One Giant Leap for Mankind - Neil Armstong 7/20/1969 One of the proudest days in the history of man, and for me, the proudest day to call myself an American - God Bless America
The most significant event of the 20th century, and NASA recorded over the original video tapes of the landing!!!
They are playing an audio feed of the event on NASA's website, here: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/apollo11_radio/index.html I've been listening to it in the background for a few days. Most of it is technical jargon mixed in with some dead air time. But, every once in a while there is some cool tidbits. It should get more exciting later this evening. BTW, I REALLY hope this thread doesn't turn into some conspiracy debate. Let's save that for another place and time, one where I don't have to be subjected to it, preferably. :laugh: Oh yeah, and Armstrong never said "a" like he was supposed to in that quote. No big deal, just some trivia for the day.
No conspiracy with the tapes. Just typical of Government bureaucracy. Recording over the most significant video tape of the century isn't even a surprise to me. Lucky there are lots of video tapes of it from the re broadcasts and they are cleaning up the video, plus the audio is safe. Armstrong, Yeager, Baldwin and some of the others from that generation are true brave American hero's. I have an autographed picture of Yeager and one of Paul Tibbets (Enola Gay), each with their respective aircraft and I would love to have the Apollo crew autographed pictures to go on my wall too.
I have two autographed photo's of Armstrong - before the flight at age 7 I asked my dad how they go to the bathroom in space. He said, "ask Niel" so I wrote a letter and he sent it. About 4 months later I received an envelope in the mail with the photo's ... and nothing else. Back then, I wanted an answer not some dumb pictures I've seen 10,000 times on the news and in print. Dad framed them for me and I've kept them all these years ... along with quite a bit of "space" nostalgia. Often when I show my car, I display a few pieces from '69 inside the car to make it look like its back in the day. I also usually throw my '69 Mets Yearbook in there too ... yep kept that too after all these years
Very cool story and very cool to have the pictures signed from before the flight! Those men represent the greatness of America in my mind.
If you want to read a REALLY good book, pick up a copy of Gene Krantz bok "Failure is not an option". It is a great story about how the men (kids then) of Mission control went about the business of space - without a playbook because it had never been done before. In fact, Krantz's first job was to create the rulebook or mission plan. ...really a great read. I read it about 2 years ago and think I'll dig it out again
Man, watching the astronauts stepping on the Moon was the biggest thrill I think I've ever gotten. Let's go back for good!
Hi David, I also have a photo of the Enola Gay signed by Paul Tibbets. On July 20, 1969 I asked Anne, my bride of nearly 39 years, to marry me. The photo "Earthrise" hangs over our mantle to this day. Although this photo was taken by Bill Anders in 1968, It comemororates our engagement. BTW: My brother Tom really is a retired rocket scientist. When working for Morton-Thiokol he was an instrumental member of the team that designed the thrusters on the luner lander. Yes - he an MIT graduate. Yes, they worked perfectly on every Moon mission. Yes, he is my best friend as well.
One of the moments of my youth I will never forget! I will always remember watching it on TV. I was 8 at the time. It seemed nearly every boy of the time built that lunar lander model! Revell made a killing on that one! I pleaded with my folks to get me the Estes Saturn V rocket kit, which at that time was taller than I was. :laugh: No go on that one. :beer
I remember that for the first few lunar landings they took the whole grade school to the gym and had us watch it. Sounds funny now since we didn't have any big screen technology back then but it was the most amazing thing that could be imagined.
We were camping at Nickerson State Park on Cape Cod and had a small 12V B&W TV hooked to the battery cables. About 15 of us around that small TV watching the landing. One of those "I remember exactly where I was when it happened" moments!
Alan, Another good read is "First Man", which is the Authorized Biography of Neil Armstrong.. Author is Nasa's James Hansen Very insightful as to who he really is. It covers his entire life, not just the space missions. It is really amazing how hard those guys worked and trained for everything that lead up to the space program. I learned alot about our most famous astronaut, who I thought I knew quite a bit about.. I chuckled when you mentioned the your story above about the letter.. there is a whole chapter in the book about how his life changed after the moon landing, and he specifically talks about letters and autographed pictures. I haven't read Krantz's book, I will have to pick it up. I think I also have everything about the space program on DVD.. I highly recommend "When We Left Earth" by the Discovery Channel, as well as "From the Earth to the Moon" from HBO.. Think I will have to pop in one of those tonight, to salute the occasion. As far as my rememberence of the program... well, at 42 now, I was pretty young in 1969... I do recall seeing the Night launch of Apollo 17 tho.. JW
No Need Jim - Discovery is playing it at 10P est tonight and they were playing the other part of the series during the day today. I stand in awe of the men who made that happen and did it. Most folks dont underestand that the computer for the space mission was less powerful than the average home computer of today. They shot a pin at a golf ball 240,000 miles away and hit it. Not bad for some smart guys with slide rulers and protractors. The amazing part of all of this were the men who dared to get on top of 7,000,000,000 lbs. of thrust and do the unknown. Maybe I am more nostalgic about it than some, but it boggles my mind the enormous task at hand and they pull it off. It is amazing the things that have been accomplished by men who dared and dreamed. I was very lucky that I had a father who was in awe of the space program and he had taken me to the Smithsonian and to some of the local museums here on Long Island which fueld my interest. I was further lucky to tour Grumman several times(a good friend of his was a VP) and to meet some of the men who built the LEM and other equipment for the landings as well as sit in the cockpit of an F14D (they wouldnt give me he keys though-lol) Again all I can say is AWESOME!:TU: Something I find a little sad, ask the average kid how many times we have been to the moon and back and most (if not all) will say once. Just let them know we landed there 6 out of 7 times. :grin: I'm not being a smarty pants, just an observation I have made.
The space race was on! I recall getting up early in the morning and watching it on TV, I was almost 7 years old @ the time, and just think of how smart the Marketers of Buick @ GM were @ the time to name the colors on the new 1970 GSX, Apollo White and Saturn Yellow to tie in with all the excitement of the space program.
If the ever get back on the surface of the moon they should try and jump start that ol' Luner Rover dune buggy they left behind up there and go have some fun with that!:3gears:
I will never forget that night in June. Sat on the back deck with my dad and looked at the big moon in the sky. Dad was part of the team that built the lunar landing module and he was soooooooooo proud. I got to see it as they built it and he has one of the steering nozzles off the vessel as a souvenir. Mikey
I remember seeing the moon landing on tv when I was a kid. That made a big impression. My eyes were glued to the tv when they made the second or third mission. You could see the moon get bigger and bigger as they approached it. The footage shown on tv of the orbit around the moon was awesome. Always wondered why they never went back.
Here is a great pic shot of the '69 landing. http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/apollo12panorama.jpg
