Three, two, one, zero.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for manned.

I should have said the poet.

So beautiful.

Beautiful. There's a star man waiting in the sky.

I'm Leland Melvin. I'm an author and Moth storyteller.

July 20th marks the 55th anniversary of the moon landing.

And to celebrate the occasion, we'll be sharing three of our favorite stories that are all about space travel.

Our little intro now might have given it away.

Now there's something very, very special about space, staring up at the night sky and imagining what it would be like, thinking about

the vastness of the universe, or staring back at Earth from the space shuttle Atlantis,

thinking about the vastness of our human experience.

And, by the way, full disclosure, I've been fortunate enough to do both, because in addition to being an educator

and Moth storyteller, I've also been to space twice as an astronaut. The first story we're

sharing is from Michael Massimino. He told this at a New York City main stage where the theme

of the night was around the bin.

Here's Michael live at the market.

In 1984, I was a senior in college and I went to see the movie The Right Stuff. And a couple things really struck me in that movie.

The first was the views out the window of John Glenn's spaceship,

the view of the Earth, how beautiful it was, on the big screen.

I wanted to see that view.

And secondly, the camaraderie between the original seven astronauts depicted in that movie,

...