Steve

At the age of 27, Steve Bales was assigned to the position of Lead Guidance Officer for the Apollo 11 mission.?He was in Houston's Mission Control as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended toward the moon on July 20, 1969.

As the Eagle Lander made its approach toward the moon's surface, Armstrong radioed to Houston, "PROGRAM ALARM!"??

This meant that the guidance computer was having to compute too many tasks at once and couldn't keep up.?This was a critical safety issue for the astronauts aboard the spacecraft.

Steve had 5 seconds to decide whether the mission should proceed or if they should abort and turnaround.?The lives of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were in his hands.

"We're 'GO' on that alarm" was the call made by Steve as he quickly assessed the risk.?

After a brief pause, Steve and the rest of the world heard this:

"Houston...Tranquility Base here.?The Eagle has landed."

In the blink of an eye, history was made.

On December 28, 1955, Steve was a 13-year-old boy sitting in front of his family's TV set watching “Man and the Moon.”?It was the second of a three-part series on space travel where Walt Disney introduces the Disneyland attraction "Rocket Ship to the Moon," followed by a cartoon about a two-stage plan for getting humans to the moon.

"That show, probably more than anything else, influenced me to study aerospace engineering. And that wasn't the ordinary thing to do for a boy raised in a small Iowa farming community."

If Walt Disney had not produced that program, and if Steve hadn’t watched it, would the moon have boot prints on it from Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin?

Things we say and do every day have the potential to cause a shift in someone’s life…for better or worse.?

That’s one small step for man…..