David Schonauer: Space Race. America's first glimpse of the seven young men who would lead the nation into space came at a NASA press conference in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1959.
It began with a picture session for the clamoring press photographers on hand -- the "grim little crawling beggar figures" Tom Wolfe describes in The Right Stuff. Among this "swarm of root weevils" was Ralph Morse, a Life magazine veteran who knew history when he saw it -- during World War II, he'd managed to cover Jimmy Doolittle's raid on Tokyo and the German surrender to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. When Morse looked through his camera at the young astronauts gathered at the front of the room, he knew he wanted in on the space race. "When I got back to New York I sent a note to the managing editor, and I said this is going to be one of the biggest stories in the world," recalls Morse, age 93 and living in Delray, Florida. Space Race Timeline. Magizine Cover-TIME.
Space Exploration News Article-TIME. Science: The Future of NASA. "We are at the peril point," declared NASA Administrator Thomas Paine.
With that gloomy but accurate assessment of the space agency earlier this year, he announced one more in a series of cuts in staff and work schedules. Last week the 48-year-old former General Electric executive made an even more telling comment: he quit himself. Though Paine insists that his resignation was not an act of protest against continuing reductions in the space agency's budget, he obviously sees a better future back with G.E. Only a year after its triumphant conquest of the moon,...