Today marks the 43^rd anniversary of the historic first lunar landing.  I was 9 at the time and remember my parents waking me up to watch the historic event – in Neil Armstrong’s immortal words: “A giant leap for mankind”.

My disappointment that the shuttle fleet is grounded and that NASA does not have the type of mandate that put us on the moon is a subject for another day.  Today, I honor the men and women who participated in the Apollo program and remember the giants that they truly were.

~ Christopher Buck, Publisher

10 Reasons Why the Moon Landing was Awesome

By Curtis Silver

Today marks the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Forty-three years ago mission commander Neil A. Armstrong and lunar module pilot Edwin Eugene ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, Jr. walked on the moon while command module pilot Michael Collins orbited above. A few days from now, however, will mark the 43rd anniversary of the day people really reacted to what just happened. As with all major events in time, there is always a day of reflection. I’d like to honor that day of reflection with my top 10 thoughts about the Apollo 11 moon landing.

It was a comeback victory in the space race against the Soviets

I’d even say, we made the Soviets look like chumps. We won the space race by putting a man on the moon. Sure, the Soviets were there first, having bounced their Luna 2 spacecraft off the moon 10 years earlier, but we left our footprints there. The Cold War may have lasted another 15 years or so after that, but it gave us the confidence to make movies like Red Dawn. It also showed the world what could be achieved by democracy over communism. From my father, who was in the Navy at the time:

I was at sea when the landing occurred; I didn’t even know about it until we hit our next port of call, which was Barcelona. I can tell you that the Spanish people were very excited about the landing; they mostly thought it was a wonderful occurrence and congratulated us sailors for the event. They also thought we must be very proud to have beaten the Russians to the moon. At the time, Spain was under the control of the fascist dictatorship government of Francisco Franco.

Gave the conspiracy theorists something to talk about for the next century

Even though anyone with a high-powered telescope and laser system (don’t you have one?) can see the reflections off the equipment left on the moon, the conspiracy theorists still think the whole thing was staged, on the basis that we haven’t gone back. If we should have faked anything in the late ’60s, it should have been Vietnam. GeekDad has more on debunking the conspiracy theories.

OM Times Magazine » syndicated