Are we there yet?

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth,” John Kennedy said in 1961.

Forty years ago today, the landing had been accomplished, but not yet the return; the astronauts, having earlier fired their CSM engine to push themselves out of lunar orbit, were riding the long transearth coast back to home. The big event still to come: the insane (says me) plummet into the Pacific that was the reentry procedure — what that other Buzz (Lightyear) might call “falling with style.” That’s tomorrow!