Excerpt:
The Cold War was only beautiful once, and that was during the race to space. Because after the Russians fired Sputnik across our bow in October 1957, and generals and presidents fretted over great missile silos in the sky, there were others who just wanted to see whose guys could fly the highest. When Yuri Gagarin (above) went first, America countered with its first real heroes since the war: The Mercury Seven. Alan Shepard was the first American to go up, in '61; John Glenn went up and around and around and around, and we all craned our necks and cheered and made him a senator. We saw blood on the launchpad after three were burned alive right on the ground; we saw footprints on the moon, back in 1969 when something like a moon landing could still get an 80 share (what were the other 20 percent watching?). And of course there was the Challenger in 1986, that awful fire in the sky. But we won. And we've been lucky. And we've used the moon for a driving range. Now for the planets, and the stars in the sky at night.