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Mitchell Andrus
07-20-2010, 6:39 PM
Sea of Tranquility, 1969.

It's not impossible and it wasn't a miracle. We just decided to do it.

Please, no conspiracy posts. I don't have the energy.....

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John Mark Lane
07-20-2010, 8:15 PM
Sea of Tranquility, 1969.

It's not impossible and it wasn't a miracle. We just decided to do it.

Please, no conspiracy posts. I don't have the energy.....

.

The Eagle has landed.

Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin. What a team! What a time! I remember it like it was yesterday. Thanks for the reminder.

Ken Fitzgerald
07-20-2010, 8:17 PM
I was on duty that weekend in a barracks at Great Lakes Naval Station. The TV lounge on our floor was a couple of rooms down the hall. There were 4 of us sitting there in awe watching it.

Ron Jones near Indy
07-20-2010, 8:40 PM
Thanks for the reminder. I too remember where I was and what I was doing.

Jim Rimmer
07-20-2010, 9:05 PM
The first word from the surface of the moon was "Houston". Not that a Texan would brag or anything.:rolleyes:

whit richardson
07-20-2010, 9:34 PM
The first word from the surface of the moon was "Houston". Not that a Texan would brag or anything.:rolleyes:

Hit shore wuz pard! My expatriate Texan famliy gathered around the B&W Curtis Mathis console in NJ waiting with a nation on the edge of their seats. My folks were probably puffing a Chesterfield or a TAREYTON lit with a lighter the size of the Lunar Lander.

Wow... what memories.. remember also staying up really late just listening to the chat going back and forth they had it running almost all night.

Zach England
07-20-2010, 9:39 PM
my parents were in elementary school...

Bob Turkovich
07-20-2010, 9:51 PM
My brother and I were both Aerospace Engineering students at the time. My father - who couldn't afford it - went out and bought a color TV the day before the launch so his two sons could take it all in.

18 months later, 25 or so of us + a couple of our professors (who were working part time for NASA) took a bus trip from Ann Arbor down for the Apollo 14 launch. The day before the launch, we got a tour of Launch control (from through the window), a tour of the Vehicle Assembly Building and got within a 1/2 mile of the pad. Our "tour guides" were the Apollo 15 astronauts (all three of which had University of Michigan tie-ins). The next day we had VIP "standing" seats 7 miles from the pad.

You could feel the heat from the launch from 7 miles away. You could see the palm trees swaying from the pulsations from the Saturn booster engines.

To see something that big go airborne was (and still is) the most incredible man-made thing I've ever seen.

Thanks for stirring the memories.

Mitchell Andrus
07-20-2010, 10:01 PM
I was 12 and on vacation at the house in Nova Scotia - watching on the neighbor's set. Mostly others were out or in bed. My best friend and I stayed up to watch Uncle Walter doing his thing (the Canadian stations borrowed the US's CBS feed).

Did anyone else send to Goddard in Maryland for big manila envelopes filled with 8x10 pictures and bios?
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Bob Rufener
07-20-2010, 10:28 PM
I also remember where I saw this unforgettable event. Your reminder made it more special since my wife and I spend a day and a half in early April touring the Kennedy Space Center. What an impressive display! The Saturn rocket was an engineering marvel that was really awesome. If you have never been there, it is well worth a visit.

Rod Sheridan
07-21-2010, 8:25 AM
Wow, it really was that long ago, and I was 11 years old and watching it on TV.

Just incredible.

Those were heady times when it seemed like mankind could accomplish any task it wanted to.

I fear that we've lost our commitment as a society, and now spend too much time worry about the individual at the expense of the good of the group.

That was one fantastic accomplishment.............Regards, Rod.

Dave Anderson NH
07-21-2010, 8:56 AM
I was out in the bush somewhere west of the city of Tam Ky in Quang Nam Province playing hide and seek. I heard about it a day or so later. Somehow it seemed almost as surreal as my being a grunt and at war.

Chuck Wintle
07-21-2010, 9:19 AM
Sea of Tranquility, 1969.

It's not impossible and it wasn't a miracle. We just decided to do it.

Please, no conspiracy posts. I don't have the energy.....

.

I too remember exactly where i was and what I was doing. I was helping my father pick up hay and remember him being pi$$ed off because I wanted to go inside to see history being made. A fantastic accomplishment and one hopefully will be repeated again if NASA can ever get excited about doing something again.

Mitchell Andrus
07-21-2010, 9:59 AM
A fantastic accomplishment and one I hope will be repeated again if NASA ever get excited about doing something again.

WE are NASA, they work for us. It's not likely that we'll be going anywhere soon. We're more apathetic towards the sciences and reaching beyond our grasp than ever before. In the 40's - 70's we looked up and outside the box. Now we look down and inside - the computer.

It's a shame, really. The computer delivered on it's promise.... Now we don't have to work so hard to fulfill our dreams. We just Google it, and then go back to playing a first-person shooter.
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Jerome Stanek
07-21-2010, 10:10 AM
I was in advanced training at fort McClellen and they gave us the day off from training the next day

Jason Roehl
07-21-2010, 10:24 AM
This is something of which I've always been a little jealous. I was still 5 years from being born...but I did grow up in the Orbiter era! Exciting times up until the Challenger exploded. Our 6th grade teacher, with tears in her eyes, wheeled an A/V cart into the room a couple hours after it happened so we would know about it. One girl mentioned that she had submitted our teacher's name (Mrs. Bear, now the principal of that school, last I knew) to the Teachers in Space program.

It's just sad that people today don't realize how much technology we take for granted and use every day came out of the innovational necessities of the space program. They just see NASA as a frivolous expense.

Dave, thanks (again) for your service. I've always felt that astronauts were in a way on par with those in the military--willing to put their lives on the line for our good. The public often overlooks this sacrifice because only a few dozen have paid the ultimate price, but in terms of percentages, it's pretty high, and probably even exceeds the military.

Being in the same locale as Purdue University, at least we get some reminders--PU being the alma mater of quite a few astronauts, including Armstrong (and Gus Grissom).

Mitchell Andrus
07-21-2010, 11:21 AM
I was still 5 years from being born...

Kid, I pre-date Sputnik... by a few months.

When Challenger was lost, an employee's wife called. I was having a new phone system installed at one of my buildings. I just happened to have a 3" B/W portable in the car. The phone guy and I sat and watched that tiny screen for almost half an hour.
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mike holden
07-22-2010, 1:41 PM
I was a kid and at Nana's cottage. They were near to landing and Nana announced: "it's time for the Lawrence Welk Show" and got up to change the channel.. That was the only time Nana lost control of the TV (grin)

Mike

Mitchell Andrus
07-22-2010, 3:59 PM
That's funny.
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Roger Newby
07-22-2010, 4:23 PM
I was out in the bush somewhere west of the city of Tam Ky in Quang Nam Province playing hide and seek. I heard about it a day or so later. Somehow it seemed almost as surreal as my being a grunt and at war.


At the time, I too was involved in the Southeast Asia War Games. Having been trained to speak Vietnamese and working as an interpreter I was explaining to some of our "recently acquired guests" (can you say prisoners??) that America had just put 3 men on the moon. They gave me a "yeah.....right" look and never made any other mention of it.

It was twenty years later when the networks did an anniversary program before I got the full effect of what actually going on.

Look at our current technology in our own homes compared to what they had then in the space industry.........totally amazing.