Hello Space Fans and welcome to another edition of Space Fan News.
Because I do this show on a Friday I'm a little late but by now you've all probably heard
that Neil Armstrong, the first man to step foot on the moon, died last Saturday at the
age of 82.
Over the week, I've seen many tributes and eulogies about him and his life and at first
I thought I wasn't going to to do one.
I just didn't have the words to properly express the loss, so I was just going to do an episode
of SFN and maybe have a picture of him at the end with a caption.
But then, as I was thinking about today's script, the words came.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that I owe my entire career to Neil Armstrong and those
early days of manned space exploration.
Growing up in the sixties and seventies in the United States was a very complex time,
there were all kinds of schizophrenic things happening: civil rights, free love, war and
human space exploration were all happening at the same time.
Those decades were saturated with emotions across the spectrum.
For me, in the years leading up to the Apollo 11 launch, I was a little kid.
I was seven when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon and at the time a lot of those
cultural things escaped me, I just didn't understand or care, I was five, six, seven
years old, my priorities were playing with my friends and toys and going out on the Homosassa
River in Florida.
Still, I did notice some things.
For example, back in those days, the only time you could watch cartoons was on Saturday
morning, it's not like now where you can watch them anytime you want, and I used to LOVE
watching cartoons.
So every Saturday morning there I was, sitting in front of the TV.
But sometimes, especially on CBS, they used to get pre-empted by something going on in
space.
Every once is a while, they'd interrupt the cartoons to show us a Gemini launch or a complex
docking maneuver going on in orbit, a space walk or something like that.
Now at first, I got annoyed for interrupting Clutch Cargo, but later, sometime around 1965
I started getting interested.
There's nothing like real rockets and real space walks to get your attention.
And then, in July 1969, this happened.
[Moon Landing]
Everyone I knew was watching this event, everyone was talking about it and had an opinion on
whether we should be doing it.
To me, landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth was not, and never has
been, an American endeavor.
It was a human endeavor.
Because at that moment, when Neil said those words, we - the people watching - weren't
citizens of the U.S. or China or Russia or Italy or Australia or Iran.
We were citizens of Earth.
America happened to be the country that did it, but we weren't the only ones trying and
let's not kid ourselves, we weren't doing it in the spirit of human advancement or exploration,
we used those words, but that was not the real motivating factor.
Still it happened, for whatever reason, we made it to the Moon.
And then a little later, this happened…
[One small step]
This was the most important step ever taken by a human being.
When he said those words, my Dad yelled, 'Yes', my Mom was watching intently, Walter Cronkite
cried and I stared at the screen trying to understand what I was seeing.
On that day, at that moment, for perhaps the first time and only time, everyone on Earth
was looking up.
All of us, at the same time.
And that moment belonged solely to Neil Armstrong - he alone owned it.
Neil Armstrong will be the first to tell you that he did not do that alone, tens of thousands
of people worked every bit as hard as he did to get him to the Moon and allowed him to
take that step on the moon, and he lived his life in honor and respect of their achievement.
By all accounts he was a shy man not prone to public appearances, but his bearing, manner
and the way he lived his life was always mindful of that moment and all the people who helped
make it happen.
He knew how important it was and he took it seriously, he never did anything that might
diminish the magnitude of that first step.
But even though he had a lot of help, at that precise moment, when everyone on the planet
was looking up and hearing those words, "That's One Small Step for a man, one giant leap for
mankind", for the briefest of instances, we were ALL Neil Armstrong.
We were, all of us, taking that step with him.
It's very easy to idealize the past, and that time was far from ideal, but that was an ideal
moment.
We were all there, thinking the same thing, united as a species, and all of us looking
up and seeing out place in the universe on the surface of a different world for the very
first time.
And that moment, one of the very few ideal moments in the history of the world, belonged
to Neil Armstrong.
Now there aren't many people who can point to an exact moment as the start of their career,
but I can, and that was it.
From that day forward, I would never be the same.
This was when I knew I wanted a career in science.
Now because I was seven, that immediately translated into wanting to be an astronaut,
but as time passed and the seventies came and I got older, I wanted to be one of those
guys in the control room wearing glasses like these and white shirts and telling the astronauts
what they could and couldn't do.
My Dad worked for the state of Florida in law enforcement and my Mom was a stay-at-home
Mom, so there were no influences at home that fostered my interest in science.
They didn't object or try to stop me, but they didn't really know much about it so they
couldn't help, although they did give me encouragement.
But I grew up in the sixties and seventies.
I had resources and influences all around me.
Almost everyday Walter Cronkite would say something amazing about events in the space
program - space was always in the news, math and science were highly encouraged in school
and role models were everywhere, astronomy clubs popped up all over the place, and we
had gone to the moon.
My interest in science was nurtured by the culture in which I grew up, the times I lived
in.
When I was a kid, math and science was one of the coolest things you could do.
And that time, those decades, the Apollo program and especially the astronauts nurtured my
interest in science and space.
That interest hasn't wavered since, and I have Nell Armstrong's step *- the most important
step ever taken - to thank for getting it started.
Well, that's it Neil, thank you for all you've done for me, and it is because of you, in
part, that I will always Keep Looking Up.