Your Apollo Anniversary Experience

Wired: Your Apollo Anniversary Experience

You can’t say NASA hasn’t capitalized on the Apollo 11 anniversary. The agency has pretty much gone hog wild with all the ways you can celebrate the moon landing, which happened 40 years ago on July 20. Here are some of the best multimedia experiences NASA has to offer. ....

When I was a kid, my dad worked for a corporation that did work for NASA. I ended up with 8 X 10 glossies of the original seven astronauts. One of my earliest memories of a big national or international event was when Apollo 8 circled the moon on Christmas Eve 1968. I was at my grandparents house in Bethany, OK.

I think it was about that time that I got my model Saturn rocket kit. It was four feet tall when assembled. During the Apollo 13 mishap in April, 1970, when I was in the 5th grade, I took my model to school so my class could see what the various parts looked like.

I remember watching the moon landing and the first step on the moon.  It made a big impression on me. How about you? Were you alive then? What are your memories?

Comments

[Ed Chinn]

I was 21 at the time and just completely transfixed by the very idea that men were walking on the moon. As I watched that very poor black and white transmission, I would have wet my pants before leaving the screen for a bathroom break.

But, the Christmas of 68 moon-circling trip is almost as vivid to me. 30 years later, I stepped onto a Washington DC elevator and ran right into Frank Borman. I blurted out, "Thank you for reading Genesis to the whole planet." He grabbed my hand and thanked me vigorously. It was a moving moment for me and, I think, for him.

[Travis Greene]

I was not alive for that, sadly. Although I did grow up in central Florida, and I fondly remember various trips to Kennedy Space Center to see moonrocks and such, as well as frequently watching (and hearing, thanks to the sonic booms) the shuttle take off.

Actually, one of my most vivid space-travel-related memories is from a few years ago, for the first launch after Columbia's disaster. It was a night launch. I went to college in Orlando, and it's only about an hour from there to the coast, so we drove to the beach to watch the launch. It was amazing. We were about 25 miles from the launch site, and it went from pitch black to bright as day for about a minute. As it lit up the ocean in a surreal, chemical light, suddenly we became aware how crowded the beach was. It was strange, beautiful, and communal.

An off-topic story, I know, but it was just so cool.

[Dana Ames]

I was 13. My family was on the way out the door to go to a church picnic and I begged for us to stay to watch this "first" on TV. So we did. It was momentous, and a bit surreal. I don't remember it being the only subject at the picnic, though...

Dana

[Stan Ott]

When Alan Shepard went into space with the Mercury program I was in Junior High - and have been a huge fan of NASA (fully aware of its upsides and downsides) ever since - following every launch - taping hours of reporting during those early years - which gave me my most vivid memory of Walter Cronkite. When I was at ROTC summer camp in college I happened to pull guard duty - which meant I wasn't in the barracks that had no television but in a guard shack with a TV that allowed me to watch Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon - an incredible moment for a manned spaceflight junkie and for our whole nation's spirit. While our time has its turbulence, the late 60's certainly did too and then some and the space program created a sense of achievement and adventure for all of us - and the by-products in technial advances have blessed us ever since - thanks for bringing attention to it - and thanks for your excellent blog! Stan