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Time Lines 11
‘It suddenly struck me that that
tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the
Earth. I put up my thumb and
shut one eye, and my thumb blot-
ted out the planet Earth. I didn’t
feel like a giant. I felt very, very
small,’
-Neil Armstrong
50 Years Ago - The Moon Landing
Man on the Moon
50 years ago, America won the Space Race
I
n December of 1903, the Wright Broth-
ers flew at Kitty Hawk. History says
they were the first, although that is a
story for another day.
It was only 66 years later after that first
short flight, the man shook off the shackles
of gravity and atmosphere transverse the
great vacuum and void of space, walked on
the surface of the moon and then returned,
splashing down safely in the warm waters
of the Pacific.
We take for granted now, the achievements
of the past. Man has walked on the moon.
We did it until we got bored and stopped do-
ing it anymore.
But it’s easy to forget that the moon land-
ing was only the final achievement in a
massive, expensive endeavor that began
in earnest in 1961 when President John F.
Kennedy essentially issued a national chal-
lenge.