After Apollo: Two Professors on the Moon Landing's Cultural Reach

In episode 148 of the National Park Service's Preservation Technology Podcast, host Catherine Cooper spoke with two Hofstra University professors — geologist Bret Bennington and film scholar Rodney Hill — about their edited book After Apollo, on the wide cultural impact of the Apollo program.

The episode: "Cultural Impacts of the Apollo Program." National Park Service.

How the book began

Hofstra, in Nassau County on Long Island, wanted to mark the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing — fitting for a county where early aviation milestones happened, Charles Lindbergh took off about a mile from campus, and Grumman built the lunar module. Bennington, a paleontologist and amateur astronomer who had wanted to be an astronaut, took the science side of a conference; Hill, a Stanley Kubrick scholar, took the humanities and arts, working in a screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) — its views of Earth from space imagined before good photographs existed.

Highlights they recalled:

• a keynote and on-stage conversation with astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison, watched by a young girl clutching a Mae Jemison doll;
• Kubrick's producer Jan Harlan introducing 2001 at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, home to a lunar module built for a later mission;
• a student documentary interviewing the retired Grumman engineers who volunteer beside that module.

The strongest conference papers became chapters, from chemists to political scientists to film and cultural scholars.

Themes they highlighted

It wasn't inevitable. After World War II the U.S. brought German rocket scientists, including Wernher von Braun — whose rockets had been built with slave labor and fired at London — who evangelized space travel. With Walt Disney's mid-1950s television segments, von Braun helped sell spaceflight as human destiny; Bennington doubted the costly program would have been possible without that groundwork. The opening chapter, by Matthew Hirsch, stresses how improbable the whole enterprise was.

Imagination comes first. Science fiction — from Jules Verne in the 1800s to the earliest fantasy films — imagined Moon voyages long before engineers built them.

Women in the space age. A chapter by Julie Wosk, who curated an exhibit at the Queens Museum, traces how film, television and fashion put women in space long before NASA let them fly.

Civil rights. Attorney Patricia Rossi writes about Black leaders who criticized spending on the Moon amid poverty at home; Bennington noted that even Ted Kennedy favored cancellation before Apollo 11 flew. In the guests' telling, the debate helped energize the civil rights movement, and cost pressures eventually ended Apollo.

Immigrants. Rosanna Perotti writes about the immigrants who shaped the space program, from German and Italian scientists to later engineers and astronauts. Bennington's favorite: Egyptian remote-sensing expert Farouk El-Baz, who trained astronauts to observe lunar geology from orbit.

From explorers to routine. The final chapter, by James Spiller, contrasts Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts, presented as explorers, with Shuttle crews, presented as routine workers — an image undercut by the loss of two shuttles — and now commercial and tourist flights.

The future of human spaceflight

Hill noted how much public enthusiasm has faded since the late sixties, when kids wanted to be astronauts and space was everywhere in popular culture. The guests discussed whether commercial tourism, a race with China, or profits beyond Earth orbit could revive it; Bennington expected government to stay essential, as with Artemis, and argued the human element is what makes people care. Both saw a role for the arts and humanities in renewing that wonder and in teaching engineers to value — and preserve — the history they are making.

Sources

Based on "Podcast 148: Cultural Impacts of the Apollo Program," Preservation Technology Podcast, National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The episode's audio, which the imported page did not carry, is restored from the podcast's feed (2026-09-27).