Can you believe the moon walk was 40 years ago today? I think if I survive to the 50th anniversary of the moon walk I’m going to start to feel old.

In July 1969 I had just graduated high school and was taking a couple of summer classes at the local junior college. I remember watching the moon walk live on television, with Walter Cronkite providing the voice-over. Sweet.

I had forgotten about the moon conspiracy theories, that the moon walk was faked and filmed in some big movie lot in a western state somewhere. (Wasn’t there a movie about faking the moon landing? Oh, yes, Capricorn One.) I have a postulation that people believe absurd conspiracy stories because there’s something in the story they want to believe. I’d like to know if anyone ever did a social-psychological study of moon landing conspiracy theorists to determine why they wanted to believe such a thing.

I do dimly remember some grumbling about the costs of the Apollo missions, but I think most Americans were proud of and happy about landing on the moon. We thought it was just the beginning of glorious things. If someone had told us that 40 years later the moon landing would remain the pinnacle of manned space exploration, I don’t think we would have believed it. Even though the Vietnam War was going on hot and heavy at the time, the country today still seems so much smaller and shabbier and diminished from what it seemed in 1969.