07.21.1969 – 02:56
“That’s one small step for a man… one giant leap for mankind.”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about putting my boots down in that dust. I could do without the immortality of historical recognition. Like Alan Bean, I be just as happy to be the 4th or the 104th. I just want to look out from another world. More than that, I want to believe that people like me might look out from a thousand different worlds.
I’m a pretty imaginative guy and I think that’s pretty far-fetched. 24 men, of the billion or trillions or quadrillions of people that have lived and died on earth – 24 have seen the universe from another world.
Many have ruled Rome, many have won superbowls, many have climbed mount Everest. Few went to the moon.
We’ll never really love this Earth until we know what it’s like to miss it. Carl Sagan tried to tell us.
I pray we survive long enough to have that experience, then we survive the experience. Then maybe we’ll be something…
Also – conspiracy theorists- Bring it. We did it and it was the best thing we ever did. Deal with it.
We went to the moon. We landed. We got out and walked around. We even brought a crazy dune-buggy and took it for a spin. Ask the engineers who designed it, ask the machinists and mechanics who built it, ask the crews who fueled, inspected, tracked, and recovered it, ask the astronauts who flew it.
Better yet- build a spaceship, take it to the moon, and see for yourself. We did it. We did it with technology that didn’t exist when we declared we would do it. We did it in the middle of a war. We did it with less computing power than most people carry around in their pocket.
We could do it again. Now. It took 10 years last time. I say we could bring it back online in 3. If we had any balls.