40 years ago, July 20th, one of the most amazing feats mankind has ever accomplished was done so by the Apollo 11 mission; man landing on the moon. I only wish I could have been around at the time to see this amazing feat live, but even 40 years later I am amazed and fascinated that this was accomplished using only 60s technology. Space exploration has made some leaps and bounds with the Shuttle project, and the international space station, but I feel empty considering we’ve all but abandoned missions to the moon. Thankfully, NASA plans to return to the moon by 2020, and I’m excited to see even higher quality footage and photos from those upcoming missions.
More recently regarding the 1969 Apollo missions, NASA has found the original tapes and has been undergoing a project to restore and update these videos to their original quality. In addition, I highly recommend you check out the Project Apollo Image Gallery providing high quality images from Apollo 11 in addition to all of the other Apollo missions.
If you consider all the factors going into the Apollo 11 mission, it’s quite an amazing feat that I feel will be unchallenged for quite some time. In only a short span of 8 years time from Kennedy’s speech to Congress, to Armstrong’s small step onto the Moon’s surface was the task accomplished. I dare you to find a goal of that magnitude being completed and accomplished successfully in that short time span today. It saddens me that today the world is shrinking and that we’ve almost lost the thrill of exploring the unknown. My hopes is that with the 2020 missions and beyond that ideal will be rekindled again, maybe eventually bringing way to a manned mission to Mars or beyond.
