Paper Title (partially based on): ‘Poetry under siege by rockets’: A case study of the creative and critical coverage by the New York Times of the 1969 Apollo 11 moonwalk

Author(s) and Year: Ceridwen Dovey (2025)

Journal: Public Understanding of Science (Open Access)

TL;DR: In 1969, The New York Times thought that usual science reporting would fail to reflect the significance and societal perception of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk. Instead, they chose to cover it with poetry and critical opinions. This piece explores the relevance of this bold editorial choice through the prism of contemporary communication theories and the Space Race 2.0. We argue that the complex political and societal dynamics of the new race demand rich media tools beyond factual reporting.

Why I chose this topic: I got interested in how space and society interact when pursuing a Master of Space Studies. And, although I am a big fan of creative science communication through cultural media, I hadn’t had an opportunity to explore press coverage of the Moon landing before. I was especially curious about using poetry as a communication medium, as I haven’t seen much of it in space outreach. With the Space Race 2.0 gaining momentum, I think that we should study this 1969 innovation in science reporting — including the cultural context in which it was done — to prepare us to communicate the return of humans to the Moon.

The Original Space Race

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed not just on Earth but on proxy battlefields, such as space, too. The stakes were high: superiority in space exploration meant national supremacy in science, engineering, and politics.

The Soviets led the early Space Race, sending both the first satellite and the first human into outer space. The tide turned in 1969, when the U.S. put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 on the Moon, arguably winning the Space Race and helping assert the dominance of capitalism over communism in space exploration. The Apollo program’s six crewed landings drove progress in material science, engineering and computing; enabled science experiments on the surface of the Moon; and brought back samples of the lunar soil that were crucial for advancing planetary science. Lunar landings, especially the 1969 Moonwalk, received wide coverage in the media, and in ways more creative than one might think. The New York Times, for example, reported on Apollo 11 through poems, critical opinion pieces, artwork, and a satirical essay on the American space program.

Creative Coverage of the Moonwalk

Making Meaning of the Moon

This Section is based on the close reading of Dovey (2025).

The day after the Moon landing, the front page of The New York Times read “MEN WALK ON THE MOON,” and the bottom-left corner displayed the Voyage to the Moon poem by Archibald MacLeish, a Pulitzer-winning modernist poet. The editorial team had specifically looked for a poetic response, believing prose could not fully convey the emotions felt by the newspaper and its readers. Despite its overall wondrous and joyous tone, the poem also expresses that the right to make meaning of the Moon no longer belonged solely to poets.

Pages 6 and 7 featured dozens of opinions on the Moon landing from philosophical, scientific, religious, political perspectives. They take a less poetic approach, reflecting the controversy of the American space program. Notably, only half of those perspectives are in favor of the Moon landing, while the others are against. The latter, joined by Russell Baker in his satirical essay, argue that problems on Earth deserve attention and funding more than human spaceflight. Jesse Jackson, Robert Jay Lifton, June Meyer Jordan, and Lewis Mumford highlighted that the Moon landing takes away attention from more urgent social issues, such as the Vietnam war, student protests, civil rights movement, and political assassinations.

“How about a holy day, instead, a day when we concentrate on the chill and sweat worshipping of humankind, in mercy fathom?”

June Meyer Jordan

The Message of Apollo 11

The Medium is the Message

“… it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.”

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), communication theorist Marshall McLuhan argues that the medium is the message. For McLuhan, it is not the message itself that matters, but rather how it is transmitted. According to this theory, all media have an implicit meaning which has a greater influence on society than the content itself.

The Space Race 2.0

To The Moon! (again, but also for different reasons)

More than half a century later, established space powers, rising spacefaring nations, and even private companies are racing back to the Moon. Some of those projects, including Artemis, again aim for crewed missions. But in addition to doing so for scientific or geopolitical reasons like before, the Moon is now a place of economic ambition and a testbed for humanity’s “Plan B,” should long-term presence in deep space become crucial for our survival.

One of the most-cited reasons for going to the Moon is mining Helium-3, a potential future fusion fuel. The Moon is also a perfect sandbox for off-Earth manufacturing and construction that is necessary for deep space missions and colonizing Mars. Some even plan on launching commercial communication and navigation satellite constellations around the Moon to support the growing demands of lunar missions. 

In short, the status of the Moon is changing once again, only this time from a realm of geopolitics to a realm of economy and commercial competition. This shift is happening in times of growing global issues like climate change, increasing geopolitical divide, and systemic inequalities. This makes (human) space exploration a questionable priority for many, which is even reflected in cuts in public spending on space globally.

Creative Coverage for the Space Race 2.0?  

Rich Media for Complicated Astropolitics

In The New York Times’ Moonwalk coverage of 1969, the Moon landing was not the message in terms of McLuhan’s theory. Instead, the transformation of culture, mankind and its relationship with the Moon was. Such a change, caused by humanity reaching the next frontier, demanded reaching new frontiers in communication, too. However, despite it truly being a breakthrough in science journalism, the creative framing of Apollo 11 is not widely known. In the 20th anniversary recollection of the Moon landing, the editor-in-chief of that edition only mentions the front-page poem and not the dissenting ones on page 17. In the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Apollo 11 mission, the poems and critical opinions received little to no attention altogether. This selective (hi)storytelling is not at all surprising: it is rooted in the personal biases of people working on anniversary recollections, as well as the prevalent political narratives of these times. Unfortunately, it also prevents the next generation of science communicators and journalists from learning how one can push the limits of science reporting.

This raises an interesting question: would modern media dare to cover the return of people to the Moon this creatively if we barely talk about doing it the first time? The current race back to the Moon bears a remarkable resemblance to the one of the last century, both with the change of the Moon’s status and the polarized opinions around it. What sets the Space Race 2.0 apart is that it is far more complex than the original one from a political perspective. At the very least, it is no longer about bipolar rivalry, but multipolar competition. Extra complexity is added by private sector participation, regulatory and governance fragmentation, much larger scales of space activities, and the (environmental) effects the commercialization of the Moon will have.

If the social implications of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk were too complex to have been conveyed in prose, the same would be true for the Space Race 2.0. From the perspective of the Media Richness Theory, the complexity of the message — such as why, how, and in what geopolitical climate people return to the Moon — needs to be matched by a rich medium that can effectively convey it. While it is rather unlikely that (science) media will choose to go the same route to cover the Artemis program, it is certain that usual science journalism would not cut it, risking flattening the societal depth of this new chapter in lunar exploration. Luckily, the last several decades have marked significant advances in creative science reporting and the emergence of artist-scientist collaborations contextualizing space exploration in political and ideological narratives through raw, open-ended yet science-informed art, so we should definitely look out for something out of this world.

Our key takeaway: To effectively communicate complex messages, be that because of their scientific complexity or their impact on society, science communicators and journalists should use rich channels. Studying how scientific and technological milestones like the Apollo 11 Moonwalk were communicated — particularly what medium was chosen, what implicit meaning it conveys, and the societal context in which this choice was made — can help us to make more informed decisions for science coverage.

Written by Mykyta ‘Nik’ Kliapets

Edited by Elena Reiriz, Sarah Ferguson, and Kay McCallum

Featured image credit: Ron Lach from Pixabay (Pixabay Content License)