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.

[edstrick]

"...Soviet probe Luna 9 made the first successful soft landing on the Moon ..."

From the pedantic nit-picking department.. Luna 9 made a successful hard landing.... THUD!.....bounce... roll.... Surveyor 1 made a truely soft landing. But what counted was Luna 9 survived and sent back pics.

For Apollo 11, I had the old (1956) family Pentron reel-to-reel tape recorder hooked up with alligator clips to the TV's (Color... we got our first one in time for Apollo 8) and recorded selected large chunks of audio, critical mission events nonstop, mostly from CBS with Walter Cronkite. Dad's old Leica 3c was on a tripod with 35mm agfacrhrome slide film in it. The Pentron died during the mission and I was able to substitute my brother's AIWA briefcase-shaped portable reel-to-reel to continue recording. I've still got the tapes and slides.

My Dad's dad.. his parents were living with us watched with us.. he was 90 at the time. Definately boggled at the event.

Mom and Dad were in Scotland, doing their "GREAT EUROPEAN VACATION" of a lifetime. When the pub owner learned that dad was the manager of a department in a rocket division of Bell Aerospace and had worked on Apollo, he had drinks on the house.. AT A SCOTTISH PUB!.

[dvandorn]

My Dad's dad.. his parents were living with us watched with us.. he was 90 at the time. Definately boggled at the event.

My Mom's folks (my grandparents) were visiting our family that day. They had arrived on Saturday and stayed through Monday. (My Mom is one of eight siblings, and it was common back then for my grandparents to make the rounds of their kids' places during the summer, seeing as many as possible and staying a few days at each place.)

I can recall many very vivid things. For example, since my grandparents were there, my folks stocked up on various types of soda we usually didn't have in the house, including ginger ale. I drank a couple of ginger ales that afternoon, and discovered for the first time that my esophagus doesn't get along at *all* well with ginger ale. At the time Eagle touched down, I had a tremendously bad case of heartburn.

My brother, a couple of years older than I, was in high school already (in the summer between his sophomore and junior years), while I was looking forward to entering high school the following September. He worked on the school newspaper during the school year (as I would go on to do, as well), and he arranged with the journalism teacher to borrow one of the school's Yashica-Mat twin-lens reflex cameras. He set up that camera and took a roll of black-and-white pictures of the EVA from the TV screen. For all subsequent landings which featured extensive TV coverage of the EVAs (specifically, Apollos 14-17), I took over that function, borrowing the same Yashica for the purpose as my brother had used. (Unfortunately, the prints and negatives were lost when my vindictive ex-wife destroyed them in spite when we separated.)

On Sunday afternoon, July 20, 1969, I was very aware of the timing of the various mission phases. I knew that PDI was scheduled to begin just after 3 p.m. Central Daylight Time, aiming toward a landing at roughly 3:15. At the time the PDI burn began, I was in my Dad's car as he ran in to the local drugstore to pick up film for my brother's attempt to shoot the EVA later that night. I was vehement that he get us home in negative elapsed time, as I recall.

I can recall that I was determined not to sleep Sunday night, saying to myself that it was simply impossible for me to spend any time whatsoever unconscious while humans were actually on the Moon. I didn't make it, I slept for about four hours beginning at around 6 a.m. I was up and awake in time for the liftoff and rendezvous, of course.

Finally, I remember one last thing. My Dad was a bombardier on a B-17 during WWII. He had a private pilot's license (though we weren't wealthy enough for him to buy the Beechcraft Bonanza he always desired). He took only a minor interest in space exploration, more of a pilot's interest than anything else, but as we settled into our chairs and couches on that hot Sunday evening, in our darkened family room, watching the round-tube color TV we had bought only three years before, I remember my Dad taking in the family scene around him, hugging my Mom, and saying to no one in particular, "This is history. This is it, the real thing. Really something."

As Armstrong set foot upon the lunar surface, even while I paid careful attention to what he said and what the poor TV image showed... I thrilled. I rejoiced. My sense of wonder expanded until I felt that I must be as large as the Universe itself. I felt what it must be like to be one of a race of gods.

My life has been downhill, pretty much, from that time on... *sigh*...

-the other Doug

[MouseOnMars]

I felt what it must be like to be one of a race of gods.

My life has been downhill, pretty much, from that time on... *sigh*...

-the other Doug

"To speak without fear,
human beings are above the gods of heaven,
or at least their equal -
for the gods will never pass
their celestial boundaries
and descend to Earth,
but a man may ascend to heaven,
and what is more,
he may do so without leaving Earth,"

The Hermetica, the Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy

My first contact with any kind of space program was the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. I was 5 and still have the pic from the paper, that I drew my spaceship on ( Scan ).

I think we still live in a world that is discovering the moon landings. It's easy to think it's all been forgotten, what with hoax accusations and the cynicism. It's such a huge act on such a massive canvas that it reminds me of the Voyager episode "In the Blink of An Eye".

I just loaded the new Midnight Mars Browser yesterday, that has a new 3D MER mode, complete with a model of the rover from which you can pan around the environment. Almost "telepresence", although not live telepresence of course. So, actually the experience that the Armchair astronaut was seeking in the early seventies is actually very good, we just don't have many astronauts up there.

mouseonmars