America, and the world, is in your eternal debt.
My fond memories from this time would not be complete without the mention of another person.
Thanks Walter, to you too, wherever you are.
America, and the world, is in your eternal debt.
My fond memories from this time would not be complete without the mention of another person.
Thanks Walter, to you too, wherever you are.
This is why I went into engineering.
Thanks guys!
Words cannot describe this amazing event.
Well done. Well done!
http://www
‘Apollo 11: Remastered’ – An Orbiter Film
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html
If you want to play it yourself, it is free, and i guess your smart enough to figure out where to get the Apollo add-ons and stuf.
I remember lying on the beach in the dark, looking at the moon, listening on the short wave radio and drinking Scotch illegally obtained from an American ship. This was on Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf. Magic time.
It still takes my breathe away even after all these years.
An amazing achievemnent. I saw the missions live on TV as a child. The sense of wonder and danger and the bravery of all the apollo astronauts filled me with a longing for adventure and an admiration for what humans can achieve.
This flight was worth the effort and risk (and CO2 emissions too).
I was a new lecturer at London University at the time. I’ll never forget the ’60s in London.
I was a new student in London at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. As Kennedy’s deadline approached the sound of warplanes climbing up from airbases around he city seemed to be everywhere. My girlfriend at the time cried because she thought we were going to die in a nuclear war.
I remember the Moon landing in great detail, we took the day off and watched it on a black and white rented TV. It stood on a beer crate covered by an old fur coat so as to look trendy. My girlfriend at the time cried because she thought a new world was beginning; then we all drank lots of wine.
We all thought that by 2009 there would be colonies on the Moon and men on Mars. We thought that ‘2001 – a space odyssey’ was reliable future history.
These are two of my strongest memories of the sixties.
I feel kind of cheated now.
Brings tears to my eyes every time I watch.
I remember those childhood years with great fondness…. the years when I still believed in fairy tales and happy-ever-after endings… the years when I still believed in science… the days when I still believed the main stream media… but now I understand the power of television and everything has changed… now we need to look at the world with adult eyes… now we need to identify the lies and half truths… now we must try to unravel the facts from the fictions.
I would also like to add my thanks to those three young men who changed the world forever. And also to the thousands of engineers whose dedicated work made it all possible. This was an event and an achievement that united all of mankind, if only for a time.
I support manned spaceflight because it is a potent symbol of mankind’s spirit of discovery. Apart from the spiritual advance that it brought, I’ve no doubt that in the long run Apollo was of enormous economic value, both for America and the whole world.
It is disappointing that America and NASA seemed to lose their way in the decades that followed Apollo. Building up capability for low Earth orbit operations with the ISS and the shuttle was useful and perhaps necessary. But back in the time of Apollo it was almost assumed that we would have men on Mars by the eighties. Now, forty years later, it’s probably even more distant. I’ll probably never see it in my lifetime.
With that in mind, what could be a better tribute to Neil, Michael and Buzz than an international effort to put men on Mars by 2020?
Chris
I expected a job in space. I read my sci-fi and frankly Heinlein in particular is a blueprint for our next step to Inter-planetry Man.
But something changed that day. As Humans we lost our Will to take on New Frontiers. More Engineering was accomplished in the ’50s and ’60s than in the 40 years since.
The accountants, lawyers and politicians somehow hijacked Human ingenuity and took it beyond the reach of normal people with extraordinary ideas.
I recall catching a glimpse of this historic event in between doing 3 low level Macchi sorties at RAAF Pearce near Perth Australia and learnt later that our Parkes Observatory was instrumental in relaying the TV pictures to the world.
Seems like the Parkes engineers were going as blue in the face as the NASA technicians at moon landing wondering whether the dish was going to hold out in the gale force winds ten times stronger than it was normally considered safe to operate.
[url=http://www.orlandosentinel.com/media/photo/2008-09/42594022.jpg]Buzz Aldrin’s footprint[/url] probably still on the moon remains as a lasting testimony to human endeavour which I believe one day will take us far beyond our solar system to yet another frontier to conquer.
It was in the wee hours of the morning and I was eating a bowl of amerikanski cornflakeski in the exact moment Neil sat his foot on the moon.
I was as impressed by the TV pictures that had travelled from the moon to earth, then by satellite to the other side of the earth.
Live!
Forty years ago my flat-mates and I couldn’t afford a television as well as food, but we managed to hire a black and white television for the minimum of a month just so we could watch the moon landings, and we stayed up all night to watch (it happened at night here in the UK). No event since has matched the drama and I, too, would like to thank all those that made it possible.
I’ve already blogged about this
Nearly everything we have done in space has been an anticlimax after Apollo*. We should aim for Mars.
I think the ISS is a waste of time and money. The Shuttle should have been scrapped long ago.
*The exceptions would be Hubble, the Pioneers, the Voyagers, the Vikings, Spirit and Opportunity, Galileo and Cassini.
If those same 3 guys were sent to the moon today, all we’d hear is grumbling about the lack of “diversity” on the mission.
“John Silver (02:53:55) :
It was in the wee hours of the morning and I was eating a bowl of amerikanski cornflakeski in the exact moment Neil sat his foot on the moon.
I was as impressed by the TV pictures that had travelled from the moon to earth, then by satellite to the other side of the earth.
Live!”
Via the radio telescope in Parkes, NSW, Australia. The only one big enough and advanced enough to do the job at that time Apparently). And the tower was under great stress due to a storm too, so we all nearly didn’t get to see the event.
I was 10 years old, and we had just finished haying for the summer on the family farm in Vermont. We were drinking Tang for breakfast, and Vietnam had been pushed off from the headlines for awhile. I remember hearing all the reports on the radio, WIKE, accompanied by that periodic communications beep, as the artonauts approached the moon. That summer seemed to last forever.
I remember the black and white tv, the fuzzy pictures- and then running outside to look up at the moon. I wanted to go, too.
John A (03:11:16) :
………………….
No need to send people to Mars, Spirit and Opportunity are the Neal and Buzz of today.
Robotics will take over, no return journey needed!
I too watched the moon landings and was thrilled, but it’s a waste of effort to send people to the moon or mars. What the hell are they going to accomplish there compared to what a robot could accomplish for less money?
Sure, the robots these days are klunky, stupid things, but eventually they will be smart enough to do a better job than any human could do.
It was around 6:30am, July 1969. We’d gone to bed late the night before staying up to watch news of the impending moon landing. My eldest brother woke me, and just simply said, “They’ve landed”! I rushed out of bed half asleep but rapidly waking charged downstairs to see everyone gathered round our Pye B & W tv. There it was, for real, Neil Armstrong decending the ladder. My heart swelled with pride (I wished I was an American for a while) & amazement that they really had gone & done it. It was the talk of the school, every night we were glued to the tv to watch pictures from the moon, & James Burke almost beside himself with excitement about it all. A truly great endeavour, by truly courageous men. I felt rather sorry for poor old Michael Collins up there in the command module all alone, whilst the other two were getting all the glory & excitement down on the surface.
I was fascinated by space exploration ever since I was 9 or 10 years old, & was given a coloured picture book all about the adventure to date when I had measels by my Aunt. It told of the triumphs that were achieved & the tragedies that befell NASA simply getting this far. Well done USA. I am sure we Brits provided some porcelain somewhere along the way with the tea, among other things! (I still think NASA’s finest hour was Apollo 13, getting them round the moon & back safely again, showing what dedication, determination, skill & professionalism the whole team possessed at NASA. My children still wonder why I get so passionate about the movie, & I tell them I watched it happen!) I recall on Apollos 12-17 the huge improvements in equipment that followed that pioneering Apollo 11landing, the flexible suits compared to the terribly stiff early ones, etc. The “moon hop” developed by the astronauts to bounce along the surface. Truly wonderful. Let’s go back there some time soon, it could easily be paid for many times over by stopping all this Green nonsense.
BTW, is there a list of all the inventions that arose from the Space Race, eg velcro, etc. I would love to read through such a list, in the meantime I’ll trawl the web.
Again, well done to those three exceptional men, I salute you.
AtB
Was sitting next to my girlfriend on the couch watching it on TV with her parents. I was 16 she was 15. For some reason she and I decided to hold hands in front of her parents for the first time that night.
I remember watching on our old black and White tv in our house on Anglesey. I was 4 years old and that day I decided I wanted to be anastronaut. I still do !