I was 16, fully a child of the America of the Sixties and all that entailed, but, as a lifelong fan of science-fiction, I was completely transfixed by this.
[jwplayer mediaid=”246″]
At the time, I thought that within my lifetime I’d see colonies on the moon and Mars, and an ever-more-ambitious space program taking us further and further towards the stars. In some ways, that came to be, and I live daily with wonders both near and far that I could not have imagined in that long-ago place and time. I don’t think that we have somehow “failed” as a nation for not fulfilling all those dreams, but I do regret that it turned out to be so much further from our reach than it seemed then. Dammit, where’s my flying car?
Then I look around me at the technology and ease we take so much for granted, and think back to Isaac Newton:
If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.
Those men- those three men- Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins- were giants standing on the shoulders of giants. Because of them,we see further even today.
Oddly enough, I look at this… video (it’s still a ‘film’ in my 20th-century molded mind)- and I still hope for the future. What wonders will my children see, and their children beyond them? The journey’s just begun!