It’s been forty years since one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments: putting a human on another world. How freaking cool was that?! I wish I was around to see it live, and as you can tell by reading this list, I hope I’m around to see it happen again.
My eyes welled up when I read NASA’s take on the 40th anniversary, so I’m just going to quote them:
Forty years ago, Apollo astronauts set out on a daring adventure to explore the Moon. They ended up discovering their own planet.
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It was Christmas Eve, 1968, the close of one of the most turbulent, fractured years in U.S. and world history. The picture offered a much needed new perspective on “home.”For the first time in history, humankind looked at Earth and saw not a jigsaw puzzle of states and countries on an uninspiring flat map – but rather a whole planet, a fragile sphere of dazzling beauty floating alone in a dangerous void. There was a home worthy of careful stewardship.
The late nature photographer Galen Rowell described this photo as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”
In a fitting tribute to the 40th anniversary of the moon missions, the LRO has sent back some pictures of the moon landing site. Head over to this site to have a look, they’re really cool to see. You can see the LM and it’s shadow, and even the paths taken by the astronauts across the surface.
My dad was just a kid of about ten when he watched Neil and the boys bounce around on our closest neighbour. He described to me in detail what it was like — the sense of surreality, that it couldn’t possibly be happening. When you take into consideration that my cell phone probably has more computing power than most of the CPUs NASA was using at the time, it becomes an even more astonishing feat. My criticisms of NASA aside, that was a truly shining moment in human history — one of a very few, unfortunately, but one we should all be proud of.
That would have been awesome to see. I think we really take it for granted now, but it’s just as difficult to do today as it was then even with all of the progress we’ve made. It was an incredible achievement.