One Giant Leap

Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon and announced those famous words, “That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”

(If he had landed nowadays, one would hope that non gender-specific language would have surely been employed: “That’s one small step for a human; one giant leap for humanity.”)

It was one of those seminal moments where, if you were alive back then, you can always remember right where you were when it happened.

I was ten yours old and we were at a relative's lake house near our family’s ranch in South Texas on that hot summer night. My aunt and uncle and cousins were all there and I can still remember watching that shadowy figure on a black & white portable TV that my dad had set up on the front porch.

It was pretty amazing that the NASA program was able to pull that off forty years ago. After all, the space ships back then had less computing power than today’s rectal thermometers.

Like I said, we can all remember Neil Armstrong descending that ladder, but does anyone remember Buzz Aldrin’s ladder descent just a few moment’s later?

I didn’t think so.

The second one always gets overlooked. Just ask anyone from Nagasaki or Gomorrah.

Anyway, here is a video of Buzz Aldrin becoming the second person to ever step upon the moon’s surface.



Oh, and remember the iconic flag that they planted on the moon’s surface – the one that was to remain there forever and ever as a symbol of U.S. supremacy?

They placed it too close to the space ship. It got blown over when the lunar module took off.