Jealous of you guys!! I was almost 9 years away.
Yes, I watched the real first moon landing, Nov 19, 1969. Everyone knows the first one was faked.
What?
Seriously, though, I own the Spacecraft Films set for Apollo 11 and some of the other missions. They have all the launch camera footage, from all the angles, the full recording of the 16mm for the landing with multiple audio tracks, etc. It is amazing to have all that available. True raw footage, with no editing or unnecessary narration.
http://02e5a89.netsolstores.com/apollo11menonthemoon.aspx
If you get a chance, check them out. They’re amazing collections. The Saturn V one in particular has footage of every Saturn launch!
Oh wow. That looks fantastic!
A lot of Dopers seemed to be sick that day, as was I (with some kind of fever or the flu is all I can remember).
I was six, and my Dad woke me up and brought me downstairs to watch the landing on TV. I will never ever forget that night.
Hey, did anyone see that movie “The Dish” with Sam Neill and Patrick Warburton? Supposedly it’s the true story of the technical problems with getting the landing broadcasted.
The Dish is an awesome film.
And Hawaii 5-0 should be the US national anthem.
“Parkes is the biggest radio dish in the Southern Hemisphere.”
“So why is it in the middle of a sheep paddock?”
Here’s a very interesting clip. Neil Armstrong’ parents appeared on the game show “I’ve Got a Secret” in 1962 on the occasion of their son being made an astronaut nearly seven years before he set foot on the moon.
By the time Apollo 11 landed on the moon, it all seemed anticlimactic to me. Apollo 8 had orbited the moon in December 1968 - that was memorable. In May 1969, the Apollo 10 lunar module had separated from the command module, descended to within 10 miles of the lunar surface, and then reascended to rejoin the command module.
By the time Apollo 11 launched, they’d done everything except the actual landing. Think they can handle that last 10 miles? I don’t know!
Obligatory (and sad) XKCD cartoon. It appears to have been published in 2011, and with the loss of Neil Armstrong in 2012, we’re within the range of what he predicted there.
The space program figured rather largely in my childhood. Dad was a science writer in the United States and so covered each expedition from Houston Space Center.
I wound up with a Dad largely absent from 1962-1974, a shitload of unspeakably rare NASA-centric collectibles and a few cool stories to share.
We watched last night on NASA.Gov. VERY cool. 
I was five years old. My parents stayed up, and got us up in the middle of the night to watch it. I like to think I can remember it, but with things like this I’m not sure if my memories are real, or are just images created by my family - including two elder sisters - talking about it over the years.
But I definitely saw it. And was obsessed with Apollo from then on - I distinctly remember my mum trying to explain what was happening with Apollo 13 to us, and the relief when they got back.
I think we did a similar thread 5 years ago, but I never tire of telling this one:
My family was on vacation, and we were camping along with my uncle’s family somewhere near Lake Michigan.
There was a family that had a portable TV (rare in 1969) and they went around the campground and invited everyone to watch the moon walk.
So you had a huge crowd slapping Mosquitos and all watching a 6" or so B&W tube, many using binoculars. I was on my Dad’s shoulders and could barely make out that there was a man on the screen.
I was almost 6 years old and saw it on our babysitters TV…probably the earliest time in my life watching a particular event on TV…but it was certainly worth watching…and remembering.
I was born after that event. 
I am just curious as to what was being broadcast on other TV networks during that time. Or was every channel covering the event? It seems like most of the archival footage we usually see is of CBS with Cronkite announcing.
The world was broadcasting the NASA feed.
What the world was watching, however, was not what NASA was downloading from the Eagle on the surface of the Moon.
All three networks would have been covering the Apollo 11 launch, lunar landing, and first moon walk. Uncle Walter seems to have been the Voice of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, no matter what Shorty Powers might have thought.
I do recall Jules Bergman as ABC’s Science Editor reporting on the pre-shuttle NASA missions also.
I was fifteen and it was almost surreal, then. I’d been enthralled by space exploration from it’s very beginning; can even recall Sputnik and all the consternation it caused among the elders. My children can’t even seem to imagine how big a deal space exploration and manned flights into space were to pretty-much everyone. Star Wars and other films make space travel look so easy. It never was and is still far from routine. But it was a wondrously exciting time to be young and to imagine a better future. As they say, the future ain’t what it used to be. We had better find some way to extend human existence beyond Mother Earth, or Mankind will perish.
Threads like this make me a bit melancholy. Part of it is that it reminds me that I’m getting older. (I’m older now than I’ve ever been before.) The other thing is that I was a real space cadet when I was a kid. I watched I Dream Of Jeannie because it had astronauts in it. I watched all of the Apollo launches. I had a rocket similar to this one on one of my birthday cakes. There were also two spacemen, like this, only about 5" tall. I watched every astronaut movie I could.
But I have no recollection of the Moon landing. I know I watched the launch. I know I played astronaut-on-the-Moon after. But I can’t remember watching the coverage. 
I’m also disappointed we quit. Yes, I know it was expensive. Yes, I know there’s no need to send people to the Moon. But I wish it had continued.
That’s my birthday. No recollection of either the moon landing or my birth. 
I was 8 years old. I do not remember seeing it live, but I had lots of Major Matt Mason® toys so I must have been a space nut.