"Until someone follows in their still-preserved footsteps," he writes, "we are left to make the journey in our imaginations. It is a journey we [emphasis mine] can make." Beyond all the archival detail, this is the story Chaikin knows he really needs to tell: the imaginary journey, the courage that the Kennedy generation had to undertake a great deed, transcend its own technological limitations, and explore a previously impossible frontier. The facts are what got the astronauts to the moon alive; every smallest aspect of every mission was checked and rechecked with greater care than Chaikin checks his own interview transcripts. They need to be preserved so future generations can see how it was done. But he keeps coming back to the "wonder" that the facts made possible -- the thesis that all the evidence and sources of eight years of work, endless interviews, appendices,...
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