On this date, men from Earth, having ventured forth by the power of math and sheer chutzpah, landed on the surface of another cosmic body and stepped foot on the Moon. It’s been fifty-five years but I think that’s still pretty awesome.
And we’ve caught it, tamed it, trained it since our history began
Now we’re going back to Heaven just to look Him in the eye
And there’s a thunder ‘cross the land and a fire in the sky!
Gagarin was the first, back in 1961,
When like Icarus undaunted, he climbed to reach the Sun.
And he knew he might not make it, for it’s never hard to die,
But he lifted off the pad and rode a fire in the sky.
Yet a higher goal was calling, and we vowed to reach it soon,
And we gave ourselves a decade to put fire on the Moon.
And Apollo told the world we can do it if we try,
And there was one small step and a fire in the sky.
Now two decades past Gagarin, twenty years to the day,
Came a shuttle named Columbia to open up the way.
And they said “She’s just a truck”, but she’s a truck that’s aiming high!
See her big jets burn! See her fire in the sky!
Yet the gods do not give lightly of the gifts that they have made
And with Challenger and seven, once again the price was paid.
Though a nation watched her falling, all the world could do was cry
As they passed from us to glory, riding fire in the sky.
Now the rest is up to us. There’s a future to be won.
We must turn our faces outward. We will do what must be done.
For no cradle lasts forever; every bird must learn to fly.
And we are going to the stars. See our fire in the sky.
Reading Freely 
It still blows me away that they managed this with 1960’s ‘technology’. Plus the fact – which is TOTALLY awesome – that only **66** years separates the first manned flight to the first man on the moon.
Not to mention the new technology they were creating ‘on the fly’ — like the landing computers!
The more you find out about the space programme the more impressive it becomes. Whatever happened to that sort of ‘can-do’ attitude? Was it the lack of Ruskie competition?
That’s Neil deGrasse Tyson’s take, and it makes sense: many of the accomplishments of the Age of Discovery were result of the European powers competing with one another. Iron sharpeneth iron, as the book says. Also to consider was that the United States was still riding tall and proud as the world’s foremost superpower — not yet sapped by Vietnam, the inflation that followed the loss of the gold standard, presidential scandal, the oil crisis, etc. Economic problems had already cut into Apollo — the last two missions were scrubbed.
I’ve never heard that song before, I enjoyed it a lot thanks for sharing it 🙂
It’s part of an entire album with some fun works. This is my favorite, but I also like “Surprise!”, about the start of the space race: