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Feats of '69 won't ever be matched

If you are old enough to have memory of 1969, you know exactly where you were on July 20, 1969, when Astronaut Neil Armstrong gingerly stepped off the ladder of the Lunar Module Eagle and made the first human footsteps on the Moon. From Tranquility Base, over crackling radio waves and with Mother Earth over his shoulder, Armstrong uttered the immortal and prophetic words: "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

Indeed it was. The Apollo 11 moon landing marked the culmination of a great technological race between the United States and the Soviet Union to put a man on the moon. Just days before the Apollo 11 landing, known at the time only to a few Western intelligence analysts and leaders and to the Soviet chain of command, a failed Soviet moon rocket launch had destroyed an entire launch complex.

Perhaps only the Manhattan Project rivals the moon mission program in the intensity and scale of scientific resources mustered so quickly for a central purpose.

From the Apollo program &emdash; and the Mercury and Gemini programs that preceded it &emdash; came enormous gains in technology and knowledge of space.

Somehow it is fitting that Mission Control resided in Houston, because just about everything about the Apollo program was Texas-large. The redundant computer systems used to guide the mission filled not just rooms but entire buildings &emdash; and the mission today could be run off a small network of PCs. The massive Saturn V rocket that lifted Apollo 11 from Cape Kennedy stood as tall as some skyscrapers. When its engines roared, the ground shook, and even the roar over radio and pictures over television made every American want to stand and cheer. And the men who rode the rocket into space were made to be, well, larger than life, but mostly were a humble lot.

Few were more humble than Armstrong, who eschewed most opportunities to cash in on his fame. The dignity and momentousness of what he and his crewmates did would have been cheapened by any less of a man. To Neil Armstrong we owe not only the most famous words spoken from space, but also the dignity of one of the greatest moments of our nation's history.

Apollo 11 was a triumph of national will, a moment not since repeated in the space program &emdash; nor one anyone should eevn attempt to repeat, for it is unrepeatable.

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