I worked for Nasa in the days leading up to putting men on the moon. While the average American may have understood the historical significants of that day, very few really appreciated the work and preparation that led up to that day. I worked on the Saturn 5 and know of all the problems that had to be overcome to meet Kennedy's deadline of a man on the moon before the end of the decade. There were many hours of work and lives sacrificed to get us there.

I remember attending a lecture by Wernher Von Braun in 1965 when he gave his vision of how we would put men on the moon. I remember thinking how impossible this was and all that could go wrong to prevent this from happening. The fact that we did put men on the moon in 1969 with the technology of that day is truly amazing. The Young people today take technology so for granted and haven't a clue what it takes to enable them to TEXT their friends across thousands of miles. If you told the average young person today we would put men on Mars tomorrow they would probably give you a shocked look and ask "you mean we haven't already been"

I am a little surprised at richard comparing Neil Armstrong to Michael Jackson... Comparing the two Moon walks would be like me comparing a monkey at the circus to Lance Armstrong because both had ridden a bicycles.