Apollo 11 + 40

Today is the day that we mark the historic landing of man on the moon.  Forty years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of the lunar module and placed footprints on a foreign celestial body.  A very riveting time for our nation and the world as a whole.  I applaud NASA for replaying the tapes from those history-making days in real-time, I have been listening to them and have found much interesting material.  No doubt that Buzz and Neil were very excited about the important and improbable feat that they were to accomplish on this day.  

As I have been listening to the real-time feed that I mentioned above, I have also been following along with the transcript that is posted of the communications between Houston and the Apollo spacecraft.  Though at times the 40-year-old live feed and the transcript do not match up time wise, it is still fun to read along as the crew goes about flipping switches and pressing buttons to be able to land on the moon.  As for historic points on the trascript, I have found a few.  The separation of the lunar module from the command module occurs on page 318, the landing occurs on page 337, and the first footprint by Neil occurs on page 382.

I encourage everyone to pause for a moment today to reflect upon the masterful and unlikely events of today and send a message to Congress that we need to return to the moon and go to Mars and beyond.  It is our destiny as humans to seek out what is beyond our grasp and to explore what is beyond our reach.  Godspeed Neil and Buzz and all of our astronauts.