We are about the human accomplishment and opportunity realized that was Project Apollo. And, as the most recent man to walk on the Moon, Gene Cernan has said, "To stand on the shoulders of giants."

No matter where the human need to explore leads us, no matter how much time passes there will never be another Apollo. There is only one first time. Apollo was the project that took human beings somewhere else for the first time. It changed the human experience forever to look back and know in our hearts what we had always assumed in our heads - that our home planet sits in space that is vast in its emptiness, and that the emptiness we see is matched only by the substance of our planet and all the other places we have and will see.

We will be looking back with an eye on the future. That is one of the many reasons we launched on the anniversary of the liftoff of Apollo 12. Pete Conrad commanded Apollo 12. Neil Armstrong marked the momentous occasion of a human's first steps off the Earth with his famous line, "… one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." Conrad led the next expedition and took his first step with an exultant, "Whoopee!"

Conrad flew more missions for NASA, and then spent the next couple decades standing on the shoulders of giants (he was one of them, of course) to lift the rest of us up to new possibilities in airplanes and rockets, as well as old manufacturing businesses and the Internet. The work of one of his companies, Universal Space Works, played a major role in inspiring and guiding this project. Our goal is to share the vision and experiences of the people who first showed us we were not limited to this planet as we prepare to follow them into the cosmos.

As you know, Pete Conrad's life was cut short by a traffic accident in California last summer. If we at MOONWALKERS are able to come to anywhere near his level of forward-looking achievement and joy for exploration, all credit will be to his inspiration and that of his fellow astronauts. But, like Pete, our site is not about looking back. It is about what can we learn from where we have been and what it took to get there, and to what we can we do now.

Neil Armstrong recently told MOONWALKERS, "Apollo was about cutting gravitational chains and expanding the human experience. Many of the thousands in the Apollo Project were not involved in any way with "walking," yet played equal or more important roles." Armstrong is legendary for his modesty, but it is one of the legacies of Apollo.

How can a man most associate with that global shift of human expectation embodied in the phrase, "If we can put a man on the Moon we can….," be so humble? It is a very difficult for most of us to understand how such an amazing accomplishment of which billions of people were so proud can lead to such humility. After all, if you did such a thing, how would you feel?

Pretty heady stuff, but it was tempered by the realization that no one would have walked the Moon were it not for the millions back home. As Apollo 10 and 16 astronaut John Young told MOONWALKERS, "You start thinking about all those little nuts and bolts, all the pieces that had to fit and work together and all the people who made that happen and it's just an amazing thing to see."

But, that's not all. Look at the pictures. See the Earth, apparently one of countless billions of planets surrounding an unfathomable number of stars in an infinite number of galaxies. See how, as Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin has told MOONWALKERS, "I could put up my thumb and the home of 5 billion people was hidden from view." See how, as Apollo 11's Mike Collins has told us, "As far as I could see, there was me, two guys over there, 5 billion people behind them, and that's it."

Apollo made us intimately aware of our possibilities and our limits. It convinced us we could do anything we decide to do. Along the way, it also showed us the human conditions that are the basis for both achievements and limits.

Twelve people have walked on the Moon so far. They could not have done so if it were not for the "giants" to whom Cernan often refers. Someday soon, we hope there will be other people walking the Moon again as the human need to explore and understand drives us to other places like Mars. From the Moon we will again, see the "Big Blue Marble" Frank Borman spotted on Apollo 8. From Mars, we will see a small speck of white glowing in the infinite darkness of space. Those explorers too will have the shoulders of giants upon which to stand. They will exemplify the best of human accomplishment and opportunity realized, and share the vision we will celebrate.

We are MOONWALKERS.

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