Apollo 13 was also the last moment when the nation was transfixed by the adventure. When the initial commitment was made in 1961, it seemed that landing a man on the moon would be just a beginning, a foray by scouts to be followed by outposts and then by settlers. It was this kind of thinking in the early 1960s that enabled Stanley Kubrick to begin a movie about a voyage to Jupiter via a huge space station and lunar colony and plausibly entitle it 2001.

