Moon landing was unforgettable

Forty years ago today the United States Space Agency (NASA) achieved the first manned landing on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission commanded by Neil Armstrong and narrated to the world by Walter Cronkite. Anyone on the Earth within sight and hearing of a television set watched the roundtrip almost from liftoff to the landing in the Pacific. On July 20, 1969, lunar module Eagle landed on the surface of the Moon, carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the moon and Aldrin the second. Michael Collins orbited above. Armstrong and Aldrin spent a day on the surface of the Moon before returning to Earth. The computer guiding the space and landing vehicles held less RAM than most of today’s cell phones. It was and is and amazing feat.

My wife and I joined millions, if not billions, of people by going outside and staring up to the gloriously full moon just to see if by some wild chance we could spot them. It was an important day for all of us and by us I mean everybody on earth.

We’d watched the birth of the United States space efforts, and some of it was not very pretty, as they slowly but surely figured out how to get a multi-stage rocket to takeoff without either falling over or blowing up. Just the previous year we attended the World Premier of a Stanley Kubrick’s movie in Hollywood called 2001. It was so far advanced in special effects that it looked just like, but better, than the three network coverage and Walter Cronkite’s grandfatherly voice.

Below is the 1969 NASA release to the public.

“On July 20, 1969, the human race accomplished its single greatest technological achievement of all time when a human first set foot on another celestial body.

Six hours after landing at 4:17 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (with less than 30 seconds of fuel remaining), Neil A. Armstrong took the “Small Step” into our greater future when he stepped off the Lunar Module, named “Eagle,” onto the surface of the Moon, from which he could look up and see Earth in the heavens as no one had done before him.

He was shortly joined by “Buzz” Aldrin, and the two astronauts spent 21 hours on the lunar surface and returned 46 pounds of lunar rocks. After their historic walks on the Moon, they successfully docked with the Command Module “Columbia,” in which Michael Collins was patiently orbiting the cold but no longer lifeless Moon.”

Today we’re blissfully unaware when a new shuttle has left for the ISS or JPL has launched another rover to Mars. It happens now with such regularity that it holds very little meaning - I suppose that’s natural and unavoidable. None of which would be possible without the unimaginably heroic efforts of lots of people in lots of places (literally stretching around the world) but especially the three pilots in Apollo 11 forty years ago today. I still get goose bumps. And that’s the way it was. . .