David Both

This makes me feel old. Today, July 20, 2009 is the 40th, yes, the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11 and the first landing on the moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, while Michael Collins held down the fort in orbit around the moon.

What an amazing day that was. I was fascinated by the space program then and I still am today. I watched almost constantly during each flight leading up to the big one and I remember the excitement everyone felt as the Apollo 11 flight progressed towards the climax of the landing. It was all that many of us could talk about.

On the evening of the landing I was so excited that I woke my then 2 week old son, Christopher, and held him up in front of the TV with its grainy, black and white images from the surface of the moon and told him that one day he could tell people he saw men walk on the moon for the first time. I know he does not remember but that is not his fault.

I remember Walter Cronkite, who died this last Friday, just three days short of this anniversary, and his child-like wonder at this amazing feat; his speechlessness when the landing occurred. We loved Uncle Walter and trusted him. Rest in Peace.

Those were heady days for the U.S. space program and for many around the world. It was an exhilarating and promising time with new accomplishments and discoveries almost every day.

Most of the electronic devices we use today are based upon technologies developed, adapted or perfected for the space program. The impact of the space technology on our lives on earth is incalculable. Despite the cold war and the rising conflict in Vietnam it was the peacetime program that drove our technology and the economy forward as much or more than any wartime program but without the terrible human and economic disasters of war itself.

I hope that we earth people truly have the desire, the drive and the spirit to move back into space beyond the near-earth environment in which the International Space Station resides and go to the planets and back to the moon. “We came in peace for all mankind.”

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