quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
I was installing a computer at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston when the launchpad fire took the lives of three Apollo astronauts. The sadness and distress of that day tempered the joy of the first lunar landing.

The staff was developing a FORTRAN program named MOONSHOT. When I first saw the name I took it to be MOON'S HOT before realizing it was MOON SHOT.

That was a very sad day indeed. We lost 3 super hero's due to a small short in a pure oxygen environment. I felt sorry for the technician responsible.

Jim

My family was on vacation and we watched the landing & moonwalk on a little black & white TV in a cabin outside Yellowstone. I'll never forget being crammed around the TV watching the first steps.

I wasn't quite here yet. So I will just say my favorite movie about the landing is Sam Neil in The Dish.

Just loved it.

I remember it like it was yesterday, Hot July day with a huge floor fan blowing on us. The fan was like a DC-3 prop and sound like it too!

I didn't get to see it on TV.

All that week I was with the local church-sponsored Boy Scout troop that I was a member of, troop 864 in the Tendoy Council, on a backpacking excursion into the Copper Basin, Idaho's primitive area. We knew it was going on, and we looked at the moon each night wondering about what was happening. We finally got the news when we got home.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
I was installing a computer at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston when the launchpad fire took the lives of three Apollo astronauts. The sadness and distress of that day tempered the joy of the first lunar landing.

We once knew a guy who apparently was on the launchpad crew that loaded them into the capsule. My wife worked with his wife and she told us the story. He wouldn't speak of it to anyone as it had messed him up pretty good. Very sad.

Watched it on our family's 12 inch Admiral B&W TV.

I'm sure I was watching, but I can't remember a thing.
Might be because I was 2 months old at the time

quote:

Originally posted by FishOn:
Watched it on our family's 12 inch Admiral B&W TV.

Remember when a 36" console TV was a sign of affluence (and they ran on tubes)?

Watched it on a 25" b&w DuMont.

I remember it well. On a family vacation in Wisconsin; watched with some other kids (I was 16) in the living room of the house they rented.

Must be the baby of the group, ha. I'm sure it was on and I was in the room. Launched some pretty big ass Estes rockets in the years following. I've actually been remembering all week. I suppose 50 year anniversary will be a bigger deal.

3 hrs raw footage
https://youtu.be/68qoKefZvNQ

The 50th should be a big deal.
Nobody else has been able to do it.

I remember staying up to watch the landing on our black and white TV. Of course it was all a hoax.

quote:

Still have copies of the local newspaper showing the event.

That's cool.

I remember watching it....I was 5

Quite significant day for me, and somewhat emotional. I was at my grandfather's cabin on an in Lake of the Woods, Ontario. I was 14 and my grandfather would send my town by boat for groceries, building supplies, and to the post office. My younger cousin went with me that day and we noticed the TV on in one of the touristy trinket shops. I made the decision to wait until the "Giant leap for mankind" before heading back 6 miles by water. I knew it would worry my grandfather greatly, but decided it was worth it.

We arrived at the cabin after dark and everybody in bed. I expected my grandfather to be mad and worried. He just wanted to hear about what we saw. I felt so mature that he trusted me, and glad I made the right decision. My cousin appreciates that we stayed after all these years.

Another bonus was watching it with a mix of Canadians and Americans. Maybe my pride read it wrong, but it seemed everybody in the room knew for certain that night that Americans were something special.

I was a teenager and I remember watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin doing their moon walk.
It's a little sad but for a lot of people today, the moon landings were ancient history.

I still have the LIFE magazine that chronicled the event. At the time I also setup my Pentax Spotmatic camera and shot the scenes off the B&W tv screen. How times have changed. One can talk to anyone in almost any place on earth at any time-yet sadly it would only be in echo chambers.