Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Alan Sheppard , Gus Grissom etc, These guys and their colleagues were the real Astronauts Weren't they?

 They were real pioneering space explorers unlike most of the recent crop of so called Ästronauts" ie: the scientists the teachers , doctors etc ( with the exception of the shuttle pilots of course ) who are referred to as Astronauts but are really just space travellers who would  have no idea how to fly the damn thing.

And of course the fact that back then it was a lot more dangerous than it is now.

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of idiots who complain about the amount of money that NASA spent on the moon . As Alan B Sheppard once said in an interview, "people who complain about the money we spent on the moon instead of on the starving nations of the world  seem to forget that I was actually up there in Apollo14 and I had a damn good look around and I didn't see one single Dollar of that money".
The money was obviously spent on Earth paying someones wages somewhere along the line and the $2Billion we spent on Apollo has been spent 20 or 30 times over on the starving nations" most of whom are still starving today"

And most people dont realise how much we owe to the Apollo program , Better faster computers , Internet, Fax , Mobile phone technology, the INS navigational system ( prior to GPS etc) so Airliners could navigate around the globe.

Most of the critics take all that for granted .

RIP Neil, you were a true Pioneer and hero at a time when we needed some real heros, You will be missed.