Apollo 11 anniversary tomorrow..., Wanna share memories..? Options

[Stu]

( Hope people won't mind me being a bit flowery here, I've been writing this up on my blog and it set me thinking... I hope it'll at least inspire a few of the more senior members to share their memories with us young 'uns...! )

On July 20th 1969 the lunar module "Eagle" landed in the Sea of Tranquility, that's 38 years ago tomorrow, which means it's almost 40 years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, established "Tranquility Base", and changed the history and destiny of Mankind forever by leaving the pressurised safety of their lunar module and stepping out into the airless void of a lunar day, to stand on the cratered, dusty Moon at the triumphant climax of the Apollo 11 mission.

Oh yes, I remember it well...

Actually, I'm not sure I do. And it's really, really bugging me.

I was born in 1965, which means I would have been the grand old age of 4 1/2 on the day Eagle landed. Old enough to watch the TV coverage, certainly, but to actually remember it? Hmmm. Over the years I've always told people that one of my earliest memories is of watching "the Moon landing", I suppose as some kind of proof that I've been "into" this space stuff all my life, but now I can't help wondering if I've just seen the TV footage so many times, in films and on TV history programs, and on space DVDs and videos that I've just convinced myself I saw it "live" when really I was tucked up in bed, fast asleep, as any sane 4.5 yr old terran child would have been. I asked my mum if I saw it, and she can't remember; she confirmed that yes, I was a space cadet even then, but she's not sure if I saw it live or if I saw it on a TV news programme later in the day, which doesn't really help...

I wish I knew if I saw the landing live, or not. But what can I do? I guess it's just one of those things that's going to bug the hell out of me forever.

But my lack of 100% certainty about seeing the landing live doesn't change the fact that tomorrow is the anniversary of one of history's most incredible events, an event which has been hailed many times as a turning or defining point in human history. And rightly so. When Armstrong stepped off Eagle's landing leg pad, swung his leg over the side and planted his boot into the grey lunar dust That Was It. No longer were we a one planet species, we'd travelled to the Moon - the Moon! - and walked on it. On that night, people were able to look up at theMoon shining in the sky and for the First Time Ever see it as a place where people had been, for real. The Moon wasn't just a mottled, round lantern in the sky any more, but a real place, a world, ripe for exploration and exploitation. I've watched the documentaries and films so I know what the mood was like back then: we - people, men and women, Mankind - thought we could do anything. If we could conquer the Moon, well, Mars was next, and by the time people had conquered Mars "normal people" would be holidaying in space, walking on the Moon themselves, living in huge ring-shaped space stations, wearing silver space clothing and eating whole meals in a single pill!

Of course, it didn't quite turn out that way. After reaching the Moon half a dozen times we fled home again, tail between our legs, and hid from the universe. It was as if the first cave dwellers had staggered to the cave mouth, looked outside, seen the sunlit lands beyond and thought "Naah, can't be bothered..." and shuffled back inside into the damp and the shadows again.

As Tasmin Archer sang in her wonderful song "Sleeping Satellite"...

Did we fly to the moon too soon?

Did we squander the chance?

In the rush of the race

in the reason we chase is lost in romance

and still we try

to justify the waste

for a taste of mans greatest adventure.

But that's a rather unkind view, and certainly Man's Retreat From The Moon wasn't the fault of the brave Apollo astronauts who rode those mighty Saturn 5's into space and clung onto them, like dragon riders, as they thundered to the Moon. Their achievements can't be downplayed or underestimated. Their heroism and bravery can't be dismissed, however un-PC it might to have those traits now. For a brief, golden time, a shining Camelot time, the world really was united in one common noble goal - to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth again. And when Armstrong stepped off the lunar module's foot, 38 years ago tomorrow, and spoke those immortal words... "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind"... he truly was the first Ambassador from the troubled, troublesome Earth.

But I don't know if I saw it on my family TV as it happened, or later, once I woke, once Armstrong and Aldrin were safely back inside the LEM, once the world had turned on its axis some ways, and after History had moved already on.

If you were lucky enough to see the Moon landing live, and remember it clearly well, I envy you, I really do. What an amazing thing that must have been, to sit watching a flickering TV screen as thefirst human being to set foot on another world hopped down a ladder and stepped out onto the dust and into the infinity of the future. If you're not old enough to remember it, but want to know what it was like, then I urge you to watch the start of the amazing film "Apollo 13"... or the DVD box set of "FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON" - no, not just the "Apollo 11" episode but the whole series, because every moment of that HBO special is magnificent in countless ways, watching it is like travelling back in time, trust me. Or you could go to the library and hire one of the NASA DVDs or videos from its reference section, and watch the TV footage that way. If you live near an IMAX cinema, and if it's showing, go see "DESTINATION: MOON" the 3D film created to recreate the Apollo landings. I watched it with tears streaming down my face, it moved, and inspired and enraged me so much all at the same time. Whatever you do, just find a way to live - or re-live - those amazing, titanic moments as best you can. You won't be sorry.

I have grown up believing I watched the Moon landing live, picturing myself as a 4 and a half year old sitting in his warm pyjamas in front of the big 1969 TV set, yawning, fighting to stay awake, desperate to See It... but I don't know if I did. Now, sitting here, I wonder if, after all the years of expectation, I'll actually live long enough to see the first man or woman set foot on Mars. I've always thought I would, but I'm 42 now, and with the first manned mission to Mars no nearer than 2030 that means I'll be 65 on Landing Day... possible, but not guaranteed. I might miss it, I really might. That would be heartbreaking.

Many kids I talk to in schools today during my Outreach work don't believe it actually happened, they have fallen for the "We never went to the Moon" conspiracy theories, which is heartbreaking in a different way entirely. Other kids simply think of the Moon landings as some faraway historical event, as relevent to their iPod and Myspace generation as the Battle of Hastings or the signing of the Magna Carta. Which is a great, great shame.

... but none of that self-indulgent whining changes the fact that 38 years ago tomorrow human beings walked on the surface of another world for the very first time. So, rejoice in that, remember it if you can, and if you can't then look up at the Moon on the next clear night and think how amazing, how incredible it is that once, a long time ago, people from Earth stood on the Moon and looked back.

[dvandorn]

You know, being 13 at the time of the first manned lunar landing had its plusses and minuses. On the plus side, I was old enough to have been highly aware of what was going on. Heck, even at that point, I knew more about the Apollo spacecraft and operations than most anyone else my age, and more than some people who worked in the program. I have very clear (and cherished) memories of mankind's first hesitant steps into what we used to call "outer space," going back to Mercury shots.

On the minus side, witnessing such events at such a young age set up a whole slew of expectations that led to a whole slew of disappointments. Heck, even in the short term, the shadowy, low-resolution TV images from Tranquility Base, while exciting, were a little disappointing in their quality. When Apollo 12 was cleared for the higher-resolution color camera, I was excited, and I really enjoyed the down-the-ladder activities. But the loss of the camera after only a fleeting glimpse of the LM sitting on the surface was a disappointment.

So, I then looked forward to Apollo 13, wanting to once again see new vistas play out live in my living room. It had been 9 months since I had last been able to watch a full moonwalk, I was getting impatient to see another one! And then, of course, 13's landing was aborted and the following missions delayed. Quite disappointed, once again.

Which brings us to Apollo 14. I was so worked up by February of 1971, a full nineteen months since I had been able to watch a moonwalk, that I could barely think straight by the time Antares landed. I was finally rewarded with another high-quality down-the-ladder sequence (though unaccountably marred by video blooming of the bright soil beyond the LM's shadow) which showed unprecedented detail in the suits and LM structures -- while the camera was sitting in the shadows. As soon as it was deployed out into the sunlt surface and was pointed at a brightly lit scene, everything bloomed horribly and the moonwalk for which I had been waiting for more than a year and a half consisted of white blobs bobbing around a bright featureless scene with a big gold-and-silver blob sitting behind them. The image quality improved a little for the second EVA, but for most of that EVA the crew was out of sight of the TV camera. For as much as I was looking forward to these moonwalks, the TV coverage was, well, disappointing. I think the scene would have been better documented had they disconnected that lousy color camera and hooked up the duplicate of the Apollo 11 B&W camera they brought as a backup. It would have been shadowy and motion-smeared, but the resolution would have been quite a bit better.

And then the gods smiled down, and Apollo 15 happened. The quality of the TV was incredible, approaching studio-quality at times. The down-the-ladder stuff was amazing, and was followed by an even more amazing sequence of LRV deployment and loading. I was very pleased with the quality, and looked forward to seeing similar excellent scenes of ladder descents and LRV deployments on the final two missions...

Which is where the final disappointments came in. While the quality of the TV improved on each of the following two missions, on each I was denied the down-the-ladder and LRV deployment sequences. On Apollo 16, the LM's high-gain antenna didn't work (someone left a binding tape on the antenna, so it was unable to move in yaw and was therefore useless on the surface) and they could simply not pump enough signal through the omni antennae to get a usable TV picture down. Once deployed on the rover, the TV worked outstandingly, and I was not disappointed with the rest of the coverage. But the lack of the opening sequences left me feeling like the experience was incomplete.

And then came 17 -- and the ::bad word:: engineers decided they really didn't need TV coverage of the ladder descent or LRV deployment, so they saved a little weight by pulling the wiring and TV tripod out of the LM and thereby deleted the capability to send TV from the surface until the rover was deployed. Once again, the rest of the coverage was fine (although it was difficult to see much of it, since the moonwalks were held in prime time here in the U.S. and the networks decided no one wanted to see their regular programming interrupted by sharp, clear color TV scenes of people working on the Moon). But I was indeed disappointed that, after Apollo 15, we never again were treated to watching the ladder descents or the LRV deploys.

So, after all of this, I settled in and waited for a Shuttle-launched lunar exploration program to be developed. I figured you could launch a TLI stage in pieces on two or three orbiters and a seperately-launched propulsion stage (probably developed from Saturn technology). I figured that I would have to wait maybe a dozen years before I could once again revel in watching humans exploring the Moon, but that it would be worth it if the quality of the TV coverage of the scene was improved by advances in the technology.

So, I waited.

I'm still waiting...

-the other Doug

[Stu]

So, I waited.

I'm still waiting...

-the other Doug

Me too... I grew up confidently expecting that when I was this age I'd be regularly watching tv reports from "the Moon base" and seeing great pictures of modern day astronauts posing beside the descent stage of Eagle, standing in reverent silence, honouring those who went before them... and I was so sure I'd be seeing people exploring Mars by now, too; every space book I read, every science prog I watched on TV (shouldn't have trusted Tomorrow's World tho, not after they told me how CDs would last 'forever' and how we'd all be working in a 'paperless office' by 2000...) and even the "Mission to Mars" card in my PG Tips "The Race Into Space"* booklet told me that people would reach the Red Planet by the late 80s or early 90s.

They all lied to me. Even Maggie Philbin.

Now - without getting all political and potentially banny here - I'm really not sure I'm going to be around when the first men and women set foot on Mars, not with the way things are going. And that's very depressing.

* Many happy memories for Brit members here, I'm sure... "Race Into Space"

[climber]

Now - without getting all political and potentially banny here - I'm really not sure I'm going to be around when the first men and women set foot on Mars, not with the way things are going. And that's very depressing.

Stu,
Nasa decided to follow the water...and they found it.
Let's Phoenix and/or MSL find life present or ancient ... and you'll see that we'll be there earlier than you imagine now

[Stu]

Let's Phoenix and/or MSL find life present or ancient ... and you'll see that we'll be there earlier than you imagine now

Yep, that's what I'm pinning my hopes on now, that one of our in-the-not-too-distant-future rovers or landers finds wee martian critters and that kick-starts a manned program. But there are so many variables in that future equation, so many unknowns, so many pressures coming from so many sides...

Anyway, onwards and upwards eh?