On July 20 , 1969, humanity made history in a way no human ever had before: we set foot on our moon for the very first time.
I wasn’t really old enough to fully appreciate the event, but I watched with my parents as Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin stepped out of the Apollo 11 lander & walked across the lunar dust. Later missions almost made the moon seem humdrum, but on that first occasion, people across the world were holding their breaths, hoping agains hope that these brave men would survive their exploration and make it back home again.
Back then, it wasn’t certain that spacecraft would even hold oxygen for that long, much less track their way across the vacuum of space from one planet to its satellite and back. When we look back from our modern world, it seems amazing that they succeeded with their primitive computers and spaceships. And yet, they did it.
As I grow older, more and more of my memories are considered “history” instead of simply a series of events. “Kids nowadays” have no idea what it was like, watching that old black-and-white television set, praying that Neil, Buzz, & Michael Collins would return safely. They’re used to the International Space Station –which I think most people underestimate in any case, since any tiny accident could spell doom for everyone aboard. But 53 years ago, it was big news.