On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of the Apollo 11 capsule onto the moon. Buzz Aldrin stepped out after him. They walked on alien soil, made verbal history—"One small step for man... One giant leap for mankind"—and fixed an American flag in the ground. Because the moon has no wind or water, the footprints that Neil and Buzz left there in the dust remain. They will continue to endure for thousands, maybe millions, of years. These, along with the American flag, are lasting proof of an enormous feat. These men were pioneers on the final frontier. They represented NASA, America, and mankind.

The technology in a 2000 Nintendo Gameboy is about as advanced (if not more so), as that of the computer used to launch, track, and retrieve Neil and Buzz inside their shuttle. This does not mean, however, that a kid in dinosaur pajamas has the capacity to launch himself into outer space. He might try, but he will probably fail.

Paul Ramirez Jonas faces a similar dilemma. He would most likely go to the moon, given a spaceship and NASA's collaboration. But since he does not have these things, Jonas creates his own technology and victory-markers. His do-it-yourself testaments to technology articulate the plight of the kid in dinosaur pajamas, or those like him who do not even own a Gameboy. Some of Ramirez Jonas' works attempt to mimic great achievements.

In the 1998 project "Not the Old, Not the New, But the Necessary," Ramirez Jonas creates a toy-train model of Tatlin's Memorial to the Third International. The utopian design—a model that was never constructed—was to be taller than the Eiffel tower, which was, at the time, the great symbol of modernity. But Tatlin, like Ramirez Jonas, knew nothing about engineering, and his model never went higher than a few feet.

Between 1990 and 1993, in an installation titled "Men On the Moon", Ramirez Jonas attempted to capture the conversations and silences between Buzz and Neil during their 23 hour moon-stay. He fixed the recordings in wax-cast recording cylinders, etched by a device modeled after Thomas Edison's original.

Other works attempt to represent more modest moments in history. Throughout 1993 and 1994, Ramirez Jonas made kite-replicas of the early flying devices of the 20th Century: models that were soon overshadowed by the Wright brothers' famous working airplane. Others are his own experiments in near-impossible possibilities.

Longer Day (1997)

Longer Day is presented as a 20-minute video on loop, displayed on a TV/VCR. The view is through the artist's windshield. He is racing the sunset, just past Indianapolis.

I woke up at dawn and drove as far West as I could. Sunset found me on a straight, flat, east-west highway in the Midwest. I made a video of my car rushing to meet the sun in a vain attempt at making the day last forever. The recorded sunset is 1 minute longer than if I had stood still.

Though the sunset beats him over the horizon, Ramirez Jonas still retains a tiny victory: he captures one minute out of infinity.

The artist has no other choice but to accept small triumphs, since his endeavors—like the never-ending sunset project—are overly ambitious. They remain works-in-progress, which sometimes reach a trivial benchmark, yet never see a vision fully realized.

Paul Ramirez Jonas, When The Saints Go Marching In, 2003.

Album: 50 Summits (2002)

Lately, Paul Ramirez Jonas has been venturing to the highest point in each state. He climbs—or, if possible, drives—to the zenith carrying a handmade flag that reads "OPEN." A photograph documents his presence at the top; his back is to the camera as he waves the "OPEN" flag in a somewhat unenthusiastic gesture of achievement—though his the flag is raised in the air, his posture does not suggest any recent jumping up and down. Ramirez Jonas has not gone to every state's peak. If he did, he would have had to scale the 20,320-foot-tall Mt. McKinley in Alaska. Hence his album contains blank pages that suggest the prospect of future climbs. Ramirez Jonas notes that the photographs are equal in measure to the photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon, the photograph of Sir Edmund Hillary on top of Mount Everest, and the painting "The Wonderer," by the German Romantic painter Kaspar Freidrich. Does this mean that the artist sees his ascents as comparably monumental to the achievements of these men? While the flag poses might sometimes seem half-hearted, there is some perceptible earnestness in the artist's project.

The "OPEN" flag is not a frivolous symbol, but rather a common and inviting one. Ramirez Jonas is not climbing peaks and claiming them as American territories, nor is he claiming to have discovered these places alone. His ascents do not come close to the scale of Everest—"climbing" to the top often only means getting in the car and driving for a while. Obviously, he's not trying to be a pioneer. In that case, does it matter that these summits have already been discovered? Are the pilgrimages any less heroic?

Rocinante (2003)

Rocinante is a solar powered satellite-like machine. It is not actually operational in space—Ramirez Jonas lacks training as a satellite engineer and works with a significantly smaller budget than NASA. Your typical satellite concerns itself with military reconnaissance, weather reports, scientific research and the like. Ramirez Jonas' particular automaton, if active, would instead serve the purpose of making music in outer space. Rocinante's mission is unusual: it would play a combination of the two songs, "L'Internationale" and "It's a Small World After All" while circling the earth. Unfortunately, Ramirez Jonas explains, the device does not have a proper launch vehicle, and therefore has not yet been hoisted into outer space. If it were to orbit the planet, it would function not only as an outer-space music box, but also as a representative for the countries who don't have space programs of their own. Each previously unrepresented nation's flag is emblazoned—painted by Ramirez Jonas—on the outside of the spacecraft.

In addition to all of the artist's engineering difficulties, there is another problem with a music machine traveling in space. Since sound can't exist in a vacuum, Rocinante's hybrid song could never be heard in the event of an actual launch. But Paul Ramirez Jonas doesn't really have to worry about this, seeing as Rocinante will never actually make it into space.

When the Saints Go Marching In (2003)

When the Saints Go Marching In involves cows, bells, and the song "When the Saints Go Marching In"—in hypothetical form. Ramirez Jonas set up 43 concert bells—each tuned to one note from the song—with clappers made of salt. The idea is that the cows, licking the salt clappers, will sound out the notes. However, the chance that they will play them in order is extremely slim. "When the Saints Go Marching In", performed by a group of uninformed animals would be an amazing accomplishment, although a hopelessly unlikely one.

It is doubtful that the boy in dinosaur pajamas will ever embark into outer space, and he'll certainly never get there without some effort. Like early aircrafts or attempts at alien contact, a good number of grandiose projects in history have flopped soon after leaving the ground. After all, not everyone is lucky enough to be a moon-pioneer or the first to Everest. Paul Ramirez Jonas sits at the halfway mark, among the ranks of the near-achiever. He is content to fall short of success, provided that he's at least working his way there.

Paul Ramirez Jonas is a 38-year-old artist, originally from Honduras, now a resident of New York City.