Your mind is like a parachute: If it isn’t open, it doesn’t work

“Your mind is like a parachute: If it isn’t open, it doesn’t work.”

Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 astronaut

Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, July 20th, 1969.

It all began with the open mind and huge vision of one man.

On May 25, 1961, President John F Kennedy told Congress that the US “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

On July 20th, 1969, that vision was realised.

This came only 20 days after the first time any NASA mission had taken someone out of the earth’s atmosphere, and then only for a 15 minute sub-orbital flight.

JFK, however, had the vision to restore confidence in his country that had been dented by the space race and cold war with Russia. He believed that this lunary goal could play a key role in building on the ability of Americans to innovate and achieve. The lunar landing was a massive vision and one that took 400,000 people to achieve, but many historians now look back on…