Posted on 07/20/2019 7:06:19 AM PDT by Skooz
My dad was USAF, stationed at Minot AFB, ND.
I was a 9 year-old space nerd. Most of my friends were also space nerds and we followed the Apollo program closely.
During the summer, the housing area was crawling with kids all day until the sun set about 10:00 pm. Every house had at least one kid, and most had 2 or 4. The winters were harsh, so we took full advantage of the summers and stayed outside as much as possible. GREAT place to grow up. The best.
The evening of July 20, 1969, I was playing with some friends and one by one they headed home to watch the moon walk. I walked home and sat on my dad's Ford Falcon, head down and listening to the news cast on a transistor radio my grandma had given me.
After 30 minutes or so I looked up and was amazed. The neighborhood that a few minutes before had been overflowing with people -- kids playing, moms gathered in groups chatting, dads washing cars--- was a ghost town. Empty. Not a soul. Not even a cat. Nothing. It was still and void. I had never seen it like that. I felt like the last person on earth.
That was when I went inside and sat down in front of the TV with my family. And like everyone else, watched Aldrin and Armstrong walk on the moon.
I was reading the newspapers about how Teddy Kennedy - the future “Lion of the Senate” - had driven is car into a pond and let a girl die to try to save his political career - which it turns out he did, because he did become the “Lion of the Senate” - as I said......
US Army, Fort Huachuca, manning a frequency monitoring station far in the AZ desert on the base monitoring all NASA frequencies for jamming or interference. Remember it well.
Whoa. I was in that same program at the university then known only as Virginia Polytechnic Institute. We had been out on a tour that day and got as far back as a stock arena when we ran out of time. Set up chairs and a TV on the dirt floor and watched the thing from there. Surreal experience.
I was on the beach at Kitty Hawk NC with a college buddy who was stationed in Norfolk. Let’s see, from Orville & Wilbur to 1969, then 1969 to now, 112 years.
I wasnt even a twinkle in my parents eyes yet. Lol...wasnt born yet.
I graduated from VPI in 1974 with a BS degree in Computer Science; came out to Colorado and got my MS in CS at University of Colorado in 1978 ...
The astronauts were THE inspiration to recovery for me and I'm forever grateful to them and my Beatles collection.
Exactly 50 years ago I sat up late at night and watched history being made. I was 16 then. Many people today have no idea what a sensation it was. The rocket launch four days previously was impressive. The moon landing was nerve wracking and had us on the edge of our seats. But watching the first steps on live television was the ultimate thrill. I will never feel so alive again as I did that night.
I lived only 25 miles from NASA in Houston. I walked outside that night, stared at the moon and tried to imagine that someone was walking around up there! It was a surreal feeling.
My family was on a camping/fishing trip with friends (I was 13). When the radio said that the landing was happening and a moon walk would follow on TV, we packed up the entire camp and drove to our friends’ house (closer than ours) and spent the rest of the day watching on TV.
I have two vivid memories: I remember there was an issue with the TV camera deploying and for awhile before there was talk that the first step might be missed and they might have to have the astronauts try to deploy it from the outside. That didn’t happen it did deploy, but by today’s standards the picture was really fuzzy and full of shadows, it was hard to discern exactly what was happening as Armstrong came down the ladder.
The other thing I remember is my mom and dad, born in rural communities in 1913 and 1917, respectively. They literally grew up with horse and buggy transportation when they were young kids. I had never seen them so astounded by something and never before had heard the kind comments from them that they spoke that day...how they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, that they lived to see something like this. That stuck with me.
I was a crew member aboard USNS Point Cruz (T-AKV-19), my first ship with Military Sealift Command.
As the moon landing was taking place, we were returning from a Far East trip, approaching the pier to tie up at North Island and listening on portable radios.
Our trip had been to take some CH-47 Chinooks to Inchon, then make a couple of other stops on the way down to Viet Nam. There we picked up a couple of damaged aircraft and other retrograde equipment to return to the States.
That was the last voyage for the Point Cruz.
Yet I look in the mirror and I see my grandfather looking back at me.
Sorry that at the age of six, I wasn’t an budding “Sheldon Cooper”
Nor a congenital liar.
What six year has the attention span to listen to adults drone on while “nasa simulation” is shown on the screen.
The later missions I remember with more clarity.hown on the tv screen.
I was 5 a few days from turning 6, my father made us stay up and watch it. He was like that and I’m grateful.
I visited the house we lived in 35 years later. I asked the much younger owners if I could go in. I walked in to the entry way, turned to the sunken living room and gazed in the corner. I told the current owners we had a TV right there in that corner and that’s where we watched the first men walk on the moon.
They looked at me like “this guy is awesome”
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