Footprint on the Moon.Forty Years ago man walked on the moon! Neil Armstrong and Buz Aldren became the first humans ever to set foot on a world besides our own Earth. Having been beaten by the Russians in orbeting a satellite and in getting a man into space, NASA rose to the challenge issued by John F. Kennedy to put a man on the moon in this decade and return him safely to Earth. Michael Collins remained in the command module as it orbited the Moon.
It was a different world. We understood that a free people needed to maintain supremacy in technological advances and the "space race" was a healthy competition that was not hostile on its surface but had clear defense implications. We watched with Walter Cronkite as the American Space Program worked to achieve its incredible goal. Sadly, Walter died just a few days before this historic milestone at the age of 92.
We shed tears for Astronauts Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee when their Apollo 1 preflight test became a fiery death trap. Would America go forward with this obviously risky program? Yes. Go forward they did. Jim Lovell read from Genesis orbiting the Moon in Apollo Eight. The two missions that followed tested the lunar lander and command module and then came Apollo 11.
Within two years of the Apollo 1 tragedy we were seeing the lunar module "Eagle" safely landed on the Moon. At 2:00am we were watching black and white television signals that travelled from the lunar surface to Parks Tracking Station in Australia before being beamed all over the world.
Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon and history was made.
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