40 years ago, two astronauts became the first of 12 men to walk on the Moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped down from the LEM and ventured on a soil so diametrically opposed to anything Humans have ever experienced, it was called a "Magnificent Desolation". This was the fitting end to a Race that pushed us into a New Age; we had conquered Space.
After the Mercury project, it was decided that not only should the Space Program continue but a new objective must be set forth. President John F. Kennedy put in motion a challenge that could not be escaped or passed off as lunacy (pun intended). Up until his famous address before Congress, the US were pitiful to watch vis à vis their Soviet counterparts. The Reds were kicking ass and the Americans were on the receiving end. The Space Race was about to go into overdrive. JFK, probably thinking that somebody at NASA should be dropped kicked for failing so miserably, announced to the World that the United States had to put a man on the Moon and bring him back home safely, in less than ten years. The incentive...the biggest pwned you could ever have and the opportunity to give the Soviet Regime and 'Communism' as a whole, a fat and satisfactory Trudeau Salute!
25 billion dollars were voted to ONE organisation, a sum of money that eclipsed the Defense Budget at the time. Nasa found the smartest people in the Western Hemisphere and had them start work. The only other time we saw brainpower of this magnitude was during the Manhattan Project, back in the 1940's. All this energy was directed towards the fulfilment of the challenge. After the Gemini project proved humans could survive and work in space, the Apollo Missions were proposed. After the accidental death of the crew of Apollo 1, the engineers and physicists saw, for the first time, how crucial their work was to the safety of the astronauts. After a hiatus, Apollo 2-6 were unmanned test flights. Apollo 7-10 were manned but no landing were attempted as the Lunar modules weren't ready (government contractors!). Apollo 11 launched on July 16th, 1969 and fulfilled its Mission Objectives by landing men on the Moon on July 20th and then returning them, safely to Earth.
Neil Armstrong, Edwin 'Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins managed to change History, simply by taking a little walk around the block...the Right Stuff indeed.
I will expand on his post later on. I'm working on a longer piece in my spare (yeah, right) time.
Nota: Walter Cronkite, the CBS News broadcaster, who extensively chronicled NASA's Space Flights and famously proclaimed "Wow" and nothing else when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, passed away on the 17th of july.
