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Apollo 11 Plus 40 »

Forty years ago today Apollo 11 was launched sending men to the Moon

Posted by JACK GRANT, Assistant Editor in Science & Technology.
Jul 16th, 2009 | Comments

One of my earliest memories is seeing this on television:

Which happened four days after the launch on July 16, 1969. Forty years ago today we launched Apollo 11 to land men on the Moon.

In commemoration of the event, there is a website called We Choose the Moon that is playing back audio of the radio transmissions during the mission in real time. (Warning, the site is very Flash intensive, to load it requires a lot of bandwidth, and systems with slow processors or lacking RAM may choke on it)

Amazing, what humanity can accomplish when we try.

Equally amazing, what we forget we can do if we are serious, dedicated, and professional.

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NASA is restoring footage of the mission after finding the original tapes which had been misplaced for years. Here is one of their test videos:

Here is a video that doesn’t highlight the restored footage of the first step, but gives a sense of what it felt like. Look for the reaction of news anchor Walter Cronkite.

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Cross-posted between Random Fate and The Moderate Voice .

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Patrick E

Funny that we both posted at about the same time LOL

AustinRoth

Those of us who are old enough will never forget the absolute feeling of awe at the fact that we had landed men on an object that wasn't Earth. I was only 8 at the time, and certain that by the time I was a grown-up (you know, 16 years old or so), everyone wold be flying around the solar system.

While that has not come to pass, nothing will ever take that memory and emotion away from me, that feeling that Man could conquer the Universe.

Unfortunately, I do not feel that way anymore. Adulthood and education robbed me of the innocence that physics can be overcome by engineering - engineering can only work within its limits. So, mass-less propulsion, transporter beams, FTL and time travel will remain closed away from us.

DLS

Also at that time, before and as of the lunar landing (though interest quickly subsided after this landing; only the emergency generated substantial public attention to Apollo 13), we were already anticipating, for example, undertaking a manned mission to Mars, typically anticipated in 1976 (at a particularly favorable time for such a a mission given the orbits of Earth and Mars).

http://beyondapollo.blogspot.com/2009/04/manned...

"Adulthood and education robbed me of the innocence that physics can be overcome by engineering"

Well, consider also the innocence or unrealism related to the ambition that here on Earth as well, at that time, it was felt we could do anything; we felt that way (optimistic) routinely until we faced the Arab oil embargo and the "energy crisis," followed by inflation as well as innocence lost about government and about politics in the 1970s.

newsfanatic

I was just watching a video about this at http://www.newsy.com/videos/moonstruck_40_years... and according to them the original tapes were accidentally erased (?) so they're actually working from post-broadcast copies.

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