Suits became more technologically sophisticated as Gemini astronauts started spacewalking and Apollo astronauts went moonwalking.
Some of those same Apollo astronauts, and many daring predecessors, literally blazed that pathway.
They pinpointed the landing sites for the Apollo astronauts - high-resolution pictures of the surface of Mars.
Remember that the Apollo astronauts took some three days to cover that distance.
He interviewed all of the Apollo astronauts and was friends with Wernher von Braun, the architect of Nasa's moon programme.
That's especially important because NASA wants future moonwalkers to spend far more time roaming about than the Apollo astronauts did during their short visits.
Not all the Apollo astronauts' post-flight journeys have been so ethereal.
Apart from the obligatory satellite dishes and computers Clarke's home is decorated with photographs of him next to the Pope, the Apollo astronauts and Steven Spielberg.
That was when he held the antenna rabbit ears of his family's television to get the clearest picture of the Apollo astronauts walking on the moon.
The factory is built on the site of the the Redstone Arsenal, which produced the earliest U.S. rockets, including the Saturn V, which took Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
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His book "Voices From the Moon" is based upon interviews with the surviving Apollo astronauts, and he concludes there's no "lunar syndrome" that's sent the moonwalkers down paths odder than any dozen former colleagues in other lines of work.
As we were leaving the museum through the Rose Center for Earth and Space, past stunning images of the Apollo astronauts working on the surface of the moon, I asked her, for the record, why she'd never felt the urge to visit before.
The weight of the lunar module, on top of the command and service module, was the main reason why the Saturn V rockets that shot Apollo astronauts into space needed to be the tallest, heaviest and most powerful ever flown, a record they still hold.
From the seemingly insurmountable problems of getting each stage of the Saturn V to work, to the challenges of making the Command Module safe following the fire that killed the first Apollo astronauts, even the engineers would have told you at times that they didn't think it could be done.
When the Apollo 15 astronauts wanted to name their lunar landscape after him, they fixed on Dandelion Crater.
It was 1969, and a Saturn V rocket assembled by Boeing--Seattle's biggest employer--had just delivered the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon.
The gift, which also included a small Alaskan state flag that was flown to the moon with Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on the first manned moon landing mission, was one of about 185 such displays that were presented to the states, the United States' territories and to foreign nations.
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In preparation, four Earth orbital Mercury launches (carrying one astronaut each), one suborbital and nine Earth orbital Gemini flights (two astronauts each), two Earth orbital Apollo tests (three astronauts each), and two orbit tests made the lunar landings possible.
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In 1972, "Apollo 16" astronauts John Young and Charles Duke explored the surface of the moon.
Most memorable: Astronauts on Apollo 13 used duct tape to help put together air scrubbers to keep themselves alive.
Like the astronauts aboard Apollo 13 who had to build a CO2 filter from whatever was available in their capsule under the direction of engineers back on Earth, we are forced to innovate in real time.
At that time NASA was seeking applications for a second group of astronauts for the Apollo program.
He compared it to the Apollo 11 blaze that killed three astronauts on the launch pad in 1967.
Before being chosen in 1962 as one of the "Group II" astronauts -- which included Apollo 13 commander James Lovell along with such legends as Frank Borman, Pete Conrad and John Young -- Armstrong was one of the elite pilots selected to fly the X-15 rocket plane up to five times the speed of sound and toward the edge of space.
If there is a common emotion among the astronauts, four decades after the Apollo achievement, it may be simple disappointment over space exploration -- or the lack of it.
When the Apollo 13 spaceship blew up 200, 000 miles from Earth, astronauts used the moon's gravity to slingshot the capsule back home.
Just as with Apollo, any modern venture would need some kind of CSM element for the astronauts, together with a departure stage - a propulsion unit that could accelerate the astronauts' vehicle out of low-Earth orbit, putting it on a path to the Moon.
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