Apollo 11

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11's mission to the Moon. I was born ten months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked upon the Moon for the first time while Michael Collins observed.

What is amazing is that we as the human race had this kind of drive to accomplish something so monumental. President Bush set forward a program to eventually, someday, maybe, lay the ground work to eventually set foot on Mars. Somehow it lacked the passion of JFK's speech to make and achieve the goal of setting foot on the Moon and return safely to Earth.

Instead we have abandoned the Moon and nearly all space exploration except for a pathetic international space station, something unthinkable in 1969. I'm sure by now they had envisioned a lunar colony and regular flights back and forth.

Instead we have a worn out work horse of a space shuttle that is due to be retired before we even have a suitable replacement. Our space program has gone the way of the Sony Betamax player. Instead of solid Moon exploration we aren't even close to accomplishing another moon walk and likely wouldn't be for another twenty years.

Even though we have taken immense giant sized steps forward in technology we have at the same time taken bigger steps backward. My iPhone has ten if not one hundred times more computing power than the entire Apollo lunar lander.

These men were giants among men. Their courage was beyond belief. I'm a coward by the standards they exhibited in their time, nothing but a bug in their shadow. The sheer mental stress caused by being so far away from safety, home, Earth and being able to coldly calculate their mission is beyond belief.

If I could have five minutes to talk or share a drink with anyone still living who is a major historical figure it would be Neil Armstrong with Michael Jordan as distant second. Sadly we have relegated Astronauts as the forgotten past of American history. Yeah it was exciting once but now it is common place. Most people don't even know when the shuttle goes up unless there is a mishap.

After Challenger and then the stalwart Columbia disasters our space program was set back for decades. The victim of bad timing, shrinking budgets, and lack of interest.

We no longer have a goal that is seemingly impossible as walking on the Moon to rally around. Something that takes the country as a whole and unites us instead of divides us as Americans.

This might be a lament of what could have happened to our space program, to what could have been if we would have stayed the course instead of retreating, it might very well be an epitaph to a giant.