We went to the Moon before we were supposed to, technologically.

An interview by Sophie Roell of author Christopher Riley.  From The Best Apollo Books.

At the beginning you said that these men who have walked on the Moon are different from other people. Can you explain a bit more what you meant by that?

It’s simply the fact that of the almost seven billion of us on Earth when we made the film, only 12 of us, in all human history, were in this exclusive club of people that had left the Earth behind and gone and stood on another world. And if that doesn’t make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, nothing will, because it’s an amazing sentence. Even 50 years on, it’s amazing. 50 years ago, Apollo was utterly incredible. We did this before computing power had really taken off, and navigation was still done using the stars and sextants—as we had done for centuries for shipping. We went to the Moon before we were supposed to, technologically. As one person put it, the president plucked a decade out of the 21st century and inserted it into the 60s and 70s. That’s what Apollo was.