Man on the Moon 45 years later.

Forty-five years ago yesterday, man landed and walked on the moon.

Challenged by President John F. Kennedy to put a man on the moon before the 1960s came to a close, the first steps of man on the moon were made on 20 July 1969 in a moonwalk that lasted a little over two and a half hours.  The footprints that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made still exist on the moon today, proven by photographs made by an orbiting satellite just a few years ago.  

I can proudly say that I am 10 months older than the moon landing, give or take a day or two.  the night of the moon landing, my parents had taken me over to my grandparents house and at the moment that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and declared what he did a giant leap, yours truly was being coached on the proper way to clap by my grandfather.  Moment in time that were shared on TV were often in communal settings like that, and in the age where time is marked by remember where you were and what you were doing at the time history was made, that was what I was doing and where I was.

However, I don't remember that night.  That's beside the point.

Anyway, in the years since, and much like it was promised in more of a "Buck Rogers" sort of fashion my generation was promised that by the late 1980s and early 90s, humans would be living and working on the moon.  Back and forth thousands of times, using the earths natural satellite as a jumping of spot for the rest of the solar system and in time the rest of the universe.  All this having taken place before the turn of the next century, which at the time was some 30 years in the future.

Well, I'm writing this in 2014, and all we have done since the years of the moon landings was take pictures of where we walked.

That's it.

Since the last time we left earth the closest we've come with that satellite I mentioned earlier, and launching missions to earth orbits of variable altitudes.

Oh, and we crashed an unmanned probe onto the surface about five years ago.

Nothing higher or farther than that.

You would think in nearly a half-century we would have gone back personally as opposed to sending unmanned probes up there but it's too expensive and...even though we proved it can be done by man...we haven't devoted any more energy to even trying to go back.

We need to, and I hope it happens in my lifetime.