50 years ago today...

I was in a small plane with my dad and brother, watching the greatest adventure of humanity begin.  At ten miles (probably the restricted zone is more like 100 miles these days) even a Saturn V doesn't look very big. What I remember most is the intensity of the yellow-orange flame, the way it burned like the heart of a star as the rocket rose and began its roll and its climb out over the sea.  I have looked for old snapshots and I must have been a bit excited, because the ones I took missed the giant rocket and captured only clouds.  That's all right. I remember. Tennessee Williams said all true stories end in death. He was wrong.  This one was a birth. 

Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, Babylon 5:  "Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and all of this…all of this…was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars."
Footnote:: When is the last time a politician said, "We're going to do this because it's hard?"