Happy 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11

Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to set foot on the moon while Michael Collins waited for them in lunar orbit and the rest of humankind waited for word back on Earth. Watching the footage still takes my breath away.

If any of you out there are as geeky as I am about the early US space program, there are a number of wonderful resources available on the web. One of my favorites is the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. It's a collection of photographs, transcripts, video, and audio of each of the landing missions. It's remarkable to me to listen to the audio of the astronauts talking between themselves and back to the CAPCOM on Earth and realize what a tenuous link they had back home while in such a beautiful, hostile environment.

I also highly recommend seeing In the Shadow of the Moon it's a very stark, wonderful documentary that focuses on interviews with the astronauts themselves as well as archival footage without the distraction of fancy voice-over narration or elaborate graphics or music. Very powerful and very moving.