I was 13. I watched on TV at home, both the landing and the EVAs.
I was kind of in two minds. On the one hand, I had grown up during the “space race”, and had seen mission after mission, each one going one step farther. It seemed only natural that the moon landing would happen. After all, how could they fail? Even after the Apollo 1 tragedy, NASA was running on a string of successful missions in fairly short time. It seemed almost inevitable to my young mind.
At the same time, I was so amazed to think it was actually happening. Like many others I went outside to look at the moon and found it hard to reconcile that there were PEOPLE there. Absolutely too cool to believe.
Ain’t that the truth! My grandfather was born in the late 1880s and lived until 1975. During his life he saw the world go from essentially horse-and-buggy to automobiles to radio to powered flight to television to computers to supersonic aircraft to men-on-the-frickin-moon!
Age 7 1/2, huddled around the TV in a dark living room with Mom & 5yo Brother as Dad filmed it off the TV screen with a home movie camera. We still have that film somewhere.
We were all farmed out by the nuns to various families to watch it because my school didn’t have a television set. I remember the afternoon vividly. I went to a friend’s place. He had a trampoline! The prospect of watching some strange men landing on the moon paled into insignificance. So while the mothers all sat inside watching the moon landing, we children played (and fought) on the trampoline. I don’t think I actually watched the landing at all.
I was 12 at the time and to my horror had to spend the day at my aunt Cora’s. She didn’t even have the TV on! My mother stepped up for me and asked if I could watch it. So I got to hear Walter Cronkite & Co. tell us all about it. I don’t know if I was more upset about missing part of the coverage or having to eat Cora’s god-awful salmon croquettes.
Later that night, I watched live as Neil Armstrong went down the ladder. No Cora, no salmon, just enjoying history as it unfolded before my eyes.
It may be my earliest memory. I would have been two - going on three. I’m standing in front of the TV and all the grownups are really upset that I’m standing in front of the TV. Something really important is happening on the TV. And I remember the images - which as soon as I was a little older I must have assimilated into “that was the moon landing.” Because I’m sure I didn’t understand it at two.
I have an earlier memory of my sister in a bassinette. She is 23 months younger than I am, but I’m not sure it is really a memory, or a photo I saw somewhere a very long time ago. Or even a different baby when I was little. I know the moon landing is a real memory.
I was 21 years old, had just graduated from college, and was assisting a summer school professor who was teaching a college class called Shakespeare in the Theatre when word arrived of the successful moon landing (an enthusiastic physics professor went from classroom to classroom announcing the news). Everybody cheered, and we didn’t talk about Shakespeare for the rest of the class.
I was sound asleep- I missed the live telecast by less than 10 minutes. I simply could not stay awake. It was awful. Mom and Brother watched it, I saw the replay when the finally shook me awake.
Dad was in Houston, at the Space Center, covering it for as they used to say, " a large metropolitan newspaper".
Dad covered a lot of the space program. There are certain stock film shots that bring a tear to my eyes, literally. The dreams that the space program encouraged in an entire generation of people are still alive today.
Somewhere in the vault I have camera original reversal 16mm film of the Earth, shot by a Gemini astronaut as he orbited. Seriously. Dad was gonna throw it out, too. :smack:
I remember having that sensation with Apollo 12, when the three astronauts just circled around the moon. They were sending back pictures as they passed over crater after crater. There was also the suspense as they disappeared behind the moon for the first time. To me that was as amazing as Apollo 13.
For Apollo 13, I was in a room at the Holiday Inn in Greeneville, TN. My memory is that it wasn’t that late in the evening for anyone to already be in bed. I called my wife, who was home in Cincinnati. I was 30 years old.
With my parents in front of the B&W TV enthralled. Anyone else remember being worried and puzzled by that “1201 alarm”? I remember being very impressed and looking forward to a great new world of space travel and wonderful science fiction things-so much for that! I remember my father jumping up all excited when the Eagle landed. He rarely got excited around the kids and that really impressed me. Even though it didn’t lead where people expected, it was still the high point of technological achievement in the 20th century. I am truly grateful that I got to see it.
Count me as another “Apollo 11 infant” (a little over 10 months old). I wouldn’t be surprised if I watched it, though, as I know my father wouldn’t have missed it.
Padeye, the Kennedy Space Center tour is amazing, especially the Apollo exhibit. The recreation of the Appllo 7 launch (the first manned Apollo launch after the Apollo 1 accident) gave me chills and I walked around the exhibit hall in a bit of a daze, I think. There’s a Saturn V rocket hanging overhead (giving you a real idea just how huge it is) and a chip of moon rock that you can touch. I was there with my future wife and parents-in-law who I know were very amused at the way I treated it as a semi-religious experience but were kind enough not to laugh at me (not out loud, at least).
Right. As I recall the missions:
7- earth orbit, no LEM
8- lunar orbit no LEM
9- earth orbit w/LEM
10- lunar orbit w/LEM, near landing
11-17 lunar landing (except for 13)
Aged nine, I was in bed. The landing was in the small hours UK time and though my parents (and uncle and aunt) stayed up to watch it, it was Past My Bedtime and with a fine sense of the historical significance, my parents were uninterested in negotiating.
You can tell I haven’t let this sour me, can’t you?
I was in my first year of college at Penn State University/ Ogontz Campus outside of Philly when the first Space Shuttle launched. The landing happened at the exact time of the start of our final in Film Theory class. The instructor was an officious prick who refused to allow us to turn the t.v. set from video input mode to standard signal so we could all watch the Shuttle land.
I’m not exactly the rebel type but I did literally walk down from the row I was sitting in in the amphitheatre and turn the knob and looked at him and said, " This is human history being made right now. If you’re going to fail me for doing this, cool. But we are going to watch this Shuttle land back on the planet Earth. "
I was surprised. He got a little smile, sat down, and watched it with the rest of us. And he didn’t fail me for getting up in his grill about it.
I was 18 working as a cook in a fish and chip restaurant in California. Sunday was usually one of the slower days of the week, but from 5-7pm there was a mad rush and a line formed round the parking lot. At about seven this was all served and suddenly there were no customers and no cars on the street- deathly quiet and strange.
We closed down the fryers, sat down and watched the landing on a black and white portable someone had brought in.
Well, I did ask my Dad about it. Oddly, he doesn’t remember getting all teary eyed. So now I’m not sure if that’s true, he’s playing tough guy*, or my mind had made that up. Oh well.
But he did confirm for me that he felt huge and insignificant at the same time. He was a little sad, since he was passed over for the program (Gemini & Apollo), but amazed that they had actually done it. He truly believes that it was the greatest technological achievement in human history. He also said he was a bit jealous of them too.
Then he went on a minor rant about John Glenn getting all famous (before being an astronaut) by breaking the transcontinental speed record in the same plane my Dad flew (F-8 Crusader, but several years earlier), and this degenrated into a genuine tirade about how Senator John McCain was a horse’s pr**k (Dad’s words, not mine) because he was the worst Safety Officer my Dad ever flew with (again, his words, not mine).
So now I know why I didn’t ask my Dad about this earlier!
*when my brother and I were kids, my Dad was tough on us. Military tough. We grew up thinking this was normal, as all kids do. Then Pat Conroy wrote “The Great Santini”, they made a movie of it with Rober Duvall (sometimes called “The Ace”), and we realized we were both alone in the horror of our childhoods, and not so alone because at least one other person on the planet understood us. To this day, my brother jokes when people ask what he is like, he just wants to hand them his dog-eared copy of that book and let them have at it.
I was 12. We were having our annual family vacation in Panama City Florida. I watched it on the motel TV with my parents.
Funny sidenote: Years later I was working with a bunch of UK flight intructors at a little school. On the anniversary, one of them quipped that “…only Yanks would fly all the way to the moon… and bring a CAR!”
