It was with sadness that I learnt yesterday of the passing of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon. Armstrong was not somebody who I had ever met, let alone knew, but he was an icon of my childhood and so I feel sadness at this news.

Humanity’s greatest achievement to date is putting somebody on the Moon. Humans have an innate need to explore, to discover and to learn. By setting foot on the Moon on 20th July 1969 humanity proved to itself that it could get away from the Earth. The Universe is big on a scale that most of us just cannot imagine, think about how an ant perceives the workings of the entire Earth and then scale things up and you still won’t be anywhere near close to understanding the scale of the cosmos. Astrophysicists bandy about figures measured in thousands of light years and when you consider light travels at around 184 000 miles per second then you start to understand the vastness of outer space.

But back in 1969 we did something that no other species from this planet has ever managed before, we left this planet. Now we may only have travelled 250 000 miles each way but nevertheless we had managed to get away. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” are the now immortal words as Armstrong spoke as he set foot on the Moon. One small step indeed, for as I have already stated space really is vast. Humanity was like a new born baby taking its first tottering step.

Now before I get accused of being over sentimental about the Apollo landings I appreciate that they took place with the back drop of the Cold War and a desire of the USA to put one over on the then Soviet Union but we should not take away the pride in our species managing to break free from our natural environment.

Armstrong’s family have described him as a reluctant hero. He was the air force test pilot who had greatness hoisted upon him. How do you top being “the first man on the Moon”? The first man on Mars? The Apollo landings took place over 40 years ago and to this day there are only 12 people that have set foot on our nearest celestial neighbour. “Beautiful desolation” was the way that Buzz Aldrin described the lunar surface. After 40 years we are still waiting to take our second footstep. Costs are prohibitive and there are probably more pressing priorities for the governments of the world, but space exploration is necessary for our species. Not only do we need it to satisfy our curiosity, long term it will probably be necessary to enable us to do what we are here for, to procreate. Dwindling natural resources and increasing populations do not make good bed fellows.

What has all this to do with Harry Patch, you are probably asking. You may well be asking who is Harry Patch? Well Henry John Patch was born in Somerset in 1898 and also became a reluctant hero. He was the last surviving British soldier to have served in the trenches of World War I. When he passed away in 2009 we lost the final contact with the hell of the trenches. The battlefields of France and Flanders showed desolation but nobody could describe it as “beautiful desolation”.  There is nobody left who can answer the questions we may have with first hand evidence of their own. We know about the First World War only from the history books now. The First World War was the first mechanised war, it saw war waged on an industrial scale with the loss of over 16 million lives. Harry once said, in a voice that was faltering but with a look of steely defiance in his eyes, “After four years of slaughter, they got round a table to sort out their differences. Why couldn’t they just have done that to start with?”.

We named the First World War “The Great War” and “The War To End All Wars”. Sadly it has not been the war to end all wars. It took just over twenty years for the world to be plunged once more into an even more barbaric global conflict. There have been numerous wars since the end of the Second World War in 1945 showing that as a species we seem not to learn.

My fear is that it took a shade over 90 years to lose contact with the veterans of World War I, though we have the veterans of too many other conflicts to take their place. Meanwhile between 1969 and 1973 12 men stepped onto the Moon. How long will it be before they have all passed away and exist only in history? Will any of those early space pioneers live long enough to see a human reach Mars? I truly hope so.

Today I remember Neil Armstrong, the reluctant hero. Tomorrow may our world unite, put aside our petty differences and focus on exploring the vast Universe, for all our sakes.