40 Years Ago Today!

What more is there to say? It's still a mind-boggling achievement. And from JFK's announcement in 1962 to Apollo 11 was, what, 7 years?

The earliest estimates of our ability to return to the Moon are targeting 2020, 11 years from now. This is with all the prior art, the literally million-fold increase in computing technology, etc etc.

Color me disappointed. If and when we finally send a few people out of Earth's orbit, it will again be in flying gas cans, not from, say, a sky-hook. It will still be the projection of a nation's resource to send a teeny few.

Which is not to say I have anything but admiration for the astronauts and the organization that pulled it off. Neil Armstrong is a pilot's pilot - he held a number of altitude and speed records as an X-15 test pilot long before he was an astronaut. Multiply that across the whole of NASA - everywhere you turn, you have the best people in the world pushing back the frontiers of science and technology.

July 20, 1969 - when men were men and giants walked the Earth ... and the Moon!