When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the moon on a July night 40 years ago, an estimated 500 million people around the world were watching. Aldrin told Chaikin that he briefly thought of all those people glued to their TV screens. "It was the same irony that caused me to think, pause, and just inwardly chuckle, just momentarily, that, God, here are two guys further away from home ... than two guys had ever been, but there are more people watching us than anybody else has ever watched two people before in history," he said.