Moon landing was amazing accomplishment

Even 40 years later, it’s still amazing to think people have walked on the moon, a celestial object that has fascinated mankind since it first went outside at night.
I don’t remember the first moon landing, as I was still more than five years from being born. My first space-related memory didn’t occur until 1981 when Space Shuttle Columbia made its initial launch to begin the modern-day space era. I remember sitting in the gym in kindergarten and watching the awe-spiring event, wishing I was one of the astronauts.
I’m sure a lot of people had the same wish when Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon, although the risks and training that went along with the job probably would have been too much for most people.
But now those people can share a little of what he experienced – at least the space travel part – by coming up with $200,000 and booking a flight on WhiteKnightTwo, the first civilian space flight system that made its public debut at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture earlier this week in Oshkosh.
That’s a lot to pay for a space flight that will only keep people in space for five minutes, but it’s an amount I would pay, if I had it, and so would many others just to say you were an astronaut, even if it was for a brief amount of time.
In fact, Virgin Galactic, the company that made the plane, which will lift SpaceShipTwo into the atmosphere from a base in New Mexico, has already taken 300 reservations and is holding $40 million in deposits. SpaceShipTwo will take those people to space when WhiteKnightTwo reaches an altitude of 50,000 feet, blasting off from the plane at four times the speed of sound.
I’m sure Neil Armstrong and the other 11 men that have walked on the moon never imagined a day when people could buy their way into space. I could be wrong, though, as they probably thought they were setting the foundation for mankind to eventually build bases on the moon and probably never imagined we’d stop sending people to the moon by 1972.
Maybe it’s better that the private sector is now the one making the bigger advances in the space industry, as it’s probably a lot more efficient than its government-sponsored counterpart, NASA.
NASA keeps talking about sending people to Mars, a goal it hopes to accomplish within the next 20 to 30 years, but talk isn’t action, and until some real plans are proposed don’t expect it anytime soon.
The owners of Virgin Galactic, after they make a boatload – or should I say spaceload – of money from carting people like me (only richer) to space will probably figure out a way to take people back to the moon and then to Mars before NASA even comes up with a tangible proposal. And they’ll probably make a profit on it because there’s a ton of people who’d pay for that opportunity.
I don’t mean to be so hard on NASA, as it has pioneered much of the technology we use today through its endeavors, and it’s not its fault that it has to deal with the bureaucracy that comes with being a government agency. NASA has a lot to be proud of, especially in light of the moon landing anniversary.
After all, that was an amazing accomplishment.