Just Seven Days Left!

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1969.07.20

Forty years ago.

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What time was it? We listened to the landing at school - so it must of been at night for half the world anyway.....
 
think it was around dinner time, in the USA... so yeah, in the morning for us...


edit - from wiki

At 02:56 UTC on July 21 (10:56pm EDT, July 20), 1969, Armstrong made his descent to the Moon's surface and spoke his famous line "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind"[16][17][18][19][20] exactly six and a half hours after landing.[1] Aldrin joined him, describing the view as "Magnificent desolation."[21]
 
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I still remember my Mum putting me in front of the TV and telling me that this was something very important to watch.
 
It was, perhaps, the most remarkable moment in man's history. The previous Christmas, when the mission just orbited the moon, was special as well.

I believe Frank Borman, the commander, read from scripture as the craft was in lunar orbit sending back unreal video.

This all was a reminder of what can be accomplished when all focus on a goal and take pride in its completion.
 
My brother (and for sure millions of others) has one of those original Life Magazines from 69...the one with the mostly upper body of the astronaut with a reflection of the LEM and moon "base" in his visor.
 
Originally Posted By: crinkles
8 if you are in Australia

21/07/1969


I knew you guys were on the other side of the date line, but didn't know you were a whole month ahead
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Originally Posted By: crinkles
think it was around dinner time, in the USA... so yeah, in the morning for us...


edit - from wiki

At 02:56 UTC on July 21 (10:56pm EDT, July 20), 1969, Armstrong made his descent to the Moon's surface and spoke his famous line "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind"[16][17][18][19][20] exactly six and a half hours after landing.[1] Aldrin joined him, describing the view as "Magnificent desolation."[21]


Imagine if this occurred ..for the first time ...TODAY

..and instead of such a, albeit redundant, thought inspiring profound statement ..he jumped off the ladder and said ..

Coca cola! Unofficial sponsor of the Nasa Luna Mission!
 
I was 11 years old and it was late afternoon here in FL. I'll never forget those images on TV.

Looking back, it's amazing that they pulled it off with "ancient" 1960's technology. Everything had to work, and timing was critical. And as we watched it live on TV we were not aware that the lunar module was just seconds from running out of fuel as Armstrong quickly had to locate a safe spot to land.

And they did it without all the advanced, high-speed computers and software we have today. (Maybe that's why the mission was successful.
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Originally Posted By: LTVibe
I was 11 years old and it was late afternoon here in FL. I'll never forget those images on TV.


When it landed. I was 26 years old stuck in eastbound traffic on Interstate between Vallejo and Fairfield California in my 1966 Corvair Corsa with my wife to be in 18 days.

One of the things that struck me about the Lunar landing was that in science fiction movies from shortly before the landing, communications between the moon and the earth weren't nearly as good as those from the actual landing.
 
Originally Posted By: GROUCHO MARX
It was, perhaps, the most remarkable moment in man's history. The previous Christmas, when the mission just orbited the moon, was special as well.

I believe Frank Borman, the commander, read from scripture as the craft was in lunar orbit sending back unreal video.

This all was a reminder of what can be accomplished when all focus on a goal and take pride in its completion.

I've always thought that Apollo Eight was at least as important, in that the members of the mission traveled farther from the Earth (and from any help) than anyone in history . . . the first human adventurers to orbit a body other than the Sun or Earth. After that, all the Eleven crew did was the actual landing. And from a dramatic perspective, that Apollo Eight did it at Christmas, and read a selection from the Bible -- well, you just couldn't have asked for a better production!

I recall watching the Apollo 11 landing, and being rather disappointed at how blurry the images were on our b & w antenna TV. I suppose that subconsciously I'd been expecting them to look as sharp and clear as "Star Trek" or "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Esquire magazine, that summer, had a cover spoofing the upcoming landing, "What words should the first man on the moon utter that will ring through the ages?" They quoted other famous one-line sayings in history ("Watson, come here, I need you"; "What hath God wrought"; "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", etc.), and suggested that Armstrong would mumble something like, "Er, ah, well, let's see now. . . ."

I can't believe we stood on the threshold of space, and then turned our collective back as a society on it. If there are human historians in the next century, they will probably wrangle endlessly on what madness could have possessed the United States to give up on the exploration of space.
 
Originally Posted By: XS650
Originally Posted By: LTVibe
I was 11 years old and it was late afternoon here in FL. I'll never forget those images on TV.


When it landed. I was 26 years old stuck in eastbound traffic on Interstate between Vallejo and Fairfield California in my 1966 Corvair Corsa with my wife to be in 18 days.

One of the things that struck me about the Lunar landing was that in science fiction movies from shortly before the landing, communications between the moon and the earth weren't nearly as good as those from the actual landing.

I seem to recall Walter Cronkite commenting on this -- that SF writers had always predicted a 1.5-second lag between Earth and Moon, and in actuality it was almost unnoticeable.
 
Moon shot practice anyone? I was aboard the USS Essex (CVS 9) that recovered Apollo 7 from the ocean.....still in the Navy when the lunar landing occurred and watched it in Hawaii.

EssexApollo7.jpg


Also in this picture along with many others.
 
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