‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

1,000 years into the future what names will still be known from the second millennium? I suspect Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Probably Charles Darwin. Perhaps Genghis Khan. Due to the likelihoods of demographics, I would bet that more will recall Mao Zedong than Joseph Stalin.

But the men who stepped on the moon, I suspect, will also be known as names. It was a singular accomplishment.

As a subscriber to The New York Times I decided to go look at some of the articles from July 1969. I was surprised to find this: SURVEY FINDS PUBLIC BACKS MOON LANDING:

With the Apollo 11 moon mission to start tomorrow, the American people now favor landing a man on the moon by 51 to 41 per cent, according to a new poll by Louis Harris published yesterday in The New York Post.

Support was much more equivocal than I would have guessed. The public was quite aware of how expensive it all was.

My own suspicion is that humans will go back to the moon. But I think it will be a private company or an effort led by China. I don’t think our culture has the will to engage in such a task anymore.