“One Small Step for (a) Man…
…One giant leap for Mankind.”
On this day in 1969, thirty-nine years ago, Astronaut Neil Armstrong made the first bootprint in lunar dust. At 20:17 GMT, (about 1:17PM Mountain Standard time) with 25 seconds of fuel left in the descent stage of the Lunar Module and warning alarms going off constantly, Armstrong gently set the Eagle on the surface of our moon. At 02:56 GMT of July 21, or 7:56PM MST July 20, Armstrong stepped off the LM and spoke the words recorded forever in our history. He swears to this day that he said (or meant to say) “One small step for a man…” but history records otherwise. I watched him in grainy black-and-white on a neighbors 25″ television. I’d seen the Saturn V launch from the banks of the Indian River four days previously. My father was a quality control engineer for IBM, responsible for ensuring the Instrument Unit (guidance system) of the Saturn V rocket worked to specification.
Doesn’t matter. Armstrong landed on the freaking MOON after taking manual control to prevent landing in a boulder field.
They say nobody remembers who the second man on the moon was, but I do – it was Buzz Aldrin, a guy still willing to punch the lights out of moon-landing deniers. Go BUZZ!
Does anyone remember the name of the last man to leave a boot print on the moon?
I do. Gene Cernan, December 14, 1972.
We’re not scheduled to return until 2019.
Yeah. Like that’ll happen.