One Small Step For Man, One Giant Leap For Mankind

I love the moon! I love it so much I always use it as my profile picture. I feel so connected to it and, as a kid, thought it was mine.

Forty years after America's launch of Apollo 11, the U.S. space program is at a different crossroads, challenged in recent years to return to the moon and to recapture the ambition that launched the space race in 1961. Back then, a dazzled nation heard the big dreams of a youthful Ivy League-educated, senator-turned president.

"I believe," President John F. Kennedy told Congress, "that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."

That was the same year Barack Obama was born. Forty-eight years later, Obama, a similarly youthful Ivy League-educated former senator is now in charge, and the nation wonders what his vision is for the U.S. space program.

Forty years ago this week was the Apollo 11 lift-off and, on July 20, the first landing on the moon! I can remember it so well. It was so exciting and I'm looking forward to the next time the US lands on the moon.