The biggest joy was on the way home. In my cockpit window, every two minutes: the earth, the moon, the sun, and a whole 360-degree panorama of the heavens. And that was a powerful, overwhelming experience. And suddenly I realized that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft, the molecules in the body of my partners, were prototyped, manufactured in some ancient generation of stars. And that was an overwhelming sense of oneness, of connectedness. It wasn’t them and us, it was: that’s me, that’s all of it, it’s one thing. And it was accompanied by an ecstasy, a sense of oh my god, wow, yes, an insight, an epiphany.Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14

My wife and I watched In the Shadow of the Moon last night. It’s a terrifically well-done documentary of NASA’s Apollo program. It combines archive footage and interviews with living astronauts (Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, etc.) to bring to life the excitement, the drama of the early space program. I recommend it — especially for those of us who take space travel largely for granted and aren’t old enough to have witnessed man’s first steps on an alien world.