# You remember the Apollo moon landings, someone tells you he envies you for that. What you do answer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** middle-earth\ **Created:** [April 2, 2026, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965 "2026-04-02T13:57:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/21 "2026-04-02T20:35:17Z")
I watched the Apollo 11 landing live (and all the others, too) and even taped it on an audio tape recorder (home video tape did not yet exist). Watched it on CBS where the venerable Walter Cronkite was excitedly narrating. And I remember Neil Armstrong’s first words as he stepped on the lunar surface. It went like this: Armstrong: That’s one small step for man, [_crackle, pop_] one [_crackle, crackle, pop_] mankind! Cronkite: What did he say? TBH, I don’t remember Cronkite’s exact words, but he definitely had not understood Armstrong through all the static. It took some time – don’t remember how long – before it was decoded for the world. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/22 "2026-04-02T20:43:18Z")
I don’t know why anyone would envy me for being there during that time. Do they envy me for being 70 yrs old? I watched most of the launches and landings. As did most of the entire world, I remember that it was a really big deal for everyone. I am a bit perplexed for the need to repeat a pass around the Moon by Artemis. Did orbital mechanics change? What are we proving this time? We sent 6 manned landing missions to the Moon. Artemis is not even orbiting the Moon. It seems to me to be a very expensive publicity exersize for little benefit, getting no closer to landing. Most of the things being learned were aready learned by Apollo. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/23 "2026-04-02T20:50:01Z")
I was alive at the time, but I don’t remember the moon landing. I was seven years old, and the space race did not interest me at all. I was born on the day Wally Schirra flew the Sigma 7 around the world six times. That was what my father was watching on TV while my mom was suffering through labor. I don’t remember that either, the labor or the Sigma 7. ---
**Author:** ![Jaycat.again](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat.again/32/11525_2.png) [@Jaycat.again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaycat.again)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/24 "2026-04-02T21:21:30Z")
I can’t say I saw a moon landing. I can say I saw a TV show purporting to show a moon landing. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/25 "2026-04-02T21:22:26Z")
It’s all about flying something noteworthy years before the landing-capable configuration is ready. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/26 "2026-04-02T21:24:40Z")
I hope you’re splitting semantic hairs tongue in cheek. If you’re at all questioning the reality of Apollo this IMO isn’t the thread for that nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![XOldiesJock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/ec9cab/32.png) [@XOldiesJock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XOldiesJock)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/27 "2026-04-02T21:32:06Z")
> [@Jaycat.again](#): > > _I can say I saw a TV show purporting to show a moon landing._ Ha ha ha. As we all know now, it was done on a soundstage at M-G-M and directed by Stanley Kubrick. I’m astonished there are people who believe this. It would have required the silence of thousands of people. Surely, in 57 years, _somebody_ would have spilled the beans. As Mr. Franklin observed, “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.” ---
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/28 "2026-04-02T21:34:06Z")
I remember it superseding cartoons. Given the timing @Exapno_Mapcase gave above, that could well have been the splash-down, rather than the landing. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/29 "2026-04-02T21:39:15Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > You say “That’s nothing. I was in Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937 when the Hindenburg blew up.” This sounds like one of the setups in the classic “2000 Year Old Man” sketches: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2aHxL0gTbmQ/hqdefault.jpg "The 2000 Year Old Man - 1975 Animated Special") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aHxL0gTbmQ) I am not old enough to remember Apollo. But I remember Challenger disintegrating (it did NOT explode, godammit!!!). Recently, I have been made to feel old for seeing it live. Little bastards. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/30 "2026-04-02T22:02:21Z")
I would express scepticism that anyone would envy being _old_. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/31 "2026-04-02T22:26:18Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > So yes, **Spoons** , good idea: I ask you and anyone else who remembers the first moon landings. What do you reply to **Frodo**? I thought about this for a while, and it’s a tough question. I don’t think anybody has envied me for seeing the Apollo 11 moonwalk live. The closest anybody younger has come when they learn this is a remark like, “Wow! That would have been cool. What was it like?” Note that I was living in Toronto at the time, so times in my location were EDT. In my case, I had spent the day playing with friends in a local park. We kept an eye on the time, because we all wanted to get home so we could see the moon landing and the moonwalk. Which we did, and to make a long story short, our family was glued to the TV that night. Bedtimes for my sister and I were discarded so we could watch history in the making. And finally, at sometime after 11 pm EDT, Armstrong stepped out, said his famous words, and went for a walk. “Ho-lee shit,” I remember my Dad saying. The TV picture wasn’t the best, as you can see from replays today, but it was good enough that we could see Aldrin’s jump off the ladder, the flag being planted and other activity. I don’t know how long we watched that night, but it was a long time. And a few days later, we watched the astronauts splash down safely. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/32 "2026-04-02T22:29:12Z")
A slight correction before some pedantic Doper does some fault finding calculations from the clues I left in my above post: I was actually six years old during the moon landing. Not quite seven. Still bored me though. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/33 "2026-04-02T23:33:27Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > I am a bit perplexed for the need to repeat a pass around the Moon by Artemis. Did orbital mechanics change? What are we proving this time? We sent 6 manned landing missions to the Moon. Artemis is not even orbiting the Moon. It seems to me to be a very expensive publicity exersize for little benefit, getting no closer to landing. Most of the things being learned were aready learned by Apollo. It’s a test flight. It’s as different a vehicle from Apollo as a F-22 is from the Wright Flyer. We’ve had airplanes for over 100 years. We know how to make things fly. They still do test flights on new aircraft designs. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/34 "2026-04-02T23:40:54Z")
This Artemis flight will in fact orbit the moon. And the next Artemis flight, planned for next year, won’t even leave Earth orbit. It’s a pure test mission. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/35 "2026-04-02T23:54:31Z")
I remember it well, I was 14. What made bigger impact on me was the precision of the first shuttle landing, starting at about 25:35 > **[Space Shuttle: A Remarkable Flying Machine (1981)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcBy71Kha3g%2F)** > > Click to subscribe! http://bit.ly/subAIRBOYD Credit: NASA/JSC Launch date: April 12, 1981 Astronauts: John W. Young and Robert L. Crippen Takes the viewer th... ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2026, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/36 "2026-04-02T23:57:25Z")
The thing is, despite how excited everyone was about the moon landings at the time, they turned out in 20/20 hindsight to have been a dead end. Most people think that the failure to continue with manned exploration of the moon or beyond was a failure of vision or nerve, and think that a “For All Mankind” counter-factual might have come to pass if it hadn’t been for the nay-sayers. But a sober examination of the facts doesn’t support this. When did the “Space Race” end? Contrary to popular belief it did not end in July of 1969; it had in fact ended in October of 1967, when the Outer Space Treaty went into effect. This treaty banned basing nuclear weapons in space or establishing military outposts on the moon and beyond, and forbade nationalizing all or any part of the surface of celestial bodies. The idea behind the Star Trek episode “Assignment: Earth” or the opening space scenes of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, that every major power was going to have nuclear warhead satellites in orbit. The Saturn program itself had originally been a Dept. of Defense project to develop the lift capacity to support such military endeavors; at one point they were proposing launching 35 Saturn V’s _a year_ to build and support a USAF base on the moon. This was what the Space Race had **really** been about; it was never going to be about scientific exploration. The Apollo program was proposed both as a propaganda stunt and that it would incidentally create the hardware necessary to support military missions; and when that was forestalled by the Outer Space Treaty, Apollo suddenly had no purpose worth the price tag. If there had been any commanding purpose to manned spaceflight, the Soviets (who were inveterate worshippers of modernity and tech) would have gone ahead whether the USA did or not; but no nukes, no heavy-lift launchers. I like to compare the Apollo program to the voyages of Chinese admiral Zheng He. Unlike the oceanic exploration undertaken decades later by the Portuguese and Spanish, Zheng He’s voyages had no organic grounding in the economy of China; they were a purely top-down endeavor brought about for political purposes and they served no purpose once the political winds changed. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2026, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/37 "2026-04-03T00:29:52Z")
Yup. Once it was obvious the Soviet N1 couldn’t / wouldn’t reach the Moon, it was game over. We’d won the race that mattered. The military/ propaganda race. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2026, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/38 "2026-04-03T00:40:01Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > I don’t know why anyone would envy me for being there during that time. Do they envy me for being 70 yrs old? Yeah, the noises i make when getting up are not to be envied. > [@wolfpup](#): > > And I remember Neil Armstrong’s first words as he stepped on the lunar surface. It went like this: > > Armstrong: That’s one small step for man, [_crackle, pop_] one [_crackle, crackle, pop_] mankind! After some research, Armstrong did say “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind!” the “a” was covered by static or something. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2026, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/39 "2026-04-03T00:48:34Z")
Third graders in the schools where I’ve been subbing were learning about Apollo 11 recently. I think both the kids and teachers were impressed that I watched it when it happened. For some reason I remember the splashdown more vividly. Four year old me was very interested in oceans. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2026, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965/40 "2026-04-03T00:51:11Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > > [@wolfpup](#): > > > > And I remember Neil Armstrong’s first words as he stepped on the lunar surface. It went like this: > > > > Armstrong: That’s one small step for man, [_crackle, pop_] one [_crackle, crackle, pop_] mankind! > > After some research, Armstrong did say “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind!” the “a” was covered by static or something. You can do all the research you want. I was listening to (and recording) the live feed from CBS at the time, and there was a fair burst of static and Walter Cronkite at first did not understand what Armstrong had said. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-remember-the-apollo-moon-landings-someone-tells-you-he-envies-you-for-that-what-you-do-answer/1028965.md?page=3)