Ray Bradbury Bradbury and Apollo 11 this week on planetary Radio. Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the Final

Frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan, of the Planetary Frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Maybe it's having just read

Andrew Chakin's Voices From the Moon. Maybe it's the other media coverage that

has swirled around this anniversary.

Whatever it is, I'm thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to mark the 40th year since Neil Armstrong reported to us that the Eagle had landed.

We'll salute that landing and its legacy with Ray Bradbury.

Bill Nye, the Science and Planetary Guy, will add his good wishes to the celebration and Bruce

Bets will help me sort through your responses to our

lunar challenge. What would you have said if you'd been the first to put your boot in

the lunar dust? By the way have you seen the picture is taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance

orbiter of the Apollo landing sites we've got the link at planetary.org

slash radio let's get this special edition of the show underway. Here's Bill. Hey, Bill and I, the planetary

guy here, Vice President of the Planetary Society. A Monday, July 20th is or was, depending on when you're listening one historic day in the

history of astronomy and the history of humankind it was the day that humans

walked on the moon in 1969 as reckoned in the common era.

Now the moon landings were a result of the Cold War. I mean let's face it. Of course it's glorious looking into space picking up

rocks doing some geology from another world here on our world, but it was a result of

a competition to see who could build the biggest number of history's most deadly rockets.

And sure enough, the United States mobilized this tremendous workforce, built the big rockets, and got her done.

Meanwhile, the former Soviet Union went out of business about 20 years after all that.

But despite the politics, the landing on the moon was pretty much the most exciting thing ever.

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