I Put Up My Thumb

Ever Since I Was A Little Boy, I Dreamed I Would Do Something Important In Aviation.

The [moon] Surface Is Fine And Powdery. I Can Kick It Up Loosely With My Toe. It Does Adhere In Fine Layers Like Powdered Charcoal To The Sole And Sides Of My Boots. I Only Go In A Small Fraction Of An Inch, Maybe An Eighth Of An Inch, But I Can See The Footprints Of My Boots And The Treads In The Fine Sandy Particles.

No Matter When You Had Been To This Spot Before, A Thousand Years Ago Or A Hundred Thousand Years Ago, Or If You Came Back To It A Million Years From Now, You Would See Some Different Things Each Time, But The Scene Would Be Generally The Same.

You've Got To Expect Things Are Going To Go Wrong. And We Always Need To Prepare Ourselves For Handling The Unexpected.

Space Has Not Changed But Technology Has, In Many Cases, Improved Dramatically. A Good Example Is Digital Technology Where Today's Cell Phones Are Far More Powerful Than The Computers On The Apollo Command Module And Lunar Module That We Used To Navigate To The Moon And Operate All The Spacecraft Control Systems.