A million years ago, on October 4th, 1957, the Russians successfully launched Sputnik 1 into space. That made the USSR, not the US, the undisputed leader of space exploration, and you could almost hear the collective thud across the heartland from Long Island to Los Angeles. That thud was the sound of a nation's heart suddenly dropping, stunned and in shock that we were now in second place in our military rivalry with the Soviet Union.

But the national response was immediate and intense. In May 1961 President John F. Kennedy decreed that America would put the first man on the moon "before the end of this decade is out"--with emphasis on the "first."

And we did. The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs rammed through more missions and developed more new technologies in the next ten yea…