For those old enough to remember, where were you, and what were you thinking when you looked up at the sky that night?
I asked this same question on Abuzz.com on March 11, 2001 and got the best responses that site ever had to offer.
Quote:We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard
John F Kennedy, Rice University, September 12, 1962
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset+Tree/Asset+Viewers/Audio+Video+Asset+Viewer.htm?guid={897B68E1-9DCA-46FF-B38E-51C541272ABA}&type=Audio
"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."
http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS11/a11.htm
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/introduction.htm
Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins
Apollo 11 Lift Off
Earthrise viewed from lunar orbit prior to landing
View from LM window just after landing
Armstrong salutes US flag on Moon
Aldrin poses for portrait
Flag and TV camera viewed from LM window
View of full lunar disc during return trip
Closeup of Earth and terminator
http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS11/video/AS11landing.avi
http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS11/video/AS11step.avi
http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS11/a11av.htm
It is probably the only day in human history we all remember collectively in a fond way.
I was 14, visiting my mom and brother and sisters. It was a Sunday and we had gone to Folsom Lake near Sacramento, California to water-ski and expected to have plenty of time to ski and get home to see Armstrong and Aldrin come out of the Eagle landing module and step foot on the Moon.
About noon, we were in the middle of the lake, and a boat came zooming up and came along side, and shouted to us "They're coming out early. They're coming out early." We raced back to the dock, pulled the boat out, and left, as did everyone on the lake!
The traffic was terrible and we were afraid we would miss the walk. But every one had their windows down and were talking from car to car about the Moonwalk and smiling. I remember that most. Everybody was so excited and happy. And everybody was beeping their horns in unison, even in the traffic jam!
We got home about 30 minutes before Armstrong and Aldrin came out. When they touched their feet on the Moon, the whole house full of people whooped and hollered. We could hear the cheers throughout the neighborhood. A few minutes later everybody poured out of their houses shouting, fireworks went up, horns honked and we were all smiling and looking up at the sky.
To this day I still carry the memory of it and looking up in the sky and thinking how lucky I was of all the people that ever lived, to be alive to see the first man to walk on the Moon. And that "we" had made the first big leap into space in my lifetime. For a 14 year old, this was the stuff of dreams! I was so proud to be a part of the human race at that moment. And hoped it meant peace for the world.
Years later, I saw an interview of Rev Ralph Abernathy. He had been at the gates of Cape Kennedy that same day, protesting the use of the Apollo project funds that he said should have been used on the poor. But he was asked in the interview what he felt on that day. And it was exactly the way I had. The pride of being a part of humanity on that day.
I do not think that before or since we as the human race have had so much in common as we did on that wonderful day.
Nor years after when I read this in a newspaper article
And for our Viet Nam vets especially:
http://www.treefort.org/~cbdoten/rvntanks/arvns.htm
by Jeffry Scott The Arizona Daily Star
Quote:It got absolutely still," says Crosby McDowell, as a soldier with his transistor radio who was in combat in Vietnam when the moon landing came on the radio. The Moon landing on July 20, 1969, gave Americans a temporary escape from all manner of depressing news. Just two days before the historic landing, Sen. Ted Kennedy drove a car off a bridge on Massachusetts' Chappaquiddick Island, and an aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, was found dead in the submerged vehicle. Just the year before, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated.
"Meanwhile, the nation was ripping itself apart over the bloody conflict in Vietnam. But nothing could keep Americans from feeling giddy, proud and optimistic as they gathered around television sets that historic Sunday evening. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were about to leave footprints on the Moon. The lunar landing occurred on Monday morning in Vietnam, where Capt. Crosby McDowell was with a battalion of South Vietnamese soldiers five miles south of Da Nang. They had made contact with the enemy, a North Vietnamese unit of undetermined size, and a dangerous cat-and-mouse game was under way. "All of a sudden it got so quiet," McDowell said. "It got absolutely still." Turns out that everybody in the battalion was glued to their transistor radios, listening to news from the Moon. "I asked what the enemy was doing, and I found out they were listening to the radio, too," he said. It was surreal, said McDowell, who is now a financial consultant in Tucson. "Usually the action doesn't stop once contact is made," said McDowell, who said the war "stopped dead in its tracks" as Armstrong opened the hatch and climbed out of the lunar module. "It was an awesome experience, and the icing on the cake was seeing the Moon right over us," he said.
"In a letter to the Star, McDowell wrote: "I felt that we all shared in that event and were in wonder at what was happening. For about two hours, there were no sounds of war, only the calm and collected voices of Neil and Buzz as they went about their chores directly above us some quarter of a million miles away. Then, as abruptly as it stopped, the war started again. A single pop of a rifle and the staccato answer of a weapon on full auto broke the silence."
"McDowell said he will be forever grateful to the astronauts and NASA for giving him a "realization that we are all members of mankind."
Its our world. Its the only home we have and it took three men flying a quarter of a million miles away from us for us to grasp the wonder of what we share together here on this good Earth.
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