As a geek and general fan of science-ey and space-ey things, I understand the significance of Neil Armstrong’s passing this weekend. The first man who walked on the Moon; the man who did that big momentous thing so seemingly effortlessly (other than managing to miss an “A” in his big moment in the spotlight, anyway); one of the few people out there that can uncategorically be called a “Hero” regardless of the political or ideological bent of the person doing the describing is gone from us.

It is, as they say, a big deal. I happened to be surrounded by a pack of nerds on Saturday evening when the word got out, and you could sense the shared feeling of loss among us in the occasional lulls between the dick jokes on stage. One of the highlights of the particular musical comedy show I enjoyed on Saturday was the surprisingly touching rendition of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” that Paul, Storm, and Mike Phirman did; clearly thrown together at the last minute, but amazingly well done, and played completely and utterly straight. It was one of those moments, and I’m glad I was there to be a witness to it.

At the same time, though, I feel detached from things. I was born in 1974, two years or so after the last of the Apollo missions. In my lifetime, no one’s ever been back to the moon. In my lifetime, astronauts are still amazingly cool, but rather than amazingly cool guys who go “where no man has gone before”, they were mostly amazingly cool truck drivers who haul satellites up to LEO and not much else. My generation’s big shared space memory isn’t “One small step for man…”, it’s watching the Challenger blow up a few minutes after launch, and flinching after hearing “Throttling Up…” in every subsequent shuttle launch until the last one.

Let me repeat that. “The last one”. Not to downplay all the cool robots and stuff we have beaming data about the universe back to us (and those are VERY cool), but as I type this, the space program that put a guy on the moon with less tech than I have in my pocket right now doesn’t have a vehicle of it’s own that can send a human being into orbit. We need to hitch a ride.

For all the excitement and positivity and optimism brought on by the amazing achievement of putting Armstrong and company on the surface of another world, people born just a few years later have no comparable experience to look toward. That “one giant leap” into the future of space travel, never really went anywhere. We were supposed to be living on Mars and mining asteroids by now. Instead, we’re struggling to keep up with the rest of the world in math and science education, and having supposedly serious arguments in the public square about questions about our biological origins supposedly settled 150 years ago.

Granted, we’re having those arguments across time zones using amazingly complex and compact communications technology that’s honestly more advanced than anything Star Trek writers projecting 400 years in the future could come up with. But then, they were also writing about exploring the galaxy in city-sized spacecraft – I can forgive them the analog displays and radio hiss – in those writers’ present, the zeitgeist was pointing out to the stars, not shrinking computers down so they fit in our pockets and can access the sum-total of human knowledge and cat pictures with silly captions (though I’ll admit that’s a pretty cool thing to have).

I’m saddened by Armstrong’s passing. It’s a big deal from a historical perspective. It’s also a historical artifact. It was a huge launching point for humanity, and we kind of passed it by; a giant missed opportunity. Maybe someday we’ll get back on track to the stars. Curiosity is an amazing acheivement that’s got a lot of people excited again. Private sector launch efforts are on the cusp of becoming a reality, perhaps freeing up great minds to work on neat aspirational ideas again, rather than dealing with the mechanics of getting out of Earths’ gravity well. I hope so. I like to think Armstrong did too.