we landed, and walked on the moon

I remember being glued to my TV watching every minute of the moon walk on a grainy 21" rented TV - we didn't have one at the time

I would have thought that we would be much farther along the technology curve after 53 years

My father took me out of class and he found a television in the corner of the main student union at Texas A&M. Watched it being a little kid with my dad.

We didn’t own a television for the first 14 years of my life.

That was a milestone event in my childhood. We were glued to the TV set and prior my dad bought some large sheets of drawing paper. He had me and my siblings draw what we saw. My sister still has those drawings.

Summer of 1969 was a busy summer. Vietnam was still in full swing, but also Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick happened the day before the landing. The following month, the Manson Family killings and then Woodstock.

I clearly remember that, though I was only 8 years old. I fell asleep waiting, but my father woke me up to watch the first moon walk.

Armstrong has always been my biggest hero, and as I've gotten older I have a better grasp of the incredible risk those early astronauts took, and admire their sense of adventure. I always wanted to meet Armstrong.

Collins autobiography is superb, and is considered the best of all the astronauts' biographies.

I remember it. Watched it at a friends house on a black and white TV.

quote:

Armstrong has always been my biggest hero, and as I've gotten older I have a better grasp of the incredible risk those early astronauts took, and admire their sense of adventure. I always wanted to meet Armstrong.

Agreed. I wonder who kids look up to today, besides athletes and movie/rock stars.

Still have the images from mom and dad's TV burnt into my mind.

Was US Army stationed in Korea but saw photos printed in the Stars and Stripes newspaper after the event. ......... drill sgt.

There's a documentary called "When We Left Earth" about the beginning of NASA all the way to the Shuttle missions. It's narrated by Gary Sinise and is an absolute joy to watch for anyone interested in such things.

Watched it on a brand new color TV, a wedding present from first wife's rich aunt.

I remember being at my grandmas home. There were many of us, hypnotized by the incredible images.

Even my memories are black n white….

0-0

"Buzz took this picture of Neil in the cabin after the completion of the EVA. Neil has his helmet off but has not yet doffed his “Snoopy” cap. The circuit breaker panels are illuminated, and a small floodlight is on at the lower right. A circuit breaker chart has been fixed up on the wall with gray tape, below the rendezvous window in the cabin roof."


from:

https://rarehistoricalphotos.c...armstrong-moon-1969/

I followed the Space Program from Mercury on. I was always fascinated by it.
I was glued to the TV that night; I was fourteen at the time.

from:

https://rarehistoricalphotos.c...zz-aldrin-moon-1969/

The Apollo 11 mission used Hasselbad 500ELM cameras, a camera which had been available commercially for about 5 years at the time. It was, like most cameras at the time, completely wireless.

It has an electric motor drive for advancing the film between shots, but other than that it was completely mechanical. Like all film back then it had to be processed, except in this case they had to travel the quarter-million miles back to Earth before they knew if they had a good shot or not.

They didn’t even use viewfinders to frame these shots, they were all taken “from the hip” and if you look through the thousands of photos taken from the moon the number of really poorly framed shots outweigh the good shots by about 1 to 10.

My dad said he was driving on the Ventura freeway that day. He said there wasn’t another soul on that nor any other freeway. He said it was like he was the last surviving human on earth. Imagine that. What would it take to do that today?

That was a month before I started work at Texas Instruments. We made a lot of circuits for the space program.

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
My dad said he was driving on the Ventura freeway that day. He said there wasn’t another soul on that nor any other freeway. He said it was like he was the last surviving human on earth. Imagine that. What would it take to do that today?

Seriously?

9/11 and Covid; both.

Unfortunately, I was at the epicenter of both.

Stopped all the airline traffic and shipping too.

It was supposed to happen on my birthday, tomorrow, forever making that day a historical date.
Somehow it was one of the few government projects to get ahead of schedule. I was so disappointed.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
The Apollo 11 mission used Hasselbad 500ELM cameras, a camera which had been available commercially for about 5 years at the time.

When I was in high school, the Hasselblad 500CM was a bucket list camera. On Saturday afternoons, my brother and I used to go to Franks Cameras in Highland Park CA and browse all afternoon. The CM and the rangefinder Leicas, I really wanted those. Never did get them.

I was in Chicago working in a factory. There was plenty of traffic. I had other concerns in 1969 and it was not the moon landing. Soon overshadowed by Charles Manson, Woodstock and Vietnam.