Man on the moon: The dream and the plan

The Poem - consisting of 697 words in all - follows the unfolding of the successful and inspiring "Apollo 11" Moon Mission of 20 July 1969 - from launch, through orbital trajectory to lunar landing, a quest for knowledge that extends back to Galileo 400 years earlier. He was silenced for theologically dogmatic reasons by the most powerful institution of his day, the Vatican. "Apollo 11" was celebrated throughout the most powerful nation of the 1960s (and beyond), the God-fearing yet secular superpower, the United States of America. The Poem seeks to capture the sense of awed wonderment experienced simultaneously by hundreds of millions of people all over the world some 43 years ago. Within just seven years of President Kennedy's September 1962 pledge for Americans to go to and from the Moon, this stated intention became a scientific and political reality. Today, 50 years after this fulfilled Plan, we may look back with balanced sensibility upon this inspired commitment, costing some US$100 billion and harnessing the technical capacity of 20,000 companies employing 500,000 workers. There has been some unproven speculation that the entire Mission never occurred, being an elaborate alleged hoax involving film maker Stanley Kubrick, accused of fabricating the Space Mission through his cinematographic skills. Such speculation remains dubious, apparently lacking satisfactory "hard" evidence and is most properly discounted