There's something incredibly male about it all: a maze of testosterone-fueled competition and even bloodlust transformed into a soaring human achievement. "Because it's there" hardly seems like a reason, but in the end, is there ever a better one for sailing off into the unknown?

The boyishness that goes along with the manliness is fully on display with these guys. Ten of our 12 moonwalkers cooperated in making "In the Shadow of the Moon." They are Midwestern farm boys turned fighter pilots, who suddenly got the chance to fly faster, higher and farther than any other man had ever done, and they grabbed at the chance.

"Not a weak sister in the bunch," one of them says, non-reflectively. Neil Armstrong may be the first man to walk on the moon, but each man has his partly humorous claim to be intergalactically first at something: world record holder for speed in a lunar rover, say, not to mention Buzz Aldrin's more personal "first." (See the movie.)

On Oct. 26, Purdue University will dedicate a larger-than-life statue of Neil Armstrong.

Good. I hunger to see more memorials of man's achievements instead of our suffering, to think less about slavery, potato famines, 9/11s and the other evils that men did -- and still do, and will do -- and more about the places to which the human spirit, God willing, soars.