"One Small Step...."

On July 20th, 1969, two men landed on the moon in a vehicle called the Lunar Module, a small part of the large spacecraft named Apollo 11.  After watching television coverage of the descent to the lunar surface, yours truly, then a young boy in western New York state, had to go to bed.  Some time later, however, Papa Bigfoot decided to give his two oldest sons a reprieve and brought the two of us back down into our living room, apparently wanting us to witness history.  I don't remember which of the three major networks we watched that evening, but I remember very often listening to Walter Cronkite during the Apollo missions, so the following is probably what we watched.



I remember the picture quality not being all that great, but we saw Neil Armstrong descend down a ladder to the Lunar Module's landing pad, and from there step onto the lunar surface.  After doing so, we heard him say, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."  The statement was a bit confusing, because the word "man", when not preceded by any article, is usually understood in a collective sense, pretty much a synonym for "mankind".  Later, I learned that Armstrong had meant to include the article "a", but either inadvertently omitted it or said it so softly that his microphone couldn't pick it up.  (See Wink for an explanation.)  When "a" is inserted before "man", the contrast between a physically "small step" made by one person and its large significance to all humanity can be more easily understood.

As far as I can remember, I don't think that my brother and I were still watching when Buzz Aldrin descended the ladder and joined Armstrong on the lunar surface.  During the next few days, we all watched coverage of the ascent from the moon, the docking with the Command Module (piloted by Michael Collins), and the splashdown somewhere in the Pacific.  During the next few years, five other Apollo missions placed men on the moon, while one other mission failed, its crew able to fly behind the moon before returning to earth.  It's now been 50 years since two men first set foot on the moon.  (Whoever first said "time flies" was not kidding.)  For most of that time, the manned space program has been relegated to earth orbit.  But if and when mankind sets out to again go beyond our immediate vicinity, they will surely draw inspiration from the past deeds of Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, and the other astronauts of the Apollo program.