The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited.
I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul, we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.
The single thing which makes any man happiest is the realization that he has worked up to the limits of his ability, his capacity. It’s all the better, of course, if this work has made a contribution to knowledge, or toward moving the human race a little farther forward.
I believe that the message of Apollo XI was that in the spirit of Apollo, a free and open spirit, you can attack a very difficult goal and achieve it, if you can all agree and work together to achieve that goal.
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.
