Apollo 11 at 50: American Triumph!!

Thursday July 24, 1969: The Apollo 11 Command Module "Columbia" with astronauts Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin onboard splashed down in the Pacific Ocean today thereby concluding Mankind's first lunar landing mission. The Apollo 11 mission conclusively and empathetically won the Space Race for America over the Soviet Union. After trailing the Soviets for nearly a decade in Space, NASA persevered and then prevailed and in doing so clearly demonstrated the power and superiority of a free and open democratic society in opposition to the oppressive, closed communist Soviet system. 

Legendary CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite signed off his historic telecast of the Apollo 11 mission on July 24, 1969 with these fitting words, "Well, man's dream and a nation's pledge have now been fulfilled. The lunar age has begun. And with it mankind's march outward into that endless sky from this small planet circling an insignificant star in a minor solar system on the fringe of a seemingly infinite universe. The path ahead will be long; it's going to be arduous; it's going to be pretty doggone costly. We may hope, but we should not believe, in the excitement of today, that the next trip or the ones to follow are going to be particularly easy. But we have begun with “a small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind," in Armstrong's unforgettable words.

In these eights days of the Apollo 11 mission the world was witness to not only the triumph of technology, but to the strength of man's resolve and the persistence of his imagination. Through all times the moon has endured out there, pale and distant, determining the tides and tugging at the heart, a symbol, a beacon, a goal. Now man has prevailed. He's landed on the moon, he's stabbed into its crust; he's stolen some of its soil to bring back in a tiny treasure ship to perhaps unlock some of its secrets.  The date's now indelible. It's going to be remembered as long as man survives—July 20,1969—the day a man reached and walked on the moon. The least of us is improved by the things done by the best of us. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are the best of us, and they've led us further and higher than we ever imagined we were likely to go."