Forty-one years today, long enough ago that some people who've just reached middle-age were not yet born, the three bravest men on the planet sat perched atop what was essentially a big metal stick of dynamite over half as tall as the Washington Monument... and lit it, bound on a journey that would have left Leif Erickson, Christopher Columbus and Magellan faint of heart, with their jaws hanging.
From when the countdown reached zero, the lives of those three intrepid souls sitting in the nosecone might be wiped out in a heartbeat, at any given moment during the next eight days. Where they were going, there would be no places to rest, rethink, or ponder turning back. Their destination offered nothing hospitable to life – not even air to breathe. They would spend nearly 22 hours there before lifting off again for the voyage home, if they made it that far.
Just the trip there might kill them. Landing might crush them. Once down, their equipment – which despite rigorous testing back on Earth, could not be tested in the actual environment for which it was designed – could fail, stranding them there to die. Merely exiting the craft, once on the alien surface, might spell doom. The blast off for home could go wrong. The trip back was just as potentially dangerous, and they'd be "landing" in the roaring Pacific Ocean aboard a craft as fatigued by the same unprecedented ordeal as they.
Again, if they made it that far. Those were all still unanswered questions in July of 1969.
The entire planet of humanity became still to watch, counting off every tiny milestone – the rocket got off the launchpad, everything worked, nothing failed.
We lost them from radio contact somewhere along the way, for an anxious interval, wondering where they could possibly be – if they were alive – up in the black unknowable cosmos. Their voices were believed lost forever until someone thought to locate them by simply pointing the radio dish in the direction of their destination, the Moon.
And there they were, still in business, hardly aware that every other human had momentarily forgotten how to breathe.
The Moon was barren, but benign, and allowed the adventurers to roam, leave bootprints, take souvenirs and plant a red, white and blue calling card... along with a plaque that spelled out our intentions. "We came in peace for all mankind."
A few days after placing his foot upon a land where none had ever before, Neil Armstrong and his fellow pioneers – the only word fully accurate but woefully impotent somehow in this case – Edward Aldrin and Michael Collins returned to the Earth. Just as John Kennedy had proposed in a famous speech nine years earlier.
There were subsequent missions, by men equally as brave, each a step further in terms of the tools and toys we took to our new big grey oceanless beach, but none of them quite matched the magic, the dread, the elation of that first time – the one you never forget.
I was not yet seven years old when we bridged the dark gulf between worlds. I remember that fuzzy grey vision on our family TV, when the moment happened. I am so grateful that this event happened in my lifetime. Today's young people, who take for granted digital technology that would have made Jules Verne rethink his every word, will never fully understand the wonder.
The personal computer was still over a decade away. We went to the Moon via analog methods. Would that fact give them even a clue, or is it lost on them as well?
There are some who claim we never did it. Others say we've never gone back for nefarious reasons of galactic intrigue. They can't both be right. Let them have the other 364 days of the year to rage at the debate table.
Today, July 20... let's remember. And if you were there to witness it live, as I was, you know what it is to look at that photo of a bulky white faceless form standing before an American flag made to "wave" artificially by a right-angled rod... and feel a tear form.
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