First humans to leave Earth’s gravity well and orbit the Moon! Will I live to see another Moon Landing? Will it be our include Americans?
Ah yes! I remember it well!
... but, that's a still. IIRC, the live broadcast was of the lunar surface ... IIRC !
For the younger FReepers, the NASA comment; “one of the most turbulent, tragic years in American history” is really understated. Vietnam War ramping up, assassinations of Robert Kennedy & Martin Luther King Jr., multiple city riots and destruction.... it really was a BAD YEAR but for this Great Christmas Present.
We just knew we would have colonies on the moon by now, with regular transports to the stars. Grew up on Tom Swift and Mike Mars as well as Johnny Quest. Good guys were good, bad guys were bad, and crime Did Not Pay!
As Americans we believed ( still believe) that the possibilities are endless when we strive for truth, justice, and the American Way! MAGA!
And as I recall, Santa still delivered and it was an awesome Christmas. I got a Barbie, an Easy Bake Oven, a Thing Maker and a really big Spirograph set.
I remember that night!
I was only 6 years old, spending the night with my father and his girlfriend and her children. Though I’m Jewish, raised in a Jewish home by my mother, my father wasn’t observant, and dating a Christian, so it was my first experience with a Christmas tree too. (It was also my first example eating what I now realizes were pork chops, though at the time, I was told they were “lamb chops,” but that’s another story.)
It was a magical night for me as a 6 year old, my father asking me to recite the same passage in Hebrew for his girlfriend and children.
Mark
How and why it happened -
By mid-1968, the Apollo Program was in full gear, though not all parts were proceeding equally smoothly.
Grumman, in particular, was having problems developing the Lunar Module, but North American Aviation had had the Command Module and Service Module ready for some time (they were sent up on the earth-orbit Apollo 7 mission, and proved usable).
NASA had originally set out a series of early Apollo missions for 1968-69 that involved docking maneuvres with both the CM and LM, but with the LM still incomplete, von Braun suggested something different - a trip to the moon with the full Saturn V rocket (it had been successfully tested Nov. 1967), minus the LM. The fact that it would be a great PR move, at a time NASA needed all the support it could get, helped to sell NASA management on the idea.