"What makes one step a giant leap

Is all the steps before."

-- Leslie Fish, from "A Toast for Unknown Heroes"

In some ways, looking at the Apollo program is misleading. Especially now that three decades have passed to blur the details, it's easy to take the impression that Sputnik went up, JFK waved his hands, and suddenly we were landing on the moon.

It took a lot more than that. Just along one path, someone had to design every part of the rocket, capsule, and lander. Someone had to mill each part, and someone had to assemble them.

Previously, someone had to train the engineers to design the parts. Someone had to do the research that told us what designs were needed. Someone had to test and redesign.

Even more basically, someone had to make the paper that the engineers drew on. Someone had to sell the pencils. Someone had to keep the electricity running, and make the breakfasts, and bring the coffee.

Many of these actions we take for granted. They are part of the baseline of our civilization. We have systematized making paper, distributing pencils, training engineers, and bringing coffee beans from tropical regions to our home markets, roasting them, brewing them, and putting the steaming cups in the hands of the people who want them. All of this takes place without much of our attention.

At least it does until something goes wrong. Recently, for example, we've been losing ground on science education. That's a problem that could lead to losing our ability to field engineers later. So those who find and work on such problems are the sustainers of our civilization.

So here's a better way to look at the success of Apollo: millions of Americans, just like us, continually built and rebuilt a robust economy, with coffee and engineers and huge industrial capabilities and much more, and when we gathered that enormous power behind the inspiring vision of reaching the moon, we took not just thousands, but billions of steps, that accumulated into Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind.

Any grand project takes both the vision to give it direction and the thousands -- or billions -- of steps to make it a reality.

So if you want to be a part of something great, ask yourself these two questions: What is the vision? And what steps can I take to make it happen?