The Cold War space odyssey

Bestselling author Stephen Walker has produced an utterly binge-worthy yet sobering history of spaceflight set against the biggest existential conflict of the 20th century

After Neil Armstrong’s moon landing in 1969, The New York Times asked a few famous people for reactions. The 14th Dalai Lama hailed the landing as “the very acme of scientific achievement”. He added, “But the most wondrous event would be if man could relinquish all the stains and defilements of the untamed mind and progress toward achieving the real mental peace and satisfaction when he reaches the moon”. According to Buddhist psychology, delusion, greed, and hatred are the mental defilements, the root causes of suffering.
 
The Dalai Lama was speaking during the hate-filled Cold War, when Armstrong’s lunar