I’ve had many more younger people envy me over the concerts I’ve seen than the moon landing. When I tell them I saw Van Halen when they were the opening band for Black Sabbath they are in awe, moon landing not so much.
You remember the Apollo moon landings, someone tells you he envies you for that. What you do answer?
I dont doubt that, but the later controversy was whether or not Armstrong had muffed it and forget the "a’. Yes, it had static, but I dont remember well exactly what I heard, so if that is what you heard, I believe you.
My parents left the USA at the end of 1968, and went off-grid.
So I didn’t get to see the moon landing, and have since been a bit envious. It’s one of the iconic moments in recent history, and I was … not there.
Having said that, I’ve never met anyone my age who actually cared. It was about 1PM local time, everybody was at school, they probably heard it over the school PA system, if their school even had a PA system: certainly Aus schools weren’t likely to have a TV.
Yeah, being off-grid in 69 and 70 I also missed learning about the Beatles. That would have been chart-topping “Abbey Road”, and “Let It Be” albums, but I didn’t hear that music (any music)
I tell them that my grandfather was 21 years old when the Wright Brothers flew and he not only lived long enough to see the Moon landing, but also the Space Shuttle.
Then I tell them I paid $6 for a 6th row seat to see the Who a month before the Moon landing and they’re really impressed.
My grandfather was born the same year. He didn’t quite make it to the Space Shuttle and he thought the moon landing was fake. As someone who didn’t routinely see cars until he was well into adulthood I gave him a pass.
I’m way old enough. 1969, the whole decade was in turmoil. Bay of Pigs invasion, missile crisis, assassination, New Society, Vietnam War … That summer the student deferments were out and we all were in the draft. I was more interested in the earlier flights of Mercury and Gemini. How could they land (splash down) these non-maneuverable spacecraft through an unpredictable atmosphere damn near the receiving ships. Almost hit one carrier I seem to remember.
Some humor - not for the gentle readers who are offended by language. It turns out the delay from landing on the moon to stepping on the surface was because they had to reshoot the sequence. The astronauts, being test pilots, were used to using rough language. Turns out, THE ONION of all media unearthed the actual communications from the moon and the mission controllers. Both parties were excitable. Link broken after Onion to protect the squeamish.
https://theonion .com/wp-content/uploads/2004/07/yrlxxmojgjc2o6ynvrcn.jpg
Serious note: “From the Earth to the Moon” (1998), a 12 episode dramatization of the Apollo series with Tom Hanks is excellent. From IMDB.
Actually it’s a free-return shot ala Apollo 13. This surprised me as Apollo 8 orbited ten times then left orbit to return. It will also sling around at a height above the moon of some 4,200 statute miles which is why folks are called these astronauts the furthest ever from the earth.
I had to work Sunday afternoon so I missed the landing on TV but we had the radio on at work (a sandwich shop). I made it home in time for the small step.
Great cite; thanks for that. The Onion comes through again.
FYI …
Another way to break links that’s less hassle for your readers is to enclose it in back-apostrophes. So enter this
`full unbroken url goes here`
to look like this:
https://theonion.com/wp-content/uploads/2004/07/yrlxxmojgjc2o6ynvrcn.jpg
Then folks can highlight & right-click or long press or copy/paste your url with no editing.
I remember the first moon landing, but I was only 3 years old. I knew it was a big deal only because all of the adults were making a big deal out of it. A 3 year old is still trying to figure the world out. You say men are walking on the moon? Ok, if you say so. You say milk comes from cows? Ok, if you say so. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood the significance of it all.
No one has ever told me that they envied me for it. That would seem very weird to me. If anyone ever did, my response would probably be something along the lines of “you envy me for being an old fart?”
It wasn’t that much to envy either. We watched the landing itself on this crappy little black and white TV, because that’s the only type of TV anyone ever had back then. Color TV existed before then but no one we knew got a color set until the mid 1970s.
My mother also took me outside and pointed up at the moon, and told me that men were up there now. I couldn’t see them (obviously) so to me I was just looking up at the moon. It didn’t look any different than it normally did.
Our whole family had watched every televised launch and recovery leading up to the first landing in 1969, and beyond. The most memorable, and enviable, was when my father and I drove from Providence to Florida in April 1972 to see the Apollo 16 launch in person. I’d just gotten my driver’s license, Dad had a red Corvair convertible, the weather was fine, and the speed limit on the New Jersey turnpike was still 70 miles per hour. My first, and best, roadtrip capped off by the loudest noise I’ve ever heard. I missed a week of school, and Dad wrote me an excuse “Bob missed the bus” which took some explaining, although entirely true.
I am still not convinced. Here is the wikiarticle for Apsis:
and here the orbit of the Moon, section elliptic shape:
Are we sure the moon has never been 4,200 miles further from the Earth than now, during this visit, during any of the previuos visits? The difference between perigee and apogee is given as 26,226 miles or 42,207 km, that is way more than the 4,200 statute miles that you indicate.
And they have been saying this about the 4,200 miles the whole time, long before they knew when the mission was going to finally take place. Does this when not determine the distance to Earth for the whole moon and thus also for the crew orbiting it? Has anyone checked?
I am willing to believe it, but it surprises me that they claimed this as a fact before they could know it was so, as far as I can tell. Or was one of the pre-set conditions for the current launch window, whenever that would happen to be, to coincide with apogee-est apogee ever?
I was six during Apollo 11 and didn’t think it was a big deal. I mistakenly thought astronauts had already landed on the moon twice since Christmas (Apollo 8 and 10). My dad was at work and I couldn’t figure out what the grainy picture was on our tiny B&W TV my mom was glued to. I went out and played with my friends who seemed similarly unimpressed. It was a bigger deal after splashdown and the capsule went on tour. My grandfather worked at Rockwell and took us to see it. He had all the big coffee table books and other swag NASA distributed to all of their contractors.
See this excellent article that describes the design compromises that had to go into Artemis and why the mission parameters are so compromised:
Now I’m envious. And would you have believed at the time that Pete and Roger would still be around now?
I had forgotten how well idlewords writes! The internet is not so big after all, some people you meet again 
ETA: Also very good to find out why they will get the furtherest from Earth ever (if they really do, see post three up): they only have power and fuel for a so called
Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit, or NRHO. A spacecraft in this orbit circles the moon every 6.5 days, passing 1,000 kilometers above the lunar north pole at closest approach, then drifting out about 70,000 kilometers (a fifth of the Earth/Moon distance) at its furthest point. Getting to NRHO from Earth requires significantly less energy than entering a useful lunar orbit, putting it just within reach for SLS and Orion.
I listened to it at age 12 sitting in school in New Zealand.
New Zealand didn’t have a satellite dish but Australia did. It was deemed important enough for the government to tell the air force to fly to Australia, wait for the film or tape or whatever it was and fly it back so we could see it that night on TV.
My favorite is:
Visionaries at NASA identified a futuristic new energy source (space billionaire egos) and found a way to tap it on a fixed-cost basis.
The part I remember was that back then we assumed Apollo 11 was just a step in a bigger process. We figured by 2026, we’d have cities on the Moon.
You remember the Apollo moon landings, someone tells you he envies you for that. What you do answer?
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“yep” …
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(I am not much of a people-person)
Good points and I was thinking that when I typed “folks are saying.” OTOH some of them were NASA folks, not reporters. I don’t know if there’s a list of where the moon’s orbit was in relationship to it’s apogee for the various Apollo visits. The NASA livestream often has the distance from the earth and moon as well as velocity. Since there will be no comms when Integrity is behind it I’m sure it will be up at the moment of furthest distance, there not being much else to see or hear.
The Aussies made a movie about that dish and the role it played.