I had a surprise visitor this morning. My longtime friend @DavaExplorer @NASA Dep Administrator. She beat me to the South Pole by one day. pic.twitter.com/NMKEAcxs65

The youngest of those surviving seven Moonwalkers, Harrison Schmitt, turned 81 in October. Soon they will all be gone: the last participants in the human race's most astonishing, most audacious, most wonderfully inspirational adventure to date.

Gone with them will be the memory of a U.S.A. that could accomplish such marvels, in those last years of heroic national vigor, before we turned our energies to guilt and rancor and divisive social crusades, and to persuading ourselves and each other that in the human sphere, everything is equal to everything else.

Best wishes to Buzz for a speedy recovery from whatever ails him. Best wishes to our country for a revival of the spirit that sent him and his comrades on such a tremendous enterprise.