A World in Pictures- Max Kaufman

The world was changed by the photo of the moon landing. Inspired by the space race, the lunar expedition was the product of one of the biggest international conflicts not resulting in war. During this time of great technological advance people were often cowering in fear that their neighbor might be a Russian spy. Back then this photo was representative of us being ahead of the Russians. But to view this photo today illustrates to the world how ridiculous the country was behaving during the cold war. The fact of the matter is, what relevance does a flag on the moon have when dealing with a threat of all out nuclear war? The US and the soviets alike were willing to dump millions upon millions of dollars towards sticking a flag in an uninhabitable rock, just to prove that one was better than the other. Although we can thank the cold war for a lot of the technology we use today, some of the actions fueled by nationalism were quite pointless in the big picture.