Where were you: Apollo 11 Edition

[clean]

Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing.  Where were you?

I was under 5.  While i have many memories of my youth, this is not one of them. I probably was in bed (like the good boy tat I was and remain!).

I do know that I lived near the 'Space Coast' and that we did go somewhere and pulled off the road with many others and watched one of the lunar launches, but I dont know which one. 

Were you alive yet?  If you were, Do you remember where you were and have any memories you would like to share with us?

[ciao_yall]

Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing.  Where were you?

I was under 5.  While i have many memories of my youth, this is not one of them. I probably was in bed (like the good boy tat I was and remain!).

I do know that I lived near the 'Space Coast' and that we did go somewhere and pulled off the road with many others and watched one of the lunar launches, but I dont know which one. 

Were you alive yet?  If you were, Do you remember where you were and have any memories you would like to share with us?

I was only 3 and have no memories of it. However, apparently in school I was always painting pictures of rockets going to the moon and when I was 5 wanted to be an astronaut.

[monarda]

I was 9 and I remember being glued to our black and white TV, taking in every blurry moment.  I distinctly remember the front page of the NY Times: MEN WALK ON MOON.

[ex_mo]

I was yet a glimmer in my parents' eyes. Or, actually, not even that because I don't think they had met each other yet. Or gone to high school.

[mythbuster]

     Today's Google Doodle is a beautiful cartoon narrated by Mike Collins. It made me remember the pop-up book that I had of the small child about the Apollo mission.  It actively demonstrated such details as the 180 turn and dock move that the orbiter had to do to dock with the lunar lander mid flight. It was a really cool pop-up book. Do they even make these kinds of inspirational books for kids anymore?
    I was born years after the landing but my Mom was (and still is!) a space nut. She remembers tracking Sputnik with her Dad's radio set up in the backyard.

[0susanna]

My family did not have access to television at the time, for reasons, so we may have listened to news of the moon landing on radio. And then I know I read about later. Since then, I have seen the original footage so many times, I feel as if I remember it!

[cathwen]

I was 21, living at home at the time.  I'll never forget watching the landing on TV with my parents.  We were mesmerized, and the emotion we felt when Neil Armstrong's boot hit the surface of the moon is almost impossible to describe. 

When I was in fourth grade, my goal in life was to be the first woman on Mars--Mars, because I thought that surely, a woman would have already gotten to the moon by the time I grew up.  I remember remarking to my parents that there was still time to be the first woman on the moon!

[sinenomine]

It was my brother's birthday and he and I were playing with his new toys as the coverage aired. I distinctly remember my father telling us to watch, saying that it was something we'd remember all our lives.

[polly_mer]

     Today's Google Doodle is a beautiful cartoon narrated by Mike Collins. It made me remember the pop-up book that I had of the small child about the Apollo mission.  It actively demonstrated such details as the 180 turn and dock move that the orbiter had to do to dock with the lunar lander mid flight. It was a really cool pop-up book. Do they even make these kinds of inspirational books for kids anymore?

They still make science pop-up books and Amazon has pop-up books on the Apollo mission listed for sale as of 10 minutes ago.

[mamselle]

I was a junior in high school.

I don't recall much discussion, nor do I think we had an assembly to watch any coverage (as we did in elementary school, for the earlier Mercury and Gemini events, with a TV in the gym that no-one could really see, and the sound turned up, which we could hear).

But that probably had to do with a couple of the astronauts being from our state (and one, later, from our own suburb of Col's, OH).

A scene I recall more recently seeing was in the George Gently series, which I watched a couple years ago, in which Martin Shaw is invited into the home of one of the victims of a crime he's covering, because they have a tiny TV and they're all crowded into a little flat watching.

It begins with them both looking up at the moon, and the host saying, "Awww, she'll no more be a virgin after tonight...."

It's come to represent more what I think of the landing than anything...wonderful as it was in many ways, why do we have to pollute other worlds in the name of heroic exploration (even if I'm all for scientific research, the amount of junk left from that or any other landing strikes me as insouciant and irresponsible... )?

Colonizing male gaze may be indictable, in part....

M.

[polly_mer]

It's come to represent more what I think of the landing than anything...wonderful as it was in many ways, why do we have to pollute other worlds in the name of heroic exploration (even if I'm all for scientific research, the amount of junk left from that or any other landing strikes me as insouciant and irresponsible... )?

You probably don't want to look at the research for the newest landing mechanisms for exploration on bodies that don't have an atmosphere and thus cannot use a parachute.  We had a great interview just the other day with someone who had worked in that area and it was pretty eye-opening.

[hmaria1609]

Like ex_mo, my parents had yet to meet. 

In DC, there's a projected image of a rocket on the Washington Monument as part of the Apollo 11 anniversary.

For those who are fans of the British mysteries series "Endeavour," the 6th season included Apollo 11 landing in Episode 2 directed by actor Shaun Evans.

[Juvenal]

In my twenties, vacationing at the parents' rental on the shores of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville.  Only memory is staring at the TV, but not much detail.  My brother, then in Vietnam, has much more recalled memory (lying on top of his flooded bunker, looking up at the moon).

[paultuttle]

I was nearly four months old.

<grin>

[bioteacher]

I wasn't. :-)