DIGITAL EXTRA: ONE SMALL STEP: THE MOON LANDING, 50 YEARS LATER

fanatically as he would later follow the St. Louis Cardinals.

“In a very real way, it set the course for my entire life,” he said.

Horack would not make it beyond the field of 120, but it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for scientific advancement and exploration, something he was already quite accomplished in.

“I tease my astronaut friends,” he said. “I say, ‘The only difference between you and me is that when you were in the space shuttle, it was moving.’”

After earning degrees in physics and astronomy from Northwestern University, Horack began a career with NASA in 1987 and has been involved in designing and launching spacecraft ever since. Among them was NASA’S Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which was launched into orbit in 1991 to detect and study gamma rays in space.

“I was part of the team that figured out a little bit about how the universe is put together,” he said.

In 2016, Horack was named the Neil Armstrong chair in Aerospace Policy at Ohio State where he helps determine which space activities are worth pursuing. He also is the senior associate dean at Ohio State’s college of engineering.

So what’s the key to a successful space program?

“Stability,” Horack said.

Sparking curiosity

Sybil Brown said she’d love to see teachers take time to celebrate the moon landing this upcoming school year.

Brown is the K-12 STEM curriculum coordinator for Columbus Public Schools.

“I always tell my students if no one is curious, then we wouldn’t have most of the things we have in our society,” she said.

Brown, who worked as an electrical engineer before earning advanced degrees in mathematics education from Ohio State, credits the moon landing with sparking her own curiosity.

She was 8 years old when she watched the landing on a small, black-and-white television with her parents from their home in Tampa, Florida.

With no telescope, Brown remembers gazing at the moon after that, and insisting to her mother that she could plainly see the American flag planted by Aldrin and Armstrong.

“I wouldn’t stand outside and look up at the moon before that,” she said. “I was just so intrigued.”

Putting it into words

Thomas Burns tried to get the day off work, but the assistant manager of the Burger Chef in Youngstown didn’t think “it’s the moon landing” was a valid excuse.

So on July 20, 1969, Burns, then 16, watched the lunar landing, then showed up late for his shift carrying a small black-andwhite battery-operated television.

He followed the broadcast as the restaurant sat empty.

Just as Armstrong prepared to leave the spacecraft, Burns was told it was time to clean the milkshake machine.

“Fire me,” Burns replied. “I was just totally caught up in the experience, which I still remember as one of the life-changing moments in my history.”

Burns wanted to be an astronomer, but the math was too difficult. So instead, he pursued writing, earning a master’s degree in English from Ohio State, with the intention of writing about the sun, moon and stars.

“It’s my job to understand complex concepts and interpret them, translate them into a language people can understand,” he said.

Burns, now 66, became a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1993, where he taught writing and astronomy courses and served as director of the Perkins Observatory until 2018. He wrote about astronomy for The Columbus Dispatch for 18 years, and writes a weekly column for The Delaware Gazette.

“You look at the Milky Way, stretched across the sky like the backbone of the night ... and you start weeping,” he said. “I want my readers to weep, too.”