…and to the many others who risked their lives to explore space and to make those three the first to reach and, in the case of Armstrong and Aldrin, step foot on the moon.

It seems so detached from the happenings in our lives today.  We haven’t had anyone back their in 37 years – half a lifetime.  Yet today’s young don’t seem that much amazed.

Forty years.  I can’t believe it.  First of all, I can’t believe that I can remember something reasonably clearly that happened forty years ago.  That’s because the concept of forty years ago seems so long ago.  I was sitting in my family’s TV room watching it with my dad.  My mom had gone to bed.  We saw the somewhat unfocused picture showing Neil Armstrong take that famous step and say “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.

To think that it had only been 66 years since man first was able to fly with the successful flight of the Kitty Hawk by the Wright Brothers.  A giant leap indeed.  What mankind can do.