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50 years since Apollo 11


petitepedal

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What I remember...watching take offs and landings on TV's in school..

The moon walk..it was a beautiful summer day and I was playing outside..but my mom called me in to watch this never before seen event..I remember her saying how important it was..and might not see this again..

50 years later...they are replaying the event everywhere.

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5 hours ago, ChrisL said:

I was still in diapers so don’t recall... 

 

 

5 hours ago, petitepedal said:

Punk...get off my lawn....I was 11?

I think we took some time off in the Navy to watch.  A bit later I went to sea (one of the rare occasions) as part of the emergency fleet response to Apollo 13.  My "office" had a helo deck so we were used as a potential range extender for recovery helicopters as the landing zone was larger than normal.  It was the usual "out for two days, saw nothing but water and returned"

I grew up as a space nut.  At one point I had the government printing office bound editions of all the communications for the Mercury and Gemini Flights.  I believe that they were eventually donated to a school library.

50 years is a long time to have not followed up on those early flights.

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The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama set to break the World’s record for most simultaneous model rocket launches yesterday to commemorate the anniversary. I assume they set the record.

My son is going to space camp there next week for his second year. I wasn’t born when we first went to the moon, and only 1 when we last did, but maybe they will do it again during my or his lifetimes.

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One my left index finger there is a small bump that is actually a scar that is now 50 years old.  I was 3 1/2, and our family was camping.  We were all sitting in the car with the radio on listening to the broadcast of the takeoff.  Being the youngest, I was sitting in front between Mom and Dad.  I fidgeted a lot and at some point pushed in the cigarette lighter.  When it popped, I pulled it out and stuck my finger on it.  I am pretty sure that day is my earliest memory.

20190717_080839.jpg

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Something like a billion people watched. You had to know what the 60s were like to realise just how amazing that was. Russia wanted to do it, they never had a chance.

A small computer would fit in a semi, not a backpack. Rockets used to blow up a lot. The first desktop calculator showed up in the late 60s. It cost a few thousand in todays dollars, weighed several pounds, and had 5 functions and no memory. Which is another way of saying it was useless in most offices.

It was impossible, and we did it.

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1 minute ago, late said:

Something like a billion people watched. You had to know what the 60s were like to realise just how amazing that was. Russia wanted to do it, they never had a chance.

A small computer would fit in a semi, not a backpack. Rockets used to blow up a lot. The first desktop calculator showed up in the late 60s. It cost a few thousand in todays dollars, weighed several pounds, and had 5 functions and no memory. Which is another way of saying it was useless in most offices.

It was impossible, and we did it.

I read one of the first hand account books of a young Marine in Vietnam.  I remember him writing that their Lieutenant told him we just put a man on the moon and him thinking and here I am sleeping in the Freaking mud in the Nam... We can put a man on the moon but we can’t figure out this Freaking war...

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3 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

I've heard that before, but that would be just under ~1/3 of the world back then.  It seems absolutely improbable. 

Life showed pics of crowds watching a single tv. The specific number doesn't matter, it was the most watched event in history.

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I was 7. I remember us huddled around our little black and white tv. The space program was very exciting for a young boy. I was exhausted but couldn’t stop watching. I don’t remember when I fell asleep, but I remember waking wondering if it had been real. 

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For those who are interested and who have HBO on demand, tonights movie is already up.  I'm watching it now.  As a point of interest, the movie is 100% archival stuff.  There is no voice over, just Walter Cronkite giving updates as the actual footage plays.  It's quite good really.

I've been to the Kennedy Space Center museum and it is also a trip well worth taking if your in that area.  For example there is a complete Saturn V hanging from the ceiling and you just have to see it to get some appreciation of it's size.  Then you realize that most of that is fuel and isn't going to the moon.

 

Edit:  Not HBO, is CNN 

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2 hours ago, late said:

Russia wanted to do it, they never had a chance.

Russia launched a moon landing mission just a couple days before Apollo 11.  Theirs was unmanned.  It landed on the lunar surface a few hours after Apollo 11.  It's lunar flight path went over our landing site and they crash landed about 500 miles west (as we understand west) of our site.

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50 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

Russia launched a moon landing mission just a couple days before Apollo 11.  Theirs was unmanned.  It landed on the lunar surface a few hours after Apollo 11.  It's lunar flight path went over our landing site and they crash landed about 500 miles west (as we understand west) of our site.

We developed a crap ton of tech to pull that off.

Russia simply couldn't do it. Their prototype moon capsule is in a museum, it looks like something Jules Verne might have come up with. They were good at perfecting things, their rockets were better than ours. But sending a man to the moon required developing expertise at dozens of things, and they just couldn't do it.

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Which is different than saying they wanted to but never had the chance.  Once we put a man on the moon, they lost interest.  They had unlimited funds at the time to build bombs and a greater interest in bombs.  They had the means and capability.

There rocket technology was better than ours for many years.  Our Redstone project was a disaster.  The Navy couldn't make a rocket fly and the Army wasn't much better and we had the best brains from the Germans directing our efforts.  One of their problems was that Kruschchev was too involved and pulled too many strings while.

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21 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

Which is different than saying they wanted to but never had the chance.  Once we put a man on the moon, they lost interest.  They had unlimited funds at the time to build bombs and a greater interest in bombs.  They had the means and capability.

There rocket technology was better than ours for many years.  Our Redstone project was a disaster.  The Navy couldn't make a rocket fly and the Army wasn't much better and we had the best brains from the Germans directing our efforts.  One of their problems was that Kruschchev was too involved and pulled too many strings while.

A successful moon landing would have required a commitment similar to ours (huge expenditures) and several more years of work.

Their economy was always under stress, their top down management didn't work very well. They couldn't afford it, esp. not for a me too effort where it would take several years to catch up.

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