This day in history marks the day that we watched The first man walk on the moon clinching the space race for America. We made it a priority and we did it, despite the consiritorial ideas circulating stating that it was staged and filmed.
That was a feat that was dreamed about for centuries before us, and it is only in 1969 that we managed to see it come to fruition. The reason was technological, and that once we overcame that, not even the moon was outside of our grasp.
So what is next for us to explore? The answer is possibly mars, or maybe even Venus should we be able to develop a way to get there without burning up .
However interesting the next step is, the current step does not involve human feet. The bridge between earth and the moon was the longest bridge we have ever crossed, and yet it is the smallest of feats when comparing our goals from then and now.
When we first went into space, we saw the moon, we could see that one, we could see the edge of our little known universe there, and we could see this as the ultimate step. We knew of other planets and we knew of other galaxies, but we knew about them in the same way that we knew about novascotia or the peak of Mt everest. We knew of there existence, but it is out of mind so many simply ignore it and forget about it, but the moon, who could ignore the moon.
Now our vision of space travel have gone far beyond what they did on that day 41 years ago. They are now looking into the eyes of black holes, they are looking into the smallest of planets on the most distant of stars, and our ever growing curisoty is not letting us ignore them simply because they are far away.
Infact we are starting to ignore the closer things, in contrast to what was then with our focus on the mundane, we are now focusing more and more on the grander things. I cant honestly say that we will ever see a manned misson to the moon or mars again until we start some sort of colonization or something that requires a dirtect human approach that a machiene can not offer.
The trip to the stars does not require humans landing on them anymore, but I really hope I am wrong. With probes that take snapshots of distant solar systems, and take distant photographs of bizarre new galaxies, I think that the majority of our trips will be robot manned and we will see the first robots on the surface of Jupiter before we get to see people on mars.
The moon is just too old news now, and there is no real reason to go back, mars is difficult and dangerous so I don't think we will see people there soon either. Either way, looking back at this day inn history is a good reminder of the human need to explore, and gives me a little hope that we will see so much more than we dreamed of.