Little-Acorn
Well-Known Member
As you know, Neil Armstrong died today at age 82.
The first man to walk on the moon, he was the center of a milestone we will not see again in our lifetimes... or, perhaps, anyone's lifetime in millennia.
Some compare him to the Wright Brothers, the first to achieve powered aerial flight. But he goes beyond that.
Some compare him to Christopher Columbus, the first (European) to set foot on a new continent at a time when it was thought there were no more new continents.
But Neil Armstrong is something unique in human history.
He is the first man to set foot OFF the planet that our species originated on.
Ten thousand years from now, if man survives that long, Neil Armstrong's name will resonate long after people have forgotten Yuri Gagarin, or Abraham Lincoln, or George Washington.
It is said that, if man survives to spread throughout the Universe and populate other worlds, then for all but a brief period of history, the noun "ship" will refer, not to oceangoing vessels, but to spaceships.
Ten (or a hundred) thousand years from now, when Man has spread throughout the galaxy, formed colonies on planets of distant stars, and Earth is merely a minor back planet on a distant galaxy...
...Neil Armstrong will be remembered as "The First".
He was the first member of that entire, vast expansion of billions and TRILLIONS of humans, occupying countless thousands of worlds - an expansion that dwarfs everything ever done by mankind.
I disagree with those who rank him with George Washington or Christopher Columbus. As I see it, Neil Armstrong, homo sapien, ranks with the first prehistoric finned creature ever to crawl out of the primordial water life developed in, and take the first steps on dry land.
The milestone he achieved is that significant. We will not see the like in our lifetimes. Nor will our descendants, even out to a hundred generations hence.
Thank you, Neil, for being "The First".
And Godspeed, wherever you are now.
The first man to walk on the moon, he was the center of a milestone we will not see again in our lifetimes... or, perhaps, anyone's lifetime in millennia.
Some compare him to the Wright Brothers, the first to achieve powered aerial flight. But he goes beyond that.
Some compare him to Christopher Columbus, the first (European) to set foot on a new continent at a time when it was thought there were no more new continents.
But Neil Armstrong is something unique in human history.
He is the first man to set foot OFF the planet that our species originated on.
Ten thousand years from now, if man survives that long, Neil Armstrong's name will resonate long after people have forgotten Yuri Gagarin, or Abraham Lincoln, or George Washington.
It is said that, if man survives to spread throughout the Universe and populate other worlds, then for all but a brief period of history, the noun "ship" will refer, not to oceangoing vessels, but to spaceships.
Ten (or a hundred) thousand years from now, when Man has spread throughout the galaxy, formed colonies on planets of distant stars, and Earth is merely a minor back planet on a distant galaxy...
...Neil Armstrong will be remembered as "The First".
He was the first member of that entire, vast expansion of billions and TRILLIONS of humans, occupying countless thousands of worlds - an expansion that dwarfs everything ever done by mankind.
I disagree with those who rank him with George Washington or Christopher Columbus. As I see it, Neil Armstrong, homo sapien, ranks with the first prehistoric finned creature ever to crawl out of the primordial water life developed in, and take the first steps on dry land.
The milestone he achieved is that significant. We will not see the like in our lifetimes. Nor will our descendants, even out to a hundred generations hence.
Thank you, Neil, for being "The First".
And Godspeed, wherever you are now.
