The dark side of this moon trip eclipses greater issues |
The dark side of this moon trip eclipses greater issues
April 5, 2026 — 6:00am
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
Remove items from your saved list to add more.
Save this article for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.
Almost 20 years ago, Gerard DeGroot, a professor of modern history at the University of St Andrews, wrote a book titled Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest. In it, DeGroot launched a scathing critique of America’s ambition to fly itself to the moon.
The tenor of the book can be summed up at the outset, as DeGroot wrote: “Putting men in space was an immensely expensive distraction of little scientific or cultural worth. The American people, in other words, were fleeced: they were persuaded to spend $US35 billion on an ego trip to the moon, and then were told that a short step on the desolate lunar landscape was a giant leap for mankind.”
It was, of course, a different time. In the 1960s, America was mired in an unwinnable war in Vietnam and a global contest with the Soviet Union during the........