We were on vacation at lake Champlain. I remember a black and white small TV on the deck with the news and looking at the moon and being amazed.
I read tons of sci fi as I got a bit older and really thought we would be on a great path.

I was 9 years old. We lived in Brooklyn and went to a bungalow colony in the Catskills in the summer. We didn't have a TV up there. The reception was non-existent in the mountains.
But the owner who lived there year round had a big antenna and a TV. My mom, who was 4'9" on tippy toes, went to the owner and demanded she let all the kids come to the house yo watch the moon landing and Neil Armstrong's walk. This was all the more extraordinary because my mom had a very hard childhood with a stern father and a mean stepmother and was very non-assertive. But that was just non-negotiable. So we all watched in Gussie's living room.

Watching the splash down last night I realized that almost no one under 60 would remember the last splash down. Our was something to behold.

When my son was about 8 he became infatuated with space travel and rockets and the moon landing. He followed the space program and read Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" in 4th grade. At one of the science fairs held annually at his elementary school he won first place for the replica of a rocket that he had built and the report he wrote about the science behind space travel. He had been identified as gifted by 3rd grade though I always knew he had an amazing mind without anyone official telling me that. He has been a NASA engineer at KSC for almost ten years and is one of the software engineers that had a part in the successful Artemis II mission. He downplays his part, but it takes lots of people who are smart and passionate about science to make something like that happen.

It's important that we make science interesting to young people. There are so many other things drawing their attention away from what's truly important. Needless to say, my journey raising this guy has been an adventure and a challenge and I am so proud of the man he's become. Oh, and he's a staunch Democrat!

Science reminds us how powerful humans are. It humbles. It exalts.