37 Years Ago Today

Man stepped onto the surface of the moon. It has been too long since man last stood there. To mark the anniversary of the first landing, Buzz Aldrin and Rick Tumlinson have written an article for Space.com that is worth reading.

These men, and the 18 others that followed, and the thousands who worked for years to put them there were removed from the intrigues of international brinksmanship and bravado. To them this was a quest, a good thing to do, the right thing to do.

Anointed as those with the "right stuff," they were just normal people who worked through their fields to find themselves in the right place and time to be given a chance to change history. They were heroes because they did what they did not for money or personal power, but to fulfill a dream, to do the impossible simply because it was "impossible."

They were heroes because we made them heroes, because we needed heroes, just as we do today.

Real heroes, not made up, marketed, managed, media meat heroes, but people who put it all on the line, as part of a team, to do the right thing and do it as well as it can be done. No marketing deals, no personal hype, no agents bickering over million dollar deals, no walk-outs over damaged egos or who got top billing, they just did their job, did it to the maximum of their abilities, and when it was over, went on with their lives.

Unified under the banner of the quest, their fellowship took them, and us, to a place unknown, and opened up for us a new idea, that this tiny world of ours is not the only one upon which we can stand, and that we, as humans, can do incredible things in the name of a dream.

Read the whole thing. It's worth taking the time to do so. To remember. And hope.

Read the whole thing. It's worth taking the time to do so. To remember. And hope.