The World from PRX

If We Can Put a Man on the Moon

Landing on the moon has become our yardstick for what we can or can’t achieve. Environmentalists have been especially eager to compare the Apollo moon mission to the challenges of climate change. But as NASA celebrates the 40th anniversary of the landing,

For the past 40 years we have been using the moon landing as our gold standard for measuring every one-of-a-kind challenge humans face. Most recently environmentalists have stacked the lunar voyage alongside the crusade against global warming. Host Jeff Young asks NASA’s chief historian, Steve Dick, how this metaphor works and how it fails.