Thirty-five years ago we became a species no longer limited to one world, if you'll permit me a loose definition of the word. Four and half days after leaving home two brave explorers from the Earth left their tiny landing craft to set foot on their planet's "one large natural satellite," in a nearly flawless mission coming almost ten years after President Kennedy's call to do so. Though these first visitors spent less than one day there, every day since carries the imprint of that historical moment. And we're still learning from the early effort. Scientists still use lasers to target mirrors left along with that flag, the plaque, and those famous first footprints.

Armstrong and Aldrin spent a little over two hours outside the LEM on the lunar surface, about one percent of the two hundred hours devoted from takeoff to splashdown (shared with their Command Module colleague Collins). In July of 1969 I was seven years old and deeply in love with a bright, colorful television program which had sadly ended its primary run. "Real" space travel was exciting and all that but what I remember most is the contrast of the fuzzy black and white images compared to how vividly I had pictured "space" to appear. (That and how late in the evening the landing seemed to my post-bedtime sleepy eyes!)

It's hard to say in any way that we kept the faith in visiting the moon, despite widespread public support for a manned return. (That's not just landlubbers too; in congratulating the anniversary of the accomplishment ISS Science Officer Mike Fincke cited the fact that a recent poll of the residents of the International Space Station showed "100 percent support" to go back to the moon.) Current research doesn't call for many return visits and even such proposals in the works plan for missions that would drop robotic landers and not astronauts into lunar south pole craters for return of samples to Earth.

Trying times now envelop the planet and then some; even out in orbit things aren't optimal. Recent history shows a return to warlike barbarism and destruction, though it's hard to imagine how "We Came In Peace For All Mankind" doesn't include both sides of any conflict encouraged by Empire. Critics scream of waste while avoiding the successes of the overall effort, but clearly once upon a time we set our minds and hearts on a goal and astonished the world with its life-changing success. Thirty-five years of gathering dust is just too much.