The Daring Spirit

❦ First Published on

Edwin Aldrin Jr. inside the Lunar Module after EVA. Apollo 11 Mission image AS11-37-5533. The image is uncredited, though given the time and location it must have been taken by Neil Armstrong, unless Buzz was taking a selfie!

50 years ago two members of the human species stepped on another world for the first time, an extraordinary achievement, displaying the ability of human beings to work together to overcome our natural limits.

Flight, a thing of myth, dreamed of for centuries, and achieved for the first time a mere 66 years before the giant leap to the moon, is, to me, along with our time-travelling ability of written language, one of the defining achievements of our band of wanderers.

We need better leaders to help us achieve our potential, while keeping our ambitions, this daring spirit, balanced with the need to keep our home in the cosmos, the only one we have at this moment, from becoming uninhabitable to us.

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