Cronkite gushed unabashedly, putting the magnitude into the context of the great machines of war and transportation that had transformed the American century: the mighty Saturn V rocket consumed the equivalent of ninety-eight railroad cars’ worth of fuel; it propelled a craft that weighed as much as a nuclear submarine with the equivalent thrust of 543 fighter jets. The United States would spend $24 billion on Apollo, in order to plunge the sword into the heart of the Soviet Union’s ambitions in space.
