I heard those words forty-four years ago today.\u00a0 The memory of hearing them still gives me chills \u2013 and brings a tear to my eye.<\/p>\n
They were spoken by Neil Armstrong, Mission Commander of Apollo 11, as his response to a query from \u201cMission Control\u201d at NASA\u2019s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, TX (it was not renamed the Johnson Space Center until 1973).\u00a0 \u00a0They were spoken shortly after the Lunar Excursion Module Eagle<\/em> had landed on the surface of moon in the Sea of Tranquility – becoming Tranquility Base.<\/p>\n They were among the first words spoken by a human while on the surface of another world \u2013 Luna, our moon. They were, however, not the first words uttered by a human while on the surface of the moon.\u00a0 That historical honor goes either to the announcement by Eagle’s<\/em> Pilot Edwin Aldrin of “Contact light!” on receiving an indication that one of Eagle’s<\/em> footpad probes had touched the lunar surface, or to one of several statements made by either Aldrin or Armstrong while executing the post-landing checklist a few seconds later as Eagle<\/em> was settling onto the surface of the moon.<\/p>\n The Apollo 11 crew consisted of one civilian NASA employee – Neil Armstrong – and two USAF officers assigned to NASA, Edward Aldrin and Michael Collins.\u00a0 All three had a military aviation background, and all had served as test pilots before being selected for NASA\u2019s astronaut program.\u00a0 All three had been NASA astronauts for several years prior to the Apollo 11 mission; each had previously orbited the earth.<\/p>\n Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon in Eagle<\/em>.\u00a0 The third member of the Apollo 11 crew, Michael Collins, remained with the Apollo 11 command module Columbia<\/em> in orbit during the landing.<\/p>\n The story of the Apollo 11 mission is well-known; I won\u2019t re-hash the details.\u00a0 The same is true of the crew\u2019s post-astronaut lives.<\/p>\n However, that day \u2013 and their accomplishment \u2013 are indeed worth remembering.<\/p>\n