To the Moon and Back: A Personal Retrospective

To boldly go…
The Quest…
Man’s calling…
To boldly go…

As simple as opening the door to a strange room.

As complicated as unlocking the key to a new science.

The urge impels us all to take that first step into unchartered terrain.

Some would rather give others the initial chance.

But there comes a point when human nature drives us to follow those pioneers into a new land of innovation and invention.

That’s when we undertake The Quest.

The Quest.
To discover the undiscovered.
To explore the unexplored.
To know the unknown.

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I wanted to write something special, something personal, to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of mankind’s greatest voyage of exploration since Columbus… so far. It didn’t take me long to realize I had already written it and it had already appeared in The Sentinel. This Commentary originally appeared as “The Thrill of Beyond” in the July 20, 1989 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel to mark the 20^th anniversary of America’s lunar landing. Here it is in its entirety. (Click the link in the title to see the original in text form.)

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Twenty years after the publication of this piece, the United Nations declared 2009 as “The International Year of Astronomy.” It was the 400^th anniversary of the Galileo telescope. The UN invited the world to submit outreach projects to promote astronomy. They accepted my proposal: AstronomyTop100.com – the 100 greatest images and imaginations in astronomy and space exploration. Thousands of professional and amateur astronomers from all over the world (at least six out of the seven continents as well as Oceania) voted to determine the “top ten.”

In December of 2009, I hosted a live internet broadcast from the Strasenburgh Planetarium in conjunction with RIT and Yale University. I revealed to the world for the first time the top ten countdown. Apollo 11’s “Man on the Moon” was ranked mankind’s greatest achievement in astronomy and space exploration.

To cap off the broadcast and announce the world’s top pick, I read what I had written and published in The Sentinel in 1989.