Leaders | From the archive

The Eagle Has Landed

Our leader on the moon landing in 1969

They’re down; they’re safe; they’ve shown it can be done. The Eagle has landed. There is life on the moon, at last. And space itself seems friendlier. The men who have been out there before—after nine years there are still only 37 of them, plus one woman—have been near-robots, bulky servo-mechanisms slotted into their capsule’s machinery. Yet man frisking on the powdery moon is different. Preposterously space-suited, sweating heavily and near middle-aged he may be, but he is no robot.

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