Back to the Moon-ARC

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Standing on an airless, desolate plain flanked by boulders the size of houses and by mountains taller than eight Eiffel Towers stacked atop one another had a way of leaving a man humbled and feeling just how fragile a human so far from home truly was. Gene squinted in the bright sunlight, pondering what to do next. He and his two colleagues were near the end of a decade-long journey; the three days of travel from the Earth to the Moon followed by three amazing days on the lunar surface were only the most recent portions. The journey of Apollo 17 was the culmination of the most technologically advanced endeavor mankind had ever attempted. With the majestic, stark, and absolutely unforgiving Moon soon to be only a memory, a fleeting moment from his glory days, Gene reached behind his spacesuit as best he could to point the camera toward the vehicle that would soon take him from this place and put him on a journey back home. Gene realized that it would be a while before humanity felt the spark to return. Humanity’s candle had burned exceedingly bright for a decade, but it just couldn’t maintain such a vast level of effort. Going to the Moon was a major endeavor that took the full focus of an entire nation driven by the desire to defeat another great nation. Americans had won the race, and Gene, along with the rest of Apollo 17, was the final flicker of that bright-burning candle.

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