It is a consequence of the passage of time that the extraordinary becomes, if not commonplace, then certainly less remarkable than at first appearance. Last night, 30 years ago, in homes around the world, parents and their children watched awestruck as live television beamed into their living rooms, images showing man's first steps on the surface of the moon.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's great leap for mankind remains as archive footage now. But the passage of time should not be allowed to dull our memory of that extraordinary achievement and the excitement it generated. It is right that we remember with admiration the quite exceptional bravery shown by those early US Air Force test pilots seconded as astronauts to Nasa - the men who had what it took, who had in Tom Wolfe's memorable phrase, the "right stuff". They ventured into space, propelled in effect by huge bombs capable of vapourising them in an instant - as happened in 1986 when the shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after launch, killing all on board.
At the time those first astronauts went up, no one knew for sure what effect space would have on the human body. And once in space, had anything gone wrong, there was no Plan B, no way of getting them safely back to Earth. It emerged recently that in 1969, President Nixon had two speeches at the ready - the unused one spoke of two men trapped on the moon, dying slowly.
While commemorating what was a quintessentially American triumph, it should also be recalled that in the darkest depths of the Cold War, the ordinary people of the world admired and took pleasure in the achievement of the Russian, Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. The Americans generously honoured Gagarin when, during a subsequent Apollo moon landing some time after he died in a plane crash, Gagarin's medals were placed on the lunar surface by Nasa astronauts - a permanent memorial to the bravery of the man who beat them into space.
There are those who argue that the entire moon landing project was a waste of money, a very great deal of money that should have been spent feeding the Earth's hungry. What did space exploration give us, goes the question except the non-stick frying pan? But to ask the question misses the point. The Everest answer holds true today just as surely as it did when some questioned the value of scaling the world's highest mountain. It was right to aim for the moon simply because it was there. The human race is genetically coded to strive, to seek and, ultimately, to find and conquer.
The quest for the moon fired the imagination because of its sheer audacity, coupled with the fact that it succeeded. And it is worth noting that despite the arrogance that often accompanies epic achievements, one of the most frequent reactions of those who have ventured into space is a humbling sense of man's relative insignificance in the universe.