Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and Me

I was 8 years old, sitting in front of my family's black and white Zenith TV in our little pre-War era SoCal bungalow 36 years ago, watching an event that would set the course for my life. I was watching Neil Armstrong bunny hop down those few rungs on that spindly-legged LEM and then screw up his line, "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

Good going, Neil. Without the (a) your quote makes no sense.

Anyway, it was right then I decided I really did like science and math and doing cool stuff with my chemistry set; I wasn't sure before then. Watching that incredible feat I knew that I'd like to be a part of that, too, someday. So, I ended up going to university and getting two engineering degrees eventually. I've applied my interest in science, math and engineering to problems of aircraft flight, satellite control, radio communications and network design as well as software and circuit design.

And then, later, I applied my incredible brainpower to pointing and laughing at conservatives.

Back in the early/mid 90's I went to Orlando, FL for a business trip and ended up staying the weekend. I killed a day visiting KSC at the Cape. I took the tour of the facility; we were in one of those moon buggy-looking busses. At one point we went into a large hangar building and witnessed a semi-silly recreation of the Apollo 11 launch, complete with Mission Control consoles. As we heard the Flight Controller tick off the subsystems and get the response from the engineer in charge of those ("Flight controls?" "Go!" "Fuel?" Go!") the lights on the consoles would light up green. The video projected on the screen showed the Saturn V with a tiny little Command Module on top with three guys in it waiting to light the candle and go to the moon.

The countdown continued and then off it went, as I knew it would.

"Lift off, we have lift off of Apollo 11!"

The room lights came up and everyone shuffled out. Except me; I stood against the rail looking at everything for a while. The moon buggy bus driver finally came up to me (a good ol' boy from Florida) and said, "Whadja think o that?"

I looked at him for moment and said slowly, "That was great!" "That is why I am who I am."

"Yeah, I hear that a lot," was his thoughtful reply.

I followed him out to the buggy, got back on, and finished the tour, but I didn't really pay much attention to what was said. I was back in the living room of that little house we lived in, sitting on the floor watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.