One Small Step...

Like most Americans, I was saddened yesterday to learn that Neil Armstrong had passed away. On a number of occasions I have used this blog as a way to talk about my fascination with space, so as you would expect, I had a great deal of respect for Armstrong and all the men who went to the moon. Honestly, sometimes it doesn't feel like they have been given their proper place in human history. Part of that probably has to do with the fact that we no longer travel to the moon, a fact which has caused some people see the space race as a costly endeavor which didn't produce any long-term benefits. Apparently, they forget that sometimes the journey is the thing. Unfortunately, it seems as though human nature makes giving people proper credit for achievements while they are still alive next to impossible, because we never do a particularly good job of putting history into context while it is happening. We tend to go to extremes right after an event happens, which has numbed us to when something actually is worth of that kind of praise. As such, we need a few years to really figure out how big a deal something is. I can only hope that as time passes more people appreciate what an accomplishment being the first human on the moon truly was and that we celebrate the remaining astronauts while we still can.