Neil Armstrong made his first moon walk on July 20, 1969, two months before I entered college. I remember that many Americans were euphoric about this accomplishment. There were songs written, celebrations, ticker tape parades, and coins depicting an eagle landing on the moon.

Yet what really stands out in my memory was a poster on a classmate's dorm-room wall. It looked like the front page of a newspaper's special edition. The large photo dominating the upper half of the page showed Armstrong in his space suit, visor down, planting the U.S. flag into lunar soil. The banner headline screamed, "So what?"

I think the