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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