OT 40 years since moon landing

FlatBeltBob · Jul 14, 2009

Any old timers care to comment what you were doing when we landed on the Moon ?
As an impressionable 16 year old , I was laying on the floor in front of the RCA Victor , with my Radio Shack 3" reel to reel recorder , and taping the whole thing .
They landed , and took forever to open that door . I still have those tapes , but never listened to them since . I do remember the scratchy sound they sent back : "One mall step
for ann, one iant leap for ankind ". I kept telling my siblings to be quiet , but now I wish I had interviewed them and my dad for comments . It has been 20 years since my dad has been gone .
Whatever anyone else thinks , I do beleive we did go to the moon .
Steven Speilberg has commented that given the state of movie effects at that time , it would have been cheaper to do the real thing than to fake it on a movie set .
Tang was not invented for the moon mission , it was developed in 1957 by General Foods , but the Gemini astronauts made it famous !

FBBob

bradinNC · Jul 14, 2009

I was 8 years old at the time and watching it on a old black and white phillips I think. Just finished my 1st year of catholic school. Back on the family farm in Iowa. I built a plastic model of the lunar module a year or two later.

Our country may have made great strides in certain technological areas since then. But I believe we've gone to hell in a handbasket in more ways than one. The general work ethic, loyalty to ones country, and fiscal responsibility have taken a back seat to a social engineering mess.

To think we pulled off such an engineering feat 40 years ago but can't balance the budget is beyond me.

Go to a public event and hear our National Anthem play and 10% of the men(if you can call them that) don't remove their hat, or don't put their hand over their heart.

Sorry about my rant but it bothers me how far we've sunk. Brad.

Mud · Jul 14, 2009

I was 13, remember watching it in the family living room. More recordings have been found, but have not been made public yet - here's an article on it.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/online/818/lost-moon-landing-tapes-discovered

gwilson · Jul 14, 2009

I was 29,teaching in the Summer at Penland Art School. Everyone was gathered around the tv. Everyone applauded and cheered loudly when the first step on the Moon was taken. I wish the space program had gone forward. We should have been on Mars long ago.

ray french · Jul 14, 2009

I was "in country" slogging through rice paddies,braving the sweltering heat,And dodging AK-47 fire that was as thick as mosquitoes.

Craig Donges · Jul 14, 2009

Ray;

Hats off to you.

Thank you;
Craig Donges

GregSY · Jul 14, 2009

Well, if Steven Spielberg said it it must be true....

Actually, I know some people who still think it was faked.

Either way, while an impressive feat, looking back it kinda seems like a waste of money.

moonlight machine · Jul 14, 2009

I was at Boy Scout summer camp, 2 weeks enjoying the mosquitoes in northern Minnesota. Someone had a "transistor" radio, we were sitting at a picnic table, all of us amazed and proud of our country. thanks Ray.....

jim rozen · Jul 14, 2009

"To think we pulled off such an engineering feat 40 years ago..."

And that in a scant 40 years, our engineering and technology base has
eroded so badly that there is zero chance of our building or flying
that machine again. We could probably not even build ONE of those
F1 rocket engines right now.

And to think that the mission was concieved and executed before CAD
systems, before the advent of common computers.

Jim

cash · Jul 14, 2009

I was not around, but for you who were and remember it that must have been great.

I drink Tang every day and when somebody ask what it is I say Tang, what the astronauts drink.

4GSR · Jul 14, 2009

Me and my two younger brothers sitting in front of my Grandparents 19" Zenith b & w TV watching Walter Crontite anchoring the moon landing. I was 11 then, hot south Texas heat, no air conditioning, just fans back then. :smoking:

Jim Rozen's comment about computers were not used to design the "F1 rocket engines" but slide rules designed those rockets by real engineers and designers! And I bet some of them guys did not have sheep skins hanging on the wall neither.

In Boy Scouts back then, we visited a office building on south side of downtown Houston that housed the latest IBM computers of that time. NASA would buy time on those computers for some of the space flights back then. They just stored the "sequence of events" that a space flight would go through. The information was sent by a deciated line from NASA to that building. Hard to imagin my computer I'm typing on now is hundreds times faster than what they were using back then.

Ken S.

keithmech · Jul 14, 2009

I was 12.We spent the summers at our beach cabin but I had an old philco
or philco ford tv I had set up on a stump by the cabin.We could pick up a station from Bellingham and Walter Cronkite filled in the details (and that's the way it is).
I had posters of all the rockets and jets, sent to me by writing to the air force bases down in the US.,hanging in my room.
Every year I tell my kids the same story of how the summer of 69 changed the world
as we knew it.To bad they don't quite share the same enthusiasm.
Hard to believe that was 40 years!!

Steve in SoCal · Jul 14, 2009

I was 9 and very into aviation still am, space flight was an interest in the realm of that. I remember watching the grainy black and white video thinking it is utterly amazing; not only did we put two guys on the moon, we are watching them a quarter million miles away.

During the Saturn program Rocketdyne used to dyno engines at the Santa Susana test pad and we lived within a few miles of there, the ground would rumble and a huge cloud of exhaust would billow up from the canyon. It felt as if we were part of the experience. There is a F1 at the entrance to Rocketdyne to this day.

To imagine that the world saw in a short 70 or so years; the advent of the flying machine and, culminating with landing a human on another celestial body. The generations growing up in the 20th centurty saw the most profound leaps in technology ever. Sure we are doing incredible things today but consider all the came to life in the 1900's. From airplanes to X-ray, just over a hundred years ago man lived much like he had for thousands of years. In the span of a few decades peoples lives changed in just about every way.

The big issue with space travel is the more we learn the smaller we get. With out some huge advancements in getting there I don't see a lot of value in manned missions. I salute the select few who have ventured to the vastness of space but, I think objects like Hubbel are our best way to explore the universe.

Steve

SIP6A · Jul 14, 2009

I was 12 years old watching it on a 15" Admiral black and white TV. It was a Sunday about 4:00 in the afternoon here in the Easter time zone. I was working in the shop with my dad and we stopped for about an hour or so then back to work. Had a die to get finished and delivered that week.

Steve in SoCal mentioned all the changes that took place in the twentieth century. I also remember that at the launch of Apollo 11 there were people there as guests of NASA that had witnessed the first flight of the Wright brothers 66 years before.

GregSY · Jul 14, 2009

There's no shame in our knowledge base having eroded, We can't build a spaceship any more but who cares when you can make a video game that simulates flying to the moon or even stealing a car and selling meth?

Being here in Space City (yuk yuk) I've been to the space center and seen one of two of the space capsules and let me tell you - they are clearly hand built, hand hammered works of art. No computer generated widgets or other funny business.

blake in spokane · Jul 14, 2009

I was 12, and at Priest Lake, Idaho, My folks brought the 14" or so B&W from home to the resort we were vacationing at. We had TV with "Rabbit Ears." Everybody in the resort & a number of people at a near by campground heard we have a TV. Mom set it up out on the deck outside the trailer. There must have been at least 60 people sitting/standing and watching, Everybody was quiet, listining to every word.

DaveE907 · Jul 14, 2009

Ray, thank you for your service.

I was 24, had left NASA (Ames) to attend college full time after working for NASA since 1963. Spent the day at a road race track (now called Infinion Raceway) tuning a car with a radio on in the pits. All activity other than listening stopped as the event was broadcast. Had to wait to see it later on TV.

It was extremely gratifying to see the culmination of the efforts of so many highly talented and committed people. It was better yet to have known and worked with some of them.

ZAGNUT · Jul 15, 2009

i wasn't around back then but i can imagine it was similar to the OJ verdict being broadcast live on radio....

for that i was on a very busy construction site in point bob, washington and the sudden silence that came over the whole place was amazing....

dave

Asquith · Jul 15, 2009

I was thinking about this a few days ago while listening to an excellent documentary on BBC radio, with recollections from people involved, including Neil Armstrong and people from NASA Control. Younger generations will be likely to take the achievement for granted, but at the time it was a real cliff hanger, as was brought out in the radio programme. They were on a knife edge in respect of the rate of descent and the fuel available for landing, and at one point a life and death decision had to be made on whether to continue. As for taking off again….. It’s one thing taking off from the base on earth, but out there they were on their own, and only had one chance.

It happened in the early hours, UK time, and nearly everyone stayed up to watch. I was an apprentice in a big engineering works, and going to work was never an uplifting experience. Not a particularly pleasant or happy place, but the mood that morning was totally different. Everyone seemed elated, friendly and cheerful. I suppose it was a mixture of joy at the astronauts having safely achieved their mission, and the shared experience of having watched history being made.

Lew Hartswick · Jul 15, 2009

I remember watching the moon landing but the first suborbital flight of Mercury is the
thing I remember most.
...lew...(nearly 77 so don't remember the Wright bros. flight :-) )

OT 40 years since moon landing

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