Fifty years ago today this nation was near the end of a decade of turbulence, a president and two other key visionaries had been assassinated, the streets had been filled with protesters first seeking an end to racial inequities and then a war in Vietnam that few understood, and within a month hundreds of thousands of hippies would gather at Woodstock for the Summer of Love, where they would shed their clothes, indulge in drugs, and rock out.

On July 20, 1969, ours was truly a nation divided — but one that was hours from joining hands in celebration, and waving the American flag as one.

That is the day this nation won the race with the Russians to landing on the moon, a gauntlet that had been laid down by President John F. Kennedy during a Sept. 12, 1962, speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas, when he announced, “We choose to go to the moon.”

It was July 16, 1969, that Apollo 11, with all of America hitching a ride, took off from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, propelled by Saturn 5, which remains the most powerful operational rocket every produced, chewing into the 238,900-mile journey initially at seven miles a second, and burning more fuel during that single second than Charles Lindbergh needed to fly from Long Island to Paris.

Four days later at 3:17 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and with one in seven of Earth’s inhabitants watching, the module from Apollo 11 settled onto the lunar surface, a region dubbed the Sea of Tranquility, and Neil Armstrong would advise the world: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Six hours later, Armstrong would exit the module first, carefully uttering the simple words that said so much, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” He would be followed closely by Buzz Aldrin, and the two, once convinced the moon wasn’t made of cheese, began frolicking about, eventually planting an American flag into the surface.

Meanwhile, in Columbia, Michael Collins orbited the moon by his lonesome, losing all contact with mankind when on the far side of the moon, and staking claim to time spent as the most isolated human in all of world history.

The hard part of getting home remained.

In recent days, there have been multiple documentaries recalling what we believe remains mankind’s preeminent achievement, and our take home has been two things: In no way was success a given, and Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are truly American heroes who risked their lives by venturing into the unknown.

There were a multitude of events that had to perfectly unfurl, and if one didn’t, the entire mission would have been compromised, three men would have died, and America’s reputation would have been sullied. There were plenty of near-misses, including that the module had less than 30 seconds of fuel remaining when it finally kissed the lunar surface.

The other is that the moon landing was a rush job.

The race with Russia was real, with the Russians 10 years earlier getting a real head-start by piloting an unmanned craft to the moon, but the unmet challenge was a successful landing. Time has largely forgotten, but when Apollo 11 arrived, a Russian unmanned craft, Lunar 5, was already there orbiting the moon, with a goal to make the first landing on the moon and to bring back soil samples. That failed with a crash landing.

We believe, for those with fewer than a half century of laps around the sun, a tour of the Apollo 11 exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where, 3,500 artifacts from the mission are on display, including Columbia, would leave many unimpressed by the absence of sophistication, but awed by the truth of mission accomplished.

Figuratively, at least, the Apollo 11 mission was bound by duct tape, but then and now it remains a testament to American ingenuity as well as its can-do spirit.

The 50th anniversary of the moon landing is timely, coming at a time when America needs to be reminded of her greatness.

The Robesonian Editorial Board