"The darkness we expected. What we had underestimated was the silence: the quiet of the vacuum, disturbed only by our breath and the radio in our ears. The frame shifts to the right, revealing a lunar lander. It is mostly gray and white, with spindly legs supporting a central pod. Parts of the lander are wrapped in what looks like shiny metallic foil, and on one side of the lander there is a small American flag."
"This past summer Jim Lovell who flew on Apollo 8, the first successful crewed orbit of the moon, and then commanded the abortive Apollo 13 died at the age of 97. The number of living men (all men, all Americans) who have reached the moon is now only five. In the low-grade lens of the TV cameras, between 1969 and 1972, the men who walked here were transmogrified into low-gravity Cold Warriors."
Panoramic color photographs show the dusty, gray, cratered lunar surface under black sky, with a bright burst of sunlight and small black crosshairs overlaying the images. Silence dominates the scene, broken only by astronaut breath and radio. A gray-and-white lunar lander with spindly legs and metallic foil sits beside a small American flag and scientific equipment. Two astronauts—the third and fourth men on the moon—collect samples and perform photographic work, with one casting the photographer's shadow. Jim Lovell died at 97, reducing the number of living moonwalkers to five, and TV footage cast moonwalkers as both national heroes and interplanetary conquistadors.
Read at www.nytimes.com
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