Since it's the 40th anniversary...
..First time ever reported! My story of watching the moon landing with Bayard Rustin, and his memorable comment:
......
A friend wrote to remind me of an even more significant landing:
*On this day 23 years ago, America successfully landed and operated its 1st Martian probe, Viking 1. It didn’t get as much fanfare among the masses than it did among the pocket-protector crowd, but this is truly historic. To this day, there is more Terran (better sounding than ‘Earthling’) activity on Mars than there is on Luna despite the latter being several million miles closer.*
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_1>
To me, the lunar landings -- for all their edge of your seat technical aplomb -- stink of cold war chest thumping and teddy bear quality sentimentality. There's too much 'high frontier' nonsense mixed in.
But Viking 1...now there was a remarkable event! We'd gotten a robot to Mars and looked on her pitiless surface.
Glorious.
.d.