Paradoxically, left me depressed

This was a powerful documentary but afterward I could only sit and wonder: "What the hell happened to us?"

The moon landings were proof that we could achieve these grand and glorious and crazy things when we put our minds to it. Sure it was an American coup, but the whole world was briefly united in this sense of pride and wonder at what we could accomplish as a species.

Four decades later -- a mere half-generation -- where are we?

Our planet is physically collapsing... science and education are regarded with suspicion by large swaths of the American public... nations are turning inward rather than embracing each other to solve global problems... war machines are ramping up again...

The truth is that we are likely going to be extinct sooner than later. Cernan expressed a hope that some future space travelers -- terrestrial or otherwise -- might come across his daughter's initials in the lunar dust and wonder about them.

The vast expanses between stars and the time scale of the universe make it unlikely that advanced civilizations will ever encounter each other directly. The reality is that once we are gone the universe will never know that we were here. Everything we were will have been for nothing...