On this day in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the surface of the moon, and Michael Collins did not. For about thirty years after that momentous event, it was common for Americans to say, “We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t…” Eventually, however, we came to the rather sheepish realization that we did not in fact have the political will to put a man on the moon anymore, so we stopped saying it.