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Kristi Lyn Noecker and Eric Andrew Fritzges united in marriage

<p>Tomorrow many American&#8217;s will look up. It seems like a long time since that happened, literally and figuratively.</p><p>Using protective eyewear, millions will take a gander at a solar eclipse. Others will opt to watch a more protected view on TV screens. A lot of us will have to simply sense it as we work, watching the world dim a little around us.</p><p>For the majority in this country &#8212; including area residents &#8212; it will be a partial blocking of the sun. The darkening will be noticeable but incomplete, the impact only as personal as you make it.</p><p>For a swath of the population who either live in the arc of the total eclipse or traveled to be within it, the impact is apt to be more profound. This is the stuff of legends and myths, an event that, long ago, terrified the unknowing.</p><p>Now, of course, we know not only what causes it, but can predict when it will happen and where it will be darkest, down to the second.</p><p>Indeed, we take it for granted &#8212; even those who may doubt science in many other respects, don&#8217;t insist the darkening will occur at some time other than the predicted moments. You may insist it is a sign and not just a cosmological event, but you are unlikely to argue it is something other than the moon passing between us and our sun. The fact that experts can predict it with such expertise so far in advance makes the science feel ironclad.</p><p>There was a time when the science of space was not so predictable, when such calculations seemed part math, part roll of the dice, when every time we sent a satellite, much less a human, into a predicted trajectory, we held our collective breath.</p><p>It may seem ages ago. It clearly has become generational. But once upon a time, man had never set foot on the moon.</p><p>Once, if you spoke of Neil Armstrong&#8217;s &#8220;One small step for man,&#8221; the question wasn&#8217;t &#8220;do you remember?&#8221; but &#8220;where were you?&#8221; And almost everybody could answer, without pausing to think.</p><p>Sputnik I, the satellite that started the space race that led to the moon shot, launched 60 years ago. It has been 48 years since we first landed on the moon. It&#8217;s been nearly 45 years since a human last walked on it. The Soviet Union that launched Sputnik disintegrated 26 years ago. Armstrong died five years ago this week, at the age of 82.</p><p>The space race, as accurately pointed out now in multiple movies &#8212; most recently Hidden Figures &#8212; required Americans to invent things previously undreamed of, to solve problems many never knew could exist. The 1960s may have been a deeply divisive time on many fronts, but &#8220;beating the commies&#8221; in space wasn&#8217;t one of them. We shared common purpose.</p><p>Tomorrow&#8217;s eclipse may lack the drama and immediacy of the push to get to the moon. It is not a moment to unify a nation or world the way Armstrong&#8217;s &#8220;giant leap for mankind&#8221; did .</p><p>But if you give it a thought, it can be a reminder: Even if we are not united, we are stuck.</p><p>For all of us, regardless of any divisive factors, there is just that one moon, just that one sun, and just this one planet.</p><style>
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Our view: Eclipse should remind us of unity