By the time the movie was released in 1968, the title was already implausible, for the space program’s grip on the public imagination had begun to fade even before the first moon landing. Whether this was inevitable or an unlucky juxtaposition of Apollo with Vietnam and domestic upheaval will never be known. But what had been imagined as a natural process of growth in manned space travel had by 1970 come to be seen as a technological exercise that wasn’t worth the effort.
