I was a kid when President Kennedy gave his stirring speech declaring we would go to the Moon within the decade.

My friends and I could recite the names of the Mercury Seven astronauts off the tops of our heads. As Tom Wolfe observed in his book, The Right Stuff, they were like the single combat warriors of old--the very best our side could put forward to vanquish the foe. Their suits even looked like modern armor.

We were out to prove that the American Way of Life could produce better technology and finer young men than the godless Rooskies and their evil system.

Even though our great success in the spacefaring field was born out of warlike competition, there is something to be said that both sides decided duke it out in a peaceful endeavor. The first rockets those intrepid astronauts rode to the heavens were just modified ICBMs, an updated version of beating swords into plowshares. At least we weren't using them to kill each other.

I recently took a tour of Cape Canaveral. The tour touted the space shuttle program, but the focus was on the Saturn moon rocket, which last flew in missions over 30 years ago. I wanted to see the original pad that launched the Redstone rockets carrying the Mercury astronauts aloft in the 1960s, but they didn't even include it on the tour. Evidently, there is nothing to see now but cracked concrete and weeds.

Most people just don't care anymore, someone told me.