The moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.
I was inspired by the men who walked on the moon. It really was my inspiration, I think, you know, as a kid of 9 years old - I know I'm dating myself, but - I thought, 'What a cool job!'
I was only 8 years old on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, 38-year-old commander of 'Apollo 11,' descended the cramped lunar module Eagle's ladder with hefty backpack and bulky spacesuit to become the first human on the moon.
We can't start over and develop a Saturn 5-type vehicle from scratch.
The reason I wanted to do 'The First Men in the Moon' was that there is something so challenging in the combination of space travel and the Edwardian period.
I was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren't that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting.
Three decades ago, in a top story of the century, Americans placed six flags on the Moon. Today we no longer try for new and bold space achievements; instead, we celebrate the anniversaries of the past.
For the first time in history, a private company is organizing a mission to the moon. This mission will inspire countries of the world, citizens, our youth.
You can't land on the moon and say, "Ooh, it's all sticky! It's covered in jam!
When I was younger, humans went to the moon when I was about 4 years old, and I imagined that as I got older and became an adult that traveling in space was going to be fairly common and something that we all did. So I grew up believing that I'll be an astronaut just like these guys were that were going to the moon.
Admittedly, it would take industrial-grade chutzpah and a massive dose of malevolence for anyone to bulldoze the spot where Neil Armstrong stepped off the Eagle lander. But even innocent visits could be damaging.
The day Apollo 11 landed, I knew men would walk on Mars in my lifetime. I'm no longer nearly so sure. The last budget put forward in Canada contained not a penny for Mars.
Somebody else can be the first man on the moon. It doesn't interest me at all.
In 1962, President Kennedy succeeded in captivating Americans by explaining the advantages of being the first country to reach the moon and the dangers of allowing another nation to beat us there.
When the Eagle landed on the moon, I was speechless—overwhelmed, like most of the world. Couldn't say a word. I think all I said was, 'Wow! Jeez!' Not exactly immortal. Well, I was nothing if not human.
We got to the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, at the end of a poor year for this country. We had Vietnam. We had civil unrest. We had the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But we went around the moon and saw the far side for the first time. A script writer couldn't have done a better job of raising people's hope.
Six out of seven times we landed successfully [on the Moon]. I wanted to be a part of that and I was a part of that, so my personal feeling is of great gratefulness for having somehow been in a position to have been given the opportunity to be on that first landing. That's a marvelous experience for a little kid that grew up in New Jersey. So I'm very thankful, and I asked the whole world to give thanks once we successfully landed.
Our scientists grapple with the difficulties of placing a man on the moon, but the immediately troubling concern of our society is whether men of different races can sit together at a lunch counter.
Throughout history, when societies have been faced with big challenges, they've put their best people on them. During the Space Race, American and Russian scientists, engineers, astronauts and cosmonauts pushed the bounds of what was possible and landed men on the moon.
A space nerd as a kid, I learned early that putting a man on the moon took American unity, grit, determination, teamwork, hardship, innovation, sacrifice and patriotism.
The C Mission was the first command and service module. The D Mission was the first mission involving a lunar module in a manned fashion and the command module, and the E would take this lunar module and the command module into a very high elliptical orbit, about 4,000-mile-high orbit.
The first movie I did that was inspired by true events was 'Apollo 13.'
Everybody knows what the moon is, everybody knows what this decade is, and everybody can tell a live astronaut who returned from the moon from one who didn't
Apollo 11 will probably go down in history as one of the major responses of two nations facing each other with threatening technologies - sometimes called mutually assured destruction. It was also the America's response to the apparent superiority of the Russians in putting objects into space before USA could.
As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.
