[img_assist|nid=296|title=Earth from the Moon|desc=Originally from NASA here|link=none|align=right|width=250|height=528]
About 14 hours from when I'm writing this, the official 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.
The challenge to leave our small rock of a home and reach out to the stars was levied to the nation by President Kennedy less than a decade earlier. Without question, this is one of the greatest technological achievements our young species has ever made.
As the decades have droned on, our outward quest for adventure has been delegated to other creations of ours. Satellites, radio waves, computer simulations of what may be. None tap the visceral feeling of hope turned to reality that I've heard anyone who saw those first grainy television images from the most foreign of places we've set foot upon.
We get excited by the reports of the Mars rovers, still going strong long after they were expected to fail. We marvel at the wondrous images returned from the deep cosmos by the Hubble Space Telescope. We cheer and applaud every time a space shuttle launches for it's much closer to home orbit destination. (And we sigh with relief every time it returns without incident.)
All of that is all good and fine. But a lot of people want more. I want more.
I wasn't even close to being born when Niel Armstrong stepped off that last rung and settled oh-so-gently into dust that had never been trod upon before. Thanks to the new technology available for this anniversary, though, I've been able to watch and listen to the original mission progress at We Choose The Moon.
It is awe inspiring.
And I want us all to experience something like it first hand.
For too long we've let ourselves be confined to the small bubble of space that's becoming over-crowded with our satellites and debris from our numerous short-term missions. They have advanced our understanding and served us well, without a doubt. But just a scant few days travel away is a whole new world that we've barely scratched the surface of.
