Let’s go!
Posted By Russ Emerson on July 20, 2009 at 3:53 pm
40 years….
I was a seven year old kid when Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the Moon, while Collins orbited above them. It was a time that, though the details may be fuzzy to me, I will never forget.
July 20, 1969 was a Sunday, and Moon landing or no, the Emerson family was off to church — first in the morning, but then there was also the evening service that we went to. I remember almost nothing about that day’s religious observances, as such.
What sticks in my mind is the memory I have of standing around with my Dad and some other men outside the church as they finished their smokes (yes, cigarettes were legal then) before going in. Some of those men were the men that had defeated Hitler and Tojo in the fields and on the beaches and in the air and on the oceans of the world, and they then were the age I am now.
And all of them were looking up at the moon that night with wonder and awe… as was I.
I remember asking, with a seven year old boy’s curiosity, if it was possible to see the spacecraft from here on Earth, and I remember the chuckled replies. We soon went in for the evening church service, and afterwards went home. We spent the remainder of the night in front of the TV.
All the turmoil of those years — assassinations, war, protest, rock and roll — none of it has meant as much to me as that one night.
It’s been 40 years, and we’ve done… what? The entire Apollo program consumed less computing power than currently sits on my desktop, and the best we can do is an low Earth orbit space station?
It’s long past time that Man become truly space-faring… and for the good of Man, for the good of the future of all of us, it had better be free men and women leading the way. And that means Americans should be out there among the the planets.
Let’s get to it.
What you said.
Spoken like a true Trekkie.