It was 40 years ago today that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took “one small step for man” and “one giant leap for mankind” in the Sea of Tranquility - or, depending on what you believe, the Nevada Desert.
On July 20, 1969 Neil and Buzz cavorted on the moon hitting golf balls and planting American flags while Michael Collins sadly admired from the window of Apollo 11 (a.k.a stage left). The moment marked a crucial period in the space race as the Americans no longer had a case of “rocket envy” when it came to the Russians floating around in the wild yonder of a nothingness vacuum. In celebration of the 40th anniversary of this historic event, NASA has been suspiciously pulling out all of the stops lately to convince the skeptics around the world that, hey, this really did happen!
Just last week the Space organization announced that their Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter had returned imagery of all six Apollo moon landing sites, and at nearly the same time that Hollywood experts had helped restore the original footage of the landing (presumably by going out to the Nevada desert and hiring a guy that looked like Neil Armstrong in a space suit) that was conveniently lost.
If all of that fanfare weren’t enough, they also found the time to conveniently release some never before seen images of Armstrong’s
lunar liaison. Something about all of these commemorative actions smells a little fishy if you ask us. Either way, going to Mars next
seems like a really great idea for showing our space mettle, because spending billions of dollars to send a few dudes to Mars to tell us that we won’t be living there anytime soon seems like a better idea than using that money to fix problems on Earth. Oh well, to infinity and beyond!
