That was a great article.

Adding to it - Apollo 13 was a mission where 3 men should have died, but somehow didn't. If it had happened while the LM was on the moon, you would have had the CSM lose power, and then two men on the moon would have had no way to return home.

(And for the shuttle design mission - my understanding is it was likely the ability to do a HEXAGON-style film return mission in a single orbit, before the Soviets knew what was happeneing.)

Successful space travel is one of the few big news events where nobody has to be unhappy.

Most of the other big news events are ones where people get severely hurt, and political ones where one partly loses.

With this, we can look up at the moon, and say "Humanity did that."