On this, the 46th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, take note of the following space oddity: For all of the beautiful photos from man’s first walk on the moon, interestingly enough there exists but a single still photo of Neil Armstrong on his historic walk. One of his duties was to take photos while Buzz Aldrin set out the experiments. Armstrong of course, is visible in the relatively poor television from the lunar surface, in...

I grew up with space. I grew up learning and memorizing the names of each of the astronauts, their histories, flights and records, much in the same way other kids learned batting averages, home run counts, saves and ERAs about their favorite baseball players. Gemini 7, 14 days in space (14!), Gemini 8, first in flight abort, Gemini 4, first US spacewalk, and on and on. Outside of Christmas or my birthday, launch day for Gemini-this or...

Were the space shuttle to have flown in 1939, it would have still been flying when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Think about it. The phrase “the end of an era” is tossed about like a beach ball at a Giants game. But in this case it is quite true. You can almost say that it is the end of the space-program as we know it. Or at least the remnants of NASA’s “glory days”. First conceived in the minds of science fiction writers...

It’s hard to see the heroes of one’s youth slowly vanish from among us. Tonight, I am going to the “Bay Area Star Party” up at Chabot Science Center in Oakland, California. When I look at the moon, I’ll give it a special wink, as asked by his family. Please do the same. One thing I always loved about Mr. Armstrong was his humility, a trait not commonly found in the early astronaut corp. (Compare that to his fellow moonwalker, Buzz Aldrin, who...