MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION

Un-Dreaming An American Dream

July 20, 1969, 10:56 p.m. EDT. With more than half a billion people watching on television, Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder of Apollo 11 and became the first human to ever step foot on an alien world. His first words were, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Buzz Aldrin joined him moments later, looked around, and described what he saw in two powerful words: “Magnificent desolation.”

Then they spend the next two and a half hours, doing science. Collecting samples and taking photographs. And representing the highest hope of humanity: to understand our place in the world.

NASA: Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong working at an equipment storage area on the lunar module.

I was 9 years old and one of the millions of people watching that night. I remember it distinctly because it was like watching a miracle. My family was gathered around the television. My paternal grandma was there. A neighbor stopped by with one of her dogs, a huge St. Bernard named Soda (to accompany his brother’s name of Whisky), and Grandma practically jumped out of her chair, the dog was so big and slobbery.

It was an evening I hope to never forget.

Investment in our space program was embraced by millions of Americans and by people around the world. In 1961, JFK famously said, “Now it is time to take longer strides—time for a great new American enterprise—time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.”

Fast forward 56 years and NASA’s impact on the American economy is more than $75 billion in total economic output, representing 304,803 jobs nationwide, and resulting in an estimated $9.5 billion in federal, state, and local tax revenues. And that doesn’t include private sector investment on space-related research and production (estimated at $240.9 billion in gross U.S. output), or the many inventions and advances that owe their genesis to the space program, including teflon-coated fabric, infrared ear thermometers, bactereiostatic water filters, freeze dried food, precision coffee makers, reflective insulation for buildings, and energy use sensors, just to name a few.

Plus, NASA has been a key player in gathering evidence for climate change and in understanding how global warming is affecting wildfires, sea level changes, and extreme weather events.

However, as of this day in 2025, much of our national space program (as well as our defense and telecommunication satellites) has been outsourced to megalomaniac billionaires while women in NASA have been erased, grants to university research programs have been slashed or eliminated, and our current president is gleefully firing NASA scientists and program managers while appointing a man who never studied science but did star on a reality TV show and is afraid of NYC subways to oversee our space program. A move that was perfectly encapsulated by a Rolling Stone headline:

The impact to the space program if the proposed White House budget for 2026 is enacted would be to reduce funding by 25 percent and cut over 5,000 employees leaving the agency with the smallest staff and budget since the time JFK made his speech urging that “every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.”

As I look around at the impact of this presidency, all I see is desolation. But it is not magnificent.