Here’s a strange thing about one of the human race’s greatest achievement: Putting people on the moon almost seems as far-fetched in 2024 as it did in 1954.

It hasn’t happened in more than a half-century – the last U.S. Apollo mission ended in December 1972. So there are whole generations of people who have never known first hand what it’s like to see men – yes, they were all men – on the lunar surface.

But the idea of manned space flight – or space flight of any kind – wasn’t particularly widespread 70 years ago. The closest thing to it were the rockets launched by Germany against Britain in World War II – and the scientists who created those rockets were divided between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Three years after I was born, the Soviets launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik. The U.S. had been working on space flight as well, but the urgency – in light of the Cold War between the two nations – grew with the launch.

The Soviets were also the first ones to put a human in space, Yuri Gagarin, in early 1961. About a month later, Alan Shepard’s sub-orbital flight – he went up and came down – put the U.S. in the space race.

After that, President John F. Kennedy spelled out the nation’s goal – putting an American on the moon by the end of 1969. 

It happened, after years of triumph and heartbreak. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the lunar surface and, early the next day in UTC, walked on it.

There were more 500 million people watching them on live television. Seeing it was as much a marvel to us as the idea of being there. Everyone in my family stayed up late – the moon walk began at 10:56 p.m. ET on the 20th and lasted past midnight.  We watched something that was wondrous to my parents and amazing but expected to me, my brother and sister.

After the final Apollo mission, there was not nearly the motivation to either go back to the moon or to another planet, Mars or Venus. The focus went to building the International Space Station, a United States-Russia collaboration with assistance from several other nations. There have been missions to some pretty deep parts of outer space, but nobody’s been on them.

That’s likely to change in the next few years. The United States is planning a return to the moon in 2026. Japan and India are looking to send people to the moon in 2028. And, in 2029 or 2030, China – in consortium with other nations – plans a manned mission to the satellite. That’s not to mention the plans to go to other planets that have been bandied about.

Because it has been so long and the level of crazy in our world has hardly abated, there are those among us who think that the lunar missions were faked. 

Back when I was a kid, the moon was depicted as being made of green cheese. That’s obviously not true – you can see some rocks picked off the surface at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, among other places.

But it’s more likely that there’s green cheese on the moon than anyone elaborately faked what Armstrong called “one giant leap for mankind.” And given the lives lost in pursuit of this dream, blithely labeling the moon landings a hoax is incredibly disrespectful.