Are you mature enough to have watched the lunar landings and what was it like?

Question

I wasn't born yet, so I missed out !! DAMN IT!!! BLO#DY F#CKING HELL!!!!!! Anyway I always think the apollo missions were well before their time, I guess i could blame the russians or maybe america for starting the cold war?

Anyway what was it like?

Answer 1

It was indeed amazing! My family was living overseas at the time (in S. America), and it gave me a huge dose of pride in my home country and a cure to homesickness to see grainy images and voices of Americans getting ready to freakin' step out on the moon! But I tell you, I was going to a British school back then, and the way it was received by British kids, teachers, and by the Latin American public, was one of universal pride in being a *human being* that day! That wasn't just an American flag, that was humans saying "hey, we've arrived!"

I remember wondering why it took so long. Those Apollo 9 and 10 flights around the moon (I don't recall the earlier missions, although they were equally important). And finally Apollo 11 touching down, and it felt like we waited *forever* for them to climb out on the ladder, and then for Neil Armstrong to take that final step. We clapped and hooted.

I also remember that it didn't get boring at all with the subsequent Apollo landings. Every one was hold-your-breath suspenseful ... especially when Apollo 13 reminded us that this thing was really really both difficult and dangerous. Apollo 14 was particularly tense. 15, 16, and 17 all had the lunar rover (that cool buggy) and I really wanted one.

It was truly fantastic. But in your lifetime you've seen the skylab and shuttle programs, neither of which is a slouch of an achievement and in many ways far more dangerous and complex.

(Incidentally, for those people in the "just a hoax" camp, I vacillate between puzzlement, anger, and sadness. How sad it must be to be *so* cynical about the world, that you'd believe that thousands of people (astronauts, their families, engineers, NASA officials, journalists, government people, three presidents, etc. etc.) ... and to fake it not just once, but six times ... and for what? One of the greatest achivements in human history ... just a big lie? And this is a lie that has been kept by thousands of people, from many walks of life, with diverging political alliances, for more than 40 years since the beginning of the Apollo program until now. Distrusting politicians and government officials is one thing, but how cynical do you have to get to despise engineers and scientists like that?)

(But when I'm in my angry mode, it's when I remember that 32 astronauts strapped themselves into little tin cans and risked their lives to accomplish this amazing thing, including 3 astronauts who did die (Grissom, White, and Chafee, who died in Apollo 1), and 3 who almost died (Lovell, Swigert, and Haise in Apollo 13) ... all so that 35 years later some morons could get a kick out of saying that they all did it in a Hollywood lot. Imagine 35 years from now people claiming that the space shuttle was all just a big NASA hoax, and that all the astronauts who risked their lives and those that died in Columbia and Challenger were just actors and/or deliberately killed to silence them from exposing the secret. Imagine that 35 years from now. That's how I feel.)

Answer 2

It was pretty fantastic. Just 24 years after WWII ended. I remember hearing two engineers at the company I worked at (I was 15 and smart enough to keep MY mouth shut, even though I knew better), talking about the 'fact' that a rocket wouldn't work in a vacuum, because it had nothing to push against. That was 1952.
In 1999 I watched the show that celebrated the 30th anniversary of the moon landing and Neil Armstrong making the statement, that the July 20th, 1969 landing was really a reaching for 21st Century technology.
Think about it, they had a computer with them that had 4KB of memory. Four kilobytes! NOT 4 MB. And the speed of that thing was ridiculous. But it was done with determination and guts. And not just once, but repeatedly.
Ever since that day, every so often, I look up at the moon and smile knowing that we already started a number of garbage dumps up there. What an achievement.
As far as the cold war is concerned, it started itself due to intense mistrust between the former allies. Stalin was totally paranoid. And frankly, we didn't stay far behind them.
Each trying to prove to the other that they were better and stronger, like 2 school bullies.
As it turned out, the stronger economy won out. They finally threw in the towel. But look where it left us. 9 Trillion Dollars in debt. Not exactly a healthy picture. But we survived without enduring WW III

Answer 3

I was about 15 at the time and intensely interested in space and astronomy. To me it was almost magical - I'd followed the space program ever since sputnik and the landing on the moon was a dream come true. It was also scary and nervous tension was everywhere. The impact of the landing for me was that humans had just set foot on another world! I don't think Apollo was ahead of its time - it was right on line with humanity's quest for the stars. It seems so disappointing now because by comparison we are backsliding with cuts and restrictions on NASA's budgets.

We were exploring the unknown, and like the proverbial Columbus, sailing to new worlds, taking the risks that all true explorers take, knowing there must be something more, something "out there" worth all the risks with the rewards being scratching the collective itch that humanity bears when contemplating a new frontier.

It was magnificent and triumphant - the U.S., had followed the Soveits for so long, losing out to the first satellite and first man in space, etc.

And when Neil Armstrong crackled over the radio "Houston, Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed.", it was enough to cry over! Nobody knew he was going to say that. Indeed, the Eagle had landed, and it flew again and again with its newfound power and daring and spirit of exploration.

Answer 4

For those of us lucky enough to watch them the lunar landings weren't a singular event but rather the culmination of many events. that started with Sputnik . There was the triumph of the Mercury program , the tragedy of JFK's assassination , the exponential growth of the Gemini program The Fire , having Genesis read to us from lunar orbit one Christmas Eve and then one hot July night a couple of weeks before i turned 16 it all came together in grainy black and white. For the first time in the history of the world a person set foot on another planet. Absolutely incredible. I was in awe then and i'm still in awe 37 years later.

Answer 5

it was very exciting, we had a tv at school and we watched it live... it was like the man said one giant leap... but now we have to have little robots take our steps for us. it annoys me how theystopped and just went to develop the shuttle and stuff and not really go on, keep up the advances... I just watched a tv programme about it and the technology of the time was not too good... one guy was saying the level of computing power of the lunar lander was somewhere between a digital watch and a simple mobile phone...scary stuff when you consider what they were trying to do. in fact it affected me so much that whenever I travel anywhere I always send a text message to my family to tell them I have arrived safely it says "The Eagle has landed".

Answer 6

It was breathtaking beyond words. And as I become more "mature" (ah-hem) I think about how truly amazing it was to be able to witness this on live TV. Even the Viet-Cong sent a message to the U.S. government saying, "we celebrate this achievement of the human race with you", if you can even imagine that. I'm sorry you missed it...it was an event unlike anything else I can remember...ever.

We didn't start the cold war...it was rather inevitable, I think. But it was Stalin who clamped down on Berlin, so blame him.

Answer 7

It was totally awesome! But you are lucky because You will probably live to see space tourism, and possibly have the chance to vacation on the Moon yourself. There are many promising developments in private space flight recently, such as the announced suborbital tourism offerings of Virgin Galactic and Rocketplane. Sadly, the best I can expect is probably a suborbital space flight; vacations on the Moon are almost certainly not going to be available before I die.

Answer 8

Unfortunately, I wasn't born yet either. What is even more unfortunate is the lack of comparably significant accomplishments in space SINCE the apollo landing.

The most significan event since apollo was the launch of SpaceShipOne, the worlds first comercial manned spacecraft. Cool, but it kind of falls short on the overall coolness-scale.

Answer 9

I don't remember the first landing, but I remember the ones with the lunar buggies. Those things were COOL! It's too bad the funding was cut and we decided to put money into the shuttle instead of heavy lifting.

Answer 10

yes it was amazing to watch it in black and white it was on the t.v. in the early hours of the morning july i think , i stayed up all night just to see history in the making i was newly married and just had a baby and wished my baby could see it too , men on the moon , i told him all about it any way he was about 6 weeks old!!! then someone said it was all a hoax any way which now i dont know if it was true, it looked true enough and you could hear them say how fantastic it was to see the earth from the moon , they seemed to play about in the sand like dirt on the moon , and put a flag some where too , it was good t.v. fake or not .