For an 11 year old in 1969, growing up in the space age and idolizing astronauts, watching Apollo 11 complete its mission on July 20 was the climax of a decade of anticipation.
It seemed there was always somebody going into space. There was Project Mercury. Project Gemini. And finally the Apollo Program. All the liftoffs and the splashdowns were televised, and you had to wait several days to hear from the heroes because upon returning to earth, they had to be kept “in quarantine”, just in case they brought back some sort of deadly space disease.
There were no computers, internet, cell phones or social media. There was just a TV with three channels, all of them covering the biggest event in human history.
It was a warm Sunday night, and as usual, my friends and I were sleeping out in our back yard. At about 11pm, after my “lifetime” of anxiously waiting for this moment, we all gathered around the TV and witnessed Neil Armstrong actually step on the moon! Unbelievable!
They did experiments on the soil and gravity. They put up the American flag and talked to the president on the phone. It was no less than amazing. We went outside and looked up at the moon and wondered what it was like for Neil and Buzz walking around up there. It captured our national imagination.
In the ensuing years NASA took astronauts to the moon a few more times. There’s been Skylab and Space Shuttles and the International Space Station. All were good, but ever so gradually space exploration popularity waned, to the point where it seemed it virtually vanished.
I love how the 50th anniversary of the first man on the moon has brought this historic event back into the cultural conversation, and even the possibility, of after a half a century, actually going back to the moon…
And beyond!