Buzz is the only one left.
Posted on 07/20/2021 4:48:29 PM PDT by PROCON
Mayport Florida Navy Base...Watched in Damage Control Central on board ship...
I can’t say for certain, but I most likely pooped in a diaper that day.
ROTFLMAO, thanks for the diaper story!
A while back at an estate sale, I purchased a few reels of audio tape on which someone had recorded the entire Apollo 11 mission from launch to post recovery celebrations. He recorded the event off a TV, as Walter Cronkite was there for much of it.
I listened to portions of it, it was fascinating to hear again.
The reason that the landing module had those large round pads at the bottom was because the scientists believed in evolution and taught that the moon was billions of years old. With the proven amount of dust that accumulates over time they were sure that over six feet of dust was waiting for them and that the module would sink without those pads. Weren’t they surprised to find that there was only about 4-6 inches of dust.
God proved ‘em wrong . . . AGAIN!
I consider the efforts as one of America’s finest hours. The original Mission Control room in NASA for me is somewhat hallowed ground.
I was almost 8 (in three days) when they landed on the moon. I remember watching on TV (outside antenna, no one had heard of cable) with my brother and sister and mother. I had two other brothers at the time but they were both so young that they couldn’t remember.
I remember running outside and back in to watch the TV. I could see the moon.
14 years old. Listened on the radio.
What a great day in history.
I was bound and determined to stay up and watch it, whatever my parents said.
What a shock I had when they DEMANDED we stay up and watch it.
We weren’t allowed to miss it. They said it was history in the making and we could not miss something as significant as that.
They were right.
We lived in rural Alaska at the time, so no TV or radio. I read about it in the Anchorage newspapers when they showed up a few days later.
I remember that night very well, I was home from college in my Junior year, and working on the farm.
Later I met and got to know personally another man who walked on the Moon and used the lunar rover.
He is Jack Schmidt who was on Apolo 17 mission. One of the few civilian astronauts and the only geologist on the moon.
He became a US Senator and my wife work in his re-election campaign (he lost). I still have artifacts from that mission, some we bought at a Republican auction.
It truly was. It was also the second greatest engineering achievement of the twentieth century (the first being, IMHO, the Manhattan Project). It also proved there is nothing we cannot accomplish if we set our minds to it. And then we just walked away from the space program....
Buzz is the only one left.
Dad came home from work a little early that day and we all watched it on TV. When Neil stepped on the moon, Dad said, “I played a small part in getting him there.” I can still hear the tone of pride and awe in his voice.
He got to meet Neil a couple of years later when he went to Edwards to give a lecture. Neil was one of the men in the group he spoke to and I have a photo of that. He said it was one of the most exciting days of his life, as was the landing.
The landing and moon walk were very exciting for me. What an achievement!
I distinctly remember an almost an iconic image of my dad fiddling with the TV’s rabbit ears, trying to get a better picture of the landing.
“It’s good enough dad.....we’re missing it!”
The guy who built my house started out as a machinist at GM here in Indianapolis. He helped fabricate the titanium fuel tanks for the lunar lander. They had a reunion of workers on that project for the 50th anniversary, which he was lucky enough to attend, sadly he passed away shortly afterwards.
Crap if these guys would have known what a commie ridden totalitarian regime this country would become in 50 years, then, they would NOT be smiling that way.
“I remember running outside and back in to watch the TV. I could see the moon.”
Watch the movie ... The Dish
The Dish is a 2000 Australian historical comedy-drama film that tells the story of the Parkes Observatory’s role in relaying live television of humanity’s first steps on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. It was the top-grossing Australian film in 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish
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