tom Wolfe in The New York Times explains why the moon landing forty years ago was the beginning of the end rather than the end of the beginning.