They had truly left earth.

Fifty years have gone by and most of the Apollo astronauts are dead. But they accomplished what their country had tasked them to do. At that point we knew we would put boots on the moon before the Soviets did. Their visionary rocket genius Sergei Korolev was dead; their massive five-stage N-1 rocket had blown up four times.

Some of those who worked for NASA saw Apollo as providing an impetus for space exploration. But many didn’t. William Anders saw his duty to beat the Russians to the moon. In the end, that mission is what supplied the funding for the Apollo program.

Apollo had political aims and was not primarily about space exploration. It was a non-violent battlefield in the Cold War, a test of geopolitical will that the United States ultimately won.

Though public approval of the ambitious program generally didn’t exceed 50 percent, the Apollo program was briefly popular after Apollo 11, when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon. It was a magnificent achievement you’d have to be dour and sour not to be in awe of it. But NASA consumed 4.4 percent of GDP and it grated on a lot of people conservatives and liberals alike to spend that much. Now NASA spends just 0.5 percent of the national budget.