“I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges.”
— Neil Armstrong
Apollo 11 mission press conference, 1969. Verified by ABC World News, Norman Mailer's 'Of a Fire on the Moon' (1970), Wikiquote.
July 1969. Tin can, 386,000 kilometers from home, seventeen seconds of fuel, computer screaming. Boulders everywhere. I took the stick and flew sideways until I found clear ground. When we landed, my heart rate hit 150. Houston almost passed out. Nobody sent me there by accident. My whole life led to that moment. Every test flight, every failure, every night over math. You are walking toward something too. You cannot see it yet. But every hard thing you do is bringing you closer. Keep walking.