Neil Armstrong: He Defined the Hopes of the 20th Century

In the timeline of the 20th century, Neil Armstrong stepping on the Moon represents the absolute apex of accomplishment and hope. Before that, let's face it, the century was woeful. Humankind had brought itself to two world wars that wasted and destroyed tens of millions of lives in two short bursts. In between, we had economic chaos caused only by greed. We had some huge acts of genocide, the largest, of course, being the Holocaust. There was constant ideological cleansing (Ideocide?) in the Soviet Union and associated countries.  At the time Armstrong stepped on the Moon, we were in the midst of an indefinite nuclear standoff, in which the US and USSR had already come close to blowing up the world up once. The Vietnam War raged on, so did protests, and so did race riots in most US cities.  There was oppression in Eastern Europe, which was still devastated and impoverished from World War II.


Neil Armstrong's step was exactly what the world needed. What followed the space program were inventions such as microchips and computer technology that energized the last two decades and completely altered human prospects.    

Yet, space travel is far more difficult than we thought in the naive age of the 1960s. Radiation, free fall, energy requirements, sheer distance and the problems of supply all keep the Star Trek dream from being realized. It wasn't the "giant leap" he declared it to be. As a result, we struggle with an overpopulated world lacking land, resources and struggling for energy sources.

It doesn't matter if we call it a "giant leap," though. It was still an improvement over what humankind had before.

Armstrong and the Apollo team accomplished something equal to anything described in an ancient epic. In one way or another, everyone alive now benefited in some way from the Moon Landing. So he and his crew deserve to be remembered at least as long as Ulysses.

So, today the man who went farther from our planet than any of us has gone much farther till. He's traveled more distance than any galaxy we can see with out best telescopes. Though he's not able to tell us of his first step on this expedition, a just universe would have him landing in heaven now.

Without him, where would I ever get that hope?