One Giant

When I was a boy, my bedroom wall sported a large poster of Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon with photographer Neil Armstrong reflected in his visor. My parents bought it when I was one or two, not long after the moonwalk itself, and it stayed on the back of my bedroom door for a decade. It seemed to me then that Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins were the most famous people in the world.

Now the most famous of them is no longer in the world, and in my mind I’m back in that room, gazing at that poster day after day.

But this image of Armstrong from today’s flurry of obituaries, taken by Aldrin inside the lander shortly after their moonwalk, is even better.

26 August 2012 · People