Shoot for the Moon

22 Shoot for the Moon Every summer on July 19, my dad takes out old books and pictures and sits at the dining room table. It's always a day of memories for him. This is because on July 19, 1969, humans first landed on the moon. My dad was just ten years old at the time, but he remembers it like it happened yesterday. His whole family sat in front of the television and watched the fuzzy pictures of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin climbing down the ladder of their spacecraft, and setting foot on the moon. “ Humankind will never be the same after this, " Dad thought as he watched. “ We have left our little planet and stepped on another space body. Mars is next. " Or at least, that's what he thought would happen. Though Dad felt that the Apollo missions were the best, the years that followed were disappointing for him because he always felt we should have gone to Mars.

He always tried to get my older brothers interested in science. They were good at science, but they decided to open their own business. You can imagine his surprise when I, his only daughter, turned out to be the only one who really loved science. I loved the space program above all else. I knew all the astronauts'names from Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, to the most recent crew of the space shuttle. So every July 19, Dad and I sit and look at his old magazine pictures about the moon landing, way back in 1969. The pictures of those men landing on the moon have inspired me so much that I've become very interested in aerospace engineering. I hope to, one day, go to university to study it. My dad is thrilled that his daughter is going to carry on in science. Aerospace engineering is one of the hardest subjects, and there are not many girls in the program. Hopefully, I can inspire some young girls to get into it-just like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin inspired me.