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Mercury
Fall 2007 Table of Contents

by
Wayne Wood
The
day that Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz"
Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon, 20 July 1969,
was a big one for two reasons: humans were landing on the Moon,
and I got to stay up late. The whole extended family gathered around
the black-and-white console set in my grandparents' living room
and quietly watched as the grainy figure of Armstrong made its way
down the ladder from the lunar module and onto the Moon's surface.
Being
eleven years old at that moment meant that I had been almost three
years old when Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly into space
and orbit Earth in April 1961. I can not remember a time when the
current events of those days didn't include a regular diet of space
shots and near-deification of astronauts.
There
was a time in the summer and fall of 1969 when it was almost impossible
to pick up a magazine or newspaper without seeing something about
the astronauts who had landed on the moon. Their faces looked down
from a million bedroom walls of young dreamers who thought they
were going to follow their trail to the stars. I was one of those
dreamers, fueled in part by the books on astronomy that I was devouring
at the school and public libraries.
What
did those books say, and how is that different from the content
of children's books on astronomy published now? The differences
chiefly fall into three categories: advances in knowledge; cultural
changes in depiction; and a less tangible attribute best described
as a change in the "sense of wonder."
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