There have been a lot of full moons over the past 50 years, and unlike we humans who have seen a great many of them that great crater-smeared round thing has not aged one little bit.
Because 50 years, in its lifetime of about 4.5 billion years, is a mereblink of the eye.
Which reminds me, when I was a little kid I once saw an old film where the moon had a face and at one stage of proceedings it blinked... because a rocket had smacked into it.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle during the Apollo 11 mission. Mission commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph.
So 50 years ago that spectacular great glowing ball (you can't beat a low full moon over the sea) would have blinked because a space craft landed on it.
And Commander Neil Armstrong and his lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin both got out and walked across its face... kicking up fine dust and leaving footprints everywhere.
And they spiked a flagpole bearing the stars and stripes into it as well.
Yep, 50 years ago on July 21 (our time) the "one small step" was announced over crackling airwaves by the first human being to set foot on another celestial spot.
I think I remember it, as I have some shards of memory of it being near the end of the school day, and where the radio coverage brought our woodwork lessons to a halt.
Neil Armstrong steps down from the landing module Eagle to become the first man to walk on the moon.
It had to be radio coverage because back in the July of 1969 our relatively fledgling television service could not receive or issue live coverage (which the Aussies got).
But we did get to see it that night, because the NZBC had arranged for a 40-minute videotape of the historic moment to be recorded by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and rushed to Kingsford Smith Airport in Sydney to be put aboard an RNZAF Canberra. After a nearly three-hour flight it touched down at Wellington Airport and the tape was rushed to "Channel 1" in a car which was accompanied by a Ministry of Transport officer.
It got here in time for the NZBC's 7.30pm news.
Wow...technology huh?
We were blown away to hear it at school that day, and I seem to recall the teacher saying something along the lines of it being the first step for more remarkable journeys into space... and that we would be on Mars before the year 2000 arrived (which was a very long time away back then).
However, and there is always a "however" in scientific exploration ambitions, we are still many, years away from that achievement.
In fact we've hardly been back to the moon.
Only Russia and China have really bothered to try and land things on it in recent years... but no more humans.
Half a century and the small step has grown no larger.
Which reminds me of what some cynical kid said after hearing about the moon landing.
"They'll have to build another film set to make it look like Mars," he said, before being admonished by those around him.
So every clear night when the moon is as its best I gaze up at it and wonder.
I wonder if anyone else has visited it... ooh, creep alien stuff.
Are they hidden on the dark side where the water is?
Who knows, my only niggle is that this wondrous object which has attracted admiring gazes since the Neanderthal days never got a title.
For it has no name... it's just "the moon".
Whereas Saturn has something like 30 moons and each has a name, among them are Titan, Dione and Theus.
Jupiter has several orbiting companions with great names like Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, while Mars has a couple of moons by the names of Phobos and Deimos.
We have just one... but couldn't find a name for it.
So it is simply, blandly, and unimaginatively known as "the moon".
But hey, this planet isn't exactly in possession of an imaginative name either.
It is made or water and earth.
So it is called "Earth".
Gosh, how magical.
But our neighbours in the solar system all did okay with great names like Neptune, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Mercury.
Crikey, there must have been one Roman or Greek god left over.
