I was a 9-year old sitting in front of the TV, mainly because my dad told me we were about to watch man land on the moon.

I actually was into astronomy at the time. I had a periscope, and many nights in the summer I would set it up at the front door and look through it and the screen door to see the moon, when it decided to cooperate, and the stars when it didn't. I knew many of the major constellations at the time, and knew all the planets (Pluto was still a planet back then).

And I knew about the Apollo missions, the successes and failures, and I knew this on was Apollo 11, and that man was actually going to walk on the moon.

So, when I sat down to watch the moon landing, I had big expectations. And what happened? Those expectations ended up not being so great. The image was really grainy, and we didn't have cable back in those days, so we relied on the rabbit ears to try to give us the best picture possible.

It was still exciting, though, and I know I got caught up in my dad's excitement, as he'd taken the day off so that he wouldn't miss the historic event. And when Neil Armstrong finally popped out of the module and found his way down to the ground, that was thrilling also, if muted by the terrible picture.

A few days ago the news organizations showed a cleaned up, digital version of the landing, and it was amazing just how much we really missed on that day. Technology was so wonderful and so wonderfully inept at the same time, but now, we're spoiled by what these people can do. I watched, and remembered, and enjoyed it all over again.

In subsequent years, I still watched when others landed on the moon, and we had better images of some of it as we'd moved, and we now had cable. And over the years, there have been better images and scenes of other astronauts bouncing around the moon; I still have never seen the golf shot, though.

Going to the moon is man's greatest accomplishment, and it's stunning that the majority of the world wasn't alive when it happened. Am I really that old at this point of my life?

No matter; I hope everyone watches the video today, and even if you weren't alive then, imagine what we could do today with the things we know if we only had the money to do it. The sky definitely is NOT the limit.