We Choose The Moon - Forty Years Ago Today

[Dennis Markham]

Forty years ago this morning----July 16, 1969----Apollo 11 blast into the crystal clear skies off Cape Canaveral, Florida headed for the first manned moon landing.  I was a 14 year old kid living in Cocoa Beach, FL.  My father was working for Chrysler's Space Division.  A buddy of mine and I were in his 14 foot Boston Whaler with a 9.5 HP Evinrude motor on the back.  We motored out into the Banana River with literally hundreds if not thousands to watch the launch from that vantage.  We worked our way as close as security would allow.  We both stood and watched in awe as that huge Saturn V rocket lumbered into that deep blue sky.  A moment I have always treasured and will never forget.  It's similar to when people remember what they were doing the day President Kennedy was killed, or what one was doing on September 11, 2001.  The sense of pride in our Country, even for a 14 year old kid was tremendous as it was an achievement that I do not believe has been equaled.  Not only the visual sight of that rocket climbing toward the heaven but one could even "feel" the concussion of the exhaust as it moved slowly (at first) away from the cape---even from our vantage point of several miles.

Today, broadcast in real time and throughout the mission one can watch as it happened.  Here is the link to that site.

http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/

If there are any other "old-timers" out there that would like to share your memory of that event (the launch and moon landing) please do so.

[McHeath]

That's a very special memory to have, watching the liftoff and feeling the power of the Saturn V. 

I was only 3 and a half at the time, but I do remember watching the landing on TV with my family, and how later that night my older sister, who was 13, took me outside and showed me the moon and talked about how men were up there right now walking around and exploring it.  Of course I wanted to be an astronaut for years afterwards. 

And they did it all with hardly any real computing power, mostly smart people with great math skills and slide rules. 

[jsowers]

I was ten years old and we were on vacation that week, staying at my dad's boss' beach house in Ocean Drive Beach, SC. My dad did something unheard of in our penny-pinching family--he actually rented a color TV so we could watch the moon landing at the beach house. I think it was the first color TV I had ever experienced for more than a few minutes. Now that I look back on it, the moon was pretty much black and white looking, so I have to wonder if color was all that necessary. But it did make it memorable.

I think it did make my dad eventually buy our first color TV later that year, a GE 21" table model that I still have. As far as I know, it still works. It's full of GE Compactron tubes. I've worked on it a few times and it's like Bill Cahill's 1950 RCA Victor is to him. The family TV. I can't part with it.

One other memory--when we visited Kennedy Space Center a few years later we bought some pencils that said "July 20, 1969" or something like that. I used those pencils for years and years after that.

[HobieSport]

Dennis that's amazing that you were there for the liftoff. You lucky guy. I've never seen a liftoff in person so it's impossible to imagine "the rumble and the roar". Anyway, I was twelve, and like most, my buddies and family and I watched the moon mission on TV. It amazed us all, of course.

In the later missions with the Moon Rover we were also amazed. Dang! We have the first car on the moon! "That's One Short Drive for Mankind..."?

[Dan/Panther]

I had been married for a little over a year, and we lived in a small two bedroom apartment, in Garden Grove California, we had a small used 10" admiral table television, painted white with gold specks on it. I remember standing in front of that T.V. glued to the screen when the big White letters flashed on the screen,
"MAN ON MOON", just seconds after they announced it. At the time there was no live shots from the surface of the Moon, just NASA Mission Control stuff, Live came a little later, when Neal Armstrong finally stepped out onto the surface.
D/P

[Phonesrfun]

40 years ago, not today, but in another 4 days, I remember what I was doing and yes, it was kind of like Kennedy and 911.  I still remember it very vividly.  In fact It has always been my recollection that as our family was watching it on TV, we were sitting at the dining room table having dinner and it was a Sunday evening.  Well, I googled July 20, 1969, and my memory was correct.  It was Sunday.  I was 18 years old and had just graduated from high school.

So, hopefully my memory is further correct in assuming that the moon walk actually happened around the dinner hour Pacific Daylight Time on that Sunday, but I have not taken the time to research that.

I, too had the goose bumps.  I also remember the dichotomy of emotions since on one hand this event was bringing goose bumps from the accomplishment of a nation.   On the other hand this nation was mired in a very unpopular war, and the nightly news was full of things such as the Viet Nam war and the horriffic things going on in the south that made one feel not so patriotic at the time.

-Bill

[HobieSport]

I, too had the goose bumps.  I also remember the dichotomy of emotions since on one hand this event was bringing goose bumps from the accomplishment of a nation.   On the other hand this nation was mired in a very unpopular war, and the nightly news was full of things such as the Viet Nam war and the horrific things going on in the south that made one feel not so patriotic at the time.

-Bill

Well said Bill. Thanks for mentioning that. I was only twelve then but I remember feeling all those dichotomies of emotions during those times.

[McHeath]

I knew that dad and my sister got into arguments over stuff like long hair and some war, but I was just a toddler.  One day my sister came to me all happy and said that dad had agreed to let me grow my hair long.  I was about 5.  Huh?  I wanted to grow my hair long?  Oh well, I did as she was sorta in charge of that at the time, what did I know. 

[Dennis Markham]

Early on in the "space race" my family lived in Huntsville, Alabama.  Huntsville has the Marshall Space Flight Center and is now where Shuttle astronauts train  underwater to simulate weightlessness.  They call it "Rocket City".  In the early to mid 1960's, during the days of the one man Mercury Program, the two-man Gemini program and even into the test phase of the three-man Apollo program the engines for the rocket boosters were tested in Huntsville.  Many times while on the playground in elementary school we would hear the rumble and actually feel the ground shake during the static testing of those engines only a few miles away.  It became common place.  The rockets, especially those Saturn V segments were so huge that they could only be sent to the Cape via barge.  They used the nearby Tennessee River as they made their way south.  Since  many of the families in our area were involved we all took special interest in the program.

We moved to Cocoa Beach after the Apollo 1 fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee but were there to witness the first manned launch---Apollo VII which was a test of the systems and launched aboard the much smaller Saturn 1B booster.  Apollo VIII was the first to actually go to the moon and circumnavigate it, not landing.  Those old enough will remember that flight near Christmas time of 1968 when Astronaut Frank Borman read from the book of Genesis.  A commemorative postage stamp was made from the image taken from Apollo VIIII of the earth rise with the moon in the foreground.  I was also lucky enough to witness the launch of Apollos IX, X and then XI.

After the launch of Apollo XI the family packed up again and moved away from the Cape.  We found ourselves back in the Detroit area about the time the final moon mission was scheduled.  That was Apollo XVII.  It was scheduled to be the ONLY night launch of the Saturn V rocket.  As a senior in high school (December 1972) a friend of mine and I cut classes and drove straight through to Cocoa Beach to witness that launch--at night.  They say that even the wild life became confused by the sudden daylight effect that the large booster caused during the launch phase.  It was well worth the trip to see that launch.  I knew at the time that it was an opportunity that I just could not let pass me by.

Fast forward many years to April of 1985 and once again I made the trip to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger.  The last mission for that orbiter before it's explosion in January of 1986.  Although spectacular, it paled in comparison to the massive booster that was used for those moon missions.

Thanks for indulging me in this memory.  I hope I didn't put everyone to sleep! 

[HobieSport]

Thanks Dennis that was really a fun read. I wish I could have seen one of those huge good old time liftoffs in person!

The first and maybe only news clipping that I cut out as I kid had the headline "White Does It!", about the first space walk. That was just as amazing to me as folks walking on the moon. So when White died in the burn I was pretty devastated as a lad.

Heath, we didn't have any arguments in our circle of family or friends about the Vietnam War in the late sixties/early seventies, maybe because we simply seldom even discussed it. Not that it was taboo to talk about it. If we had, our family would have probably agreed anyway. Our family and freinds didn't really go through the "generation gap" thing.

As for long hair, I had a modest Beatle haircut that I requested from Dad since the age of seven oneward, which he gladly did, since he liked the Beatles too, even with our 38 year age difference. The hair was not a political statement, but simply because I wanted to be a Beatle, naturally. Of course with my incredibly long (3 inches?) hair at school I was "The Hippie" among the boys. But hey, it got the girls.

[Phonesrfun]

Now, I think it is fitting to talk about this subject in the light of a current development, and that is the death of the man who personified the Appollo program for many of us baby boomers, and that would be Walter Cronkite.  How interesting that just a couple days before the 40th anniversary of the moon walk, Walter should die.

In looking back at all the wall-to-wall reporting of Cronkite on tonight's news, it strikes me that I actually saw so many of those stories unfold every night on TV.

Kennedy's Assassination
Robert Kennedy's Assassination
Martin Luther King's Assassination
The civil rights movement
The Viet Nam war
Kent State U
The moon landing and other space news
Watergate
Nixon's resignation

And everything in between.  Watching this on TV tonight is like watching a video tape rerun of my life.  It is really interesting, and the emotions run high; not so much because of Cronkite's death, but that everything that went on in the world that touched all of our lives for so many years was being chronicled by him.

Larry King brought up a Cronkite show I had completely forgotten about, but I distinctly remember it.  It was a TV show called "You are There"  It was a dramatical piece where Cronkite would act as a reporter of some historical event way back in history, as if we were watching it on TV, and he were interviewing the participants.  He had such things as the signing of the Declaration of Independance, or interviewing Christopher Columbus and things like that.

The interesting thing is that in reality; in real life it was Cronkite and the newscasters like him of the time that took this new and fledgling medium of television, and made is so that when it came to Viet Nam or Watergate or even the moon, we as the audience were literally there, just like the You are There TV show.

Remember that back in the early 60's when Kennedy was assassinated, we did not have satelites; we did not have color TV; no wide band connections; no teleprompters. We in my age group literally have watched television grow up from nothing to what it is today.  We were absolutely amazed that we had this great new technology in television that actually allowed us to watch events that were mere hours old (and once in a rare time live) coming to our living rooms from Dallas Texas or Washington DC.  Almost instantaneous!

Wow!  What a nostalgic look back.  Anyone else want to chime in?

-Bill Geurts

[HobieSport]

Bill I am indeed very touched in a deep way by the passing away of Walter Cronkite. In fact I just first heard the news from you right here just now, so at least I'll always remember were I was when I first heard it. I am serious and not making light this.

Walter was probably the only newcaster that I ever trusted since childhood, for his simple honest intelligent way of presenting. He told the news, whatever it was, and you could just tell he was deeply aware about the implications. He was the honest opposite of news sensationalism to me I guess, if that makes sense.

I'm at a loss for words right now. This may sound weird, but I wish Walter was on the TV right now to calmly announce the passing away of himself.

I'll miss him and I wish the modern news industry would have learned more from his modest intelligent manner.

[McHeath]

Walter used to say, "And that's the way it is" and we all believed him.  It was a different time eh?

[Phonesrfun]

Yes, it was very much a different time, but during Cronkite's watch the times changed dramatically.  The 60's and 70's had so many social changes going on.  Now, it just seems that everything changes at a lightning pace.

-Bill

[HobieSport]

Wikipedia already says what I wanted to say:

"Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009)was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–81). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited in viewer opinion polls as "the most trusted man in America" because of his professional experience and kindly demeanor."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Cronkite

And that's the way it was.