Age of Innocence

摘要

Sententious words, these. But what else was a rational magazine like New Scientist to say in its editorial column the week before Neil Armstrong's famous leap for mankind 30 years ago? It was going to be a massive TV spectacle and it was expensive: these were two safe certainties to run with. And yet in truth, nobody could really know what this landing would come to signify to later generations. A historic act of exploration or a trapeze act? A triumph for science or the wanton, irrelevant use of technology? New Scientist, like everyone else, was too close to it back then to see the lunar landing for what it really was.