On this 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, the lunar module is still one of the most impressive exhibits at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The module, never flown but the same model as the Eagle that landed on the moon, is certainly a marvel of modern engineering and astrophysics. It’s also ancient history. Most of the younger tourists at the museum today gazed in amazement at the machine — and then moved on to see the other relics of the historic space program.

Even as several news cameras and personalities surrounded the module, there were no broadcasts from the moon itself — a disappointment, perhaps, to those who believed the Apollo 11 mission would unleash inexorable progress in the space program, rather than its decline.

In a New York Times op-ed that appeared this Saturday, Tom Wolfe argued that the space program died “the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the Moon.” Without any philosophers on staff, Wolfe said, NASA’s lunar missions didn’t seem to have any purpose beyond simply getting there. The world was amazed at the time, but since the Apollo program, space travel has had only one major upgrade: the space shuttle. NASA’s budget has routinely been cut since 1969, and we’ve been left with space missions that simply “keep the lights on” in Cape Canaveral and Houston.

Wolfe has a point. We like to remember these momentous historical events on their anniversaries, but will we begin to look at space travel as a relic of the past? Will there be future generations who react to learning about the first moon landing like Lloyd Christmas?

– Michael Warren, a Collegiate Network intern at National Review, studies economics and history at Vanderbilt University.