July 20, 1969: One Giant Leap

Forty-one years ago my family and I sat transfixed before our television set and watched history being made. On July 20, 1969 we saw Neil Armstrong, garbed in a bulky protective suit, descend a short ladder and become the first human to set foot on an alien world. "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind," he memorably stated.

Goose bumps caused the hair on my fourteen-year-old arms to stand on end. Even at that age I was clearly aware I was witnessing an event of epochal importance. People had dreamed of such a moment since the dawn of human consciousness. It was potentially every bit as significant as Columbus making landfall in the West Indies.

President Kennedy had electrified and mobilized the nation in 1962 by setting a moon landing as a national goal. "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win." See Kennedy's entire speech here.

Three quarters of a million Americans were involved in the space program at its height. We were inspired because we are adventurers and explorers at heart. Our more distant forebears explored and settled these continents; our more recent ones gave up kin and country to strike out on their own in search of new opportunity. We were inspired because we love a challenge, and the tougher the better. We were inspired because we love competition. The rival superpower, the Soviet Union, had beaten us off the mark into space and we were not to be outdone, not by anyone, and especially not by them. In those days, with triumph over the Great Depression and victory in World War II still fresh in the memories of all Americans over 30 and that can-do attitude imbued into us, their offspring, there was no doubt in anyone's mind we could accomplish anything we set out to do.

America embraced NASA and the space program for a number of reasons: national pride, scientific curiosity, Cold War one-upsmanship and pioneer spirit among them. It made little difference that a prime unnamed reason was to develop heavy-thrust intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear Armageddon on Soviet Russia should that prove necessary.

As a spinoff dividend, the scientific advances needed to reach the moon buttressed America's economy and defense technology and kept them foremost in the world for decades to come. These included the computer revolution and major breakthroughs in communications, avionics, metallurgy, plastics, miniaturization, nutrition, optics, electronics and physics, just to name a few.

Besides being a thrilling human adventure, putting Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon stood also as a supreme national achievement. It showed the kind of relentlessly awesome competence of which a resolute, motivated and unified United States of America is capable. I will remember it with pride for the rest of my life.