I asked my father who said “It was OK once but after that it just seemed like a waste of money.”
You had school in the middle of July? Are you in the southern hemisphere?
The Apollo Astronauts were as dull as ditchwater! Neil Armstrong sounded like he was bored to death! I know-these guys were professional pilots, who were trained to be calm. But, NASA should have sent a professional reporter on one of the missions-I guy who could write!
People don’t get excited about dispassionate military guys-you needed a good writer.
Maybe instead of looking it as “why did people lose interest so quickly” we should look at it as an eight year successful occasional TV show. Live coverage starting with Alan Shepard first American in space, Glenn first American in orbit, first American walk in space (who did that, White?)…I realize the Russians did these first and they deserve praise but they didn’t televise…various other launches. I am not religious but the reading of the creation part of “Genesis” while Apollo VIII circled the moon at Christmas was very moving. Perhaps Armstrong’s walk on the moon was the appropriate end.
There is no way of knowing but what if Bobby Kennedy had lived and been elected in 1968. Would he have continued exploring space as his brother did?
There was a time when you could get out of your brand new subcompact AMC Gremlin, walk into the house and ignore any coverage of the fourth moon landing, if it was even covered, open the paper (newspaper - remember those?) and read up on how the Pinto was blowing up when a light breeze brushed the bumper. This good news was followed by news of riots, protests, etc.
You watched the first moon landing and then reality set in by number four. You had Tang that morning, but other than that, you didn’t have anything but a GI Joe Space Capsule to show for it…you had to drag you sorry ass into your pathetic automobile after a glass of morning tang and come home to a country stuck in a very dreary time, just waiting for the next ice age.
Hate to hijack about you-know-what, but we’ve also lost the knowledge we gained in Vietnam.
I take issue with the people who are attributing the drop-off in interest to the crowded nature of the news environment at the time. The follow-up Moon missions occurred between 1970 and 1972, during the relatively calm interval between the riots and assassinations of the 1960’s and the onset of the energy crisis and Watergate.
Of course there were other news stories at that time, as there are at any time during human history. But the more tumultuous environment of the 1960’s coincided with the aboslute frenzy of public interest in the Mercury, Gemini, and early Apollo program.
People lost interest in the later Moon landings because of (1) the inevitable letdown in any program after the primary goal is reached; (2) the effective retirement of the Soviet Union as a space competitor; (3) the poor television coverage; and (4) the inherently unexciting scientific nature of the missions.
I think most people remember Sir Edmund Hillary, but your point is taken. 
It would have been pretty funny to see a Sherpa run down the ladder, brush away the dust, and quietly stand aside to let Neil Armstrong be first to set foot on the moon. In fact, that’s a great idea for a story!
Well, I’ll always be thankful for the Moon landing, because my father decided it was an occasion worth finally buying a color TV to watch it on. The landing was broadcast in black & white of course, but everything else looked outstanding.
Let me clarify the comments about the pictures from the Moon being fuzzy and out-of-focus. TV technology was nothing it is today (even without HD). The fuzzy Moon video you see now are how regular TV looked most of the time. Put on your grandmother’s eyeglasses and you’ll see how fuzzy Moon TV looked on 1969 video technology.
Braaaaaaains!
Small wonder you had to attend summer school then. (or were you down under?)
What do you mean “we”, kemo sabe?
No, not really, unless you mean that many people didn’t have good reception of all channels in those pre-digital (and mostly pre-cable) days. But the pristine video signal as it left the TV stations was much better than the moon video.
Standard U.S. broadcast (NTSC) television had 525 lines of vertical resolution, of which 486 made up the visible picture, and horizontal resolution of about 400 pixels (although they weren’t called that then). The frame rate was 30 f.p.s.
The Apollo 11 camera had a vertical resolution of 320 lines and ran at 10 f.p.s. Also, although I don’t have any specs, it clearly had a narrower dynamic range than top quality studio video cameras of the day (which were much larger, heavier, and complicated), and was operating in an extremely high-contrast environment.
So, by my calculations, a standard TV picture conveyed at least seven times more information per second than the Apollo camera, without even taking into account dynamic range and the fact that the Apollo camera was monochrome and NTSC is color.
I don’t know what the resolution for later Apollo cameras is, but every Apollo flight from 12 to 17 did carry a color camera for transmission from the moon’s surface. Al Bean accidentally pointed Apollo 12’s camera at the sun and destroyed the picture tube. And of course, Apollo 13 never did make it to the lunar surface. But I recall the pictures from Apollo 14, 15, 16, and 17 being absolutely stunning compared to Apollo 11’s.
I really must start reading the Onion again. That is an absolute gem.
Yes, the page I linked to has data on them, too. I’m surprised to note that, while in color, their resolution was even lower than the B&W Apollo 11 camera: 262 lines vs. 320. This was probably an issue of transmission bandwidth, since the color camera had to transmit six times as many frames, because it used field sequential color: “Frame rate: 60 frame/s BW / 20 frame/s color (color filters alternated between each field).” But doubling the frame rate from 10fps to 20 would increase the perceived resolution of the image.
The rockets taking off were great. The trip through space was boring beyond belief to watch on television. Think contemplating your belly button for days. Landing on the moon was great. The days in space coming home were boring. Think watching the wall for paint to peel. The ocean recovery was boring, beyond thinking I wonder if the Ruskies will try to get to them first. It was exciting that we could get there, but for the most part the details broadcast were not.
There were some bad economic times at the end of the moon missions, and the people hurting wanted the money spent on the local problems in the USA.
It’s kind of funny in the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, one of the Astronauts uses that as a point to refute the moon landing hoax people. He says something to the effect of “Now why would we bother to make nine separate hoax movies of going to the moon especially after people stopped watching after the 3rd or 4th time?”