Here’s how it looks when you train for a moon walk. Just you, the phony gray lunar surface, and 15 kid brainiacs with skinny black ties.
“Basically we were engineers. Math and science majors. Most had graduated about 5 or 6 years before getting hired. Some had a few years of experience. Our average age was only 26 or 28. I was 26. We considered the astronaut crew fairly old, but they were only 10 or 15 years older than me.”
-Apollo 11 guidance officer Steve Bales, quoted in Texas Monthly (July 2009).
(Buzz Aldrin, at left, and Neil Armstrong train at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas in April, 1969. Photo courtesy of NASA.)