Apollo XI + 40... Where Were You?

[Steve Scott]

July 20, 1969, just under a decade after the late President John F Kennedy challenged the nation to put a man on the moon and safely return him, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first earthlings to land on the surface of the moon.

I recorded the event from live TV using a Sony reel-to-reel stereo tape deck and microphones. I still remember those immortal words as the LEM Eagle (Armstrong was also an Eagle Scout) maneuvered for it's historic touchdown:

...series of beeps...
Aldrin: "30 seconds. Contact light. Okay. Engine stop,"
Armstrong: "Shutdown. (pause)... Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed".
Mission Control: "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again".

I had just graduated high school in Tacoma, Washington and was taking flying lessons from Oswald's Flying Service in nearby Fircrest - one of several private airports which are now long gone and replaced with the inevitable strip malls. It was a glorious sunny Sunday and I was scheduled to take my first solo flight in a Piper PA-28 Cherokee 140 later in the evening. After my solo, I taxiied up to the apron, a guy came running out of the office and said, "Man, they're hopping all around up there."

I drove the 4 miles home in my green 1967 VW Beetle. It was always a weird feeling being confined to only 2 dimension transportation after a 3 dimensional experience of flight. Despite still being very much daylight (darkness didn't settle in the Puget Sound region until well after 10pm), there wasn't a soul on the road. No one. No kids outside playing, no dogs barking. It was as eerie as those sci-fi movies where a scene of a deserted New York City is shown with only newspapers blowing in the street. When I got home, I watched the rest of the first lunar EVA. I thought, "Geeze, what a bummer. Here it is my big day and I'm being upstaged by these guys."

[jim gilmore]

There ya go putting life into the context it is....There's always something better/worse/bigger/ whichever.
Your solo was a BIG moment. And a guy walking on the Moon well thats something you still don't see every day. Me I haven't a clue where I was. 1969 I was most likely on summer vacation after graduating from grade school.

[Steve Fitton]

I was nine months old on 20 July 1969, so I was probably rolling around figuring out how to crawl....

The first spaceflight I remember was the first shuttle launch, which I recorded on a cassette player.

Oddly enough, I looked around and found a picture of me in July, 1969:

[proparc]

My uncle was on the team that developed the reaction rockets for the LEM. He said that the young engineer,( I believe he was 35) who headed up the L.E.M. project was a genius.

[Robert Zambelli]

I was in Basic Training, at Fort Campbell, Ky. Someone found a little black & white TV and we set it on the barracks window sill, facing outside.
Then, the whole company watched as history was made.
Rememeber it like it was yesterday.

Bob Z.

[Bill Heher]

I was a 10 year old Space Freak - glued to the TV with my Dad and a house full of people.  We had a 25" color TV and I remember someone asking why the picture was in B&W. My dad said - "They are sending live pictures from the moon-  what do you want!" A few missions later we got color.

I think I saw just about every launch, moon walk, splashdown or the Apollo program. I can remenber setting the alarm clock to get up in the middle of the night for a couple moonwalks - and my dad was there, even though he had to go to work in the morning.

I drank Tang, built models, collected newspaper articles, lived and breathed the space program. It was a great time to be a kid - and it saddens me to no end that todays youth don't seem to have anything that fills them with a sense of wonder and excitement that seeing a grainy picture of a guy in a bulky suit stomping around in the dirt did for me.

We were lucky to experience it.

God Bless America!!

[afml]

Thanks Steve for the trip back to 1969!

I was a youngster at the Navy sponsored Nats in Willow Grove, PA watching the coverage. Still remember most of the details from those two incredible weeks.  

I was flying combat with a Demon powered Fox Blackhead Combat Special. Didn't know enough to go after my opponet when the lines became entangled. Flew loops around his plane till they were free in order to give him a fair chance.  Also flew HLG and Proto Speed with the other Regional Champs to determine the Grand Winner. Then the Navy flew all of us down to Pensacola, FL for a week touring the Navy Museums, seeing where the Astronauts train, and riding in a Landing Craft in the bay. The trip down was in a C-118 and got caught in a thunderstorm. The first one to ask what the paper bags were for was the first to use it!  

"Tight Lines!"

Wes

[don Burke]

I was at a motocross in Carlsbad, CA.  Somebody had a portable TV and we watched it there.

[Jim Pollock]

Where was I,  Oh yeah.....hee, he

I was flying co-pilot on a charter Western Airlines flight from the Stockton, CA airport to the Redding CA Airport where some real estate moguls were entertaining about 5-6 potential investors in a development project.  I spent the afternoon of 20 Jul, 1969 watching TV in the lounge at the Redding airport waiting for them to return.  While I watched TV good old Neil Armstrong descended the steps of the Lunar Lander and said, according to his own words at a later time, "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."  Apparently radio static between the moon and earth took off the "a" and it sounded like "for man" instead of "for a man".  Anyway, later that after noon, I flew as Captain of Western Airways flight "??" that returned to Stockton in the Piper Navajo that we used that day.  The only time I ever flew as Captain of an airline flight!   How about those apples!

Jim Pollock      

[John Miller]

What an encridible time that was. I was 5 years out of the Navy. On that day I was involved in commercial fishing for Salmon out of Kodiak Alaska. I was on a purse seiner, probably near Deadmans bay, on the southern end of Kodiak Island.

We heard the news via short wave radio, we were soo remote that there was no TV there in those days.

It wasn't until the middle of August, when I returned to Western Washington, where I lived at the time, that I saw recordings of those moments.

[Dan McEntee]

   If memory serves me correct, and I think I've won a soda pop bet or two on this the landing was in the afternoon, and the EVA was that night. We only had one working TV at that time in my Mom's bedroom, a black and white portable set, and it was dark out. I'm thinking it was at least 9 or 10PM Central Daylight Time. I've been meaning to look up one of the web sites that is redoing the coverage of the whole flight in the proper time line and might do that tonight.
   I was a space junkie at that time also,from the first Mercury missions and still am today. The guy that does my taxes Dad worked on the Mercury and Apollo spacecraft at the then McDonnell Aircraft. It was a great time to be a kid interested in science and aviation. Kids today really don't have anything "new" or challenging to get interested in or wonder about. Have all the major milestones really been conquered? Maybe we're ready for a trip to Mars? "We will do these things and the others not because they are easy, but because they are hard!"
   Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

[Zuriel Armstrong]

Glued to the T.V.  Anytime anything NASA or with wings came on I would park in front of the T.V. until I either had to go to bed, I was 9, or the event ended.  I remember most of the NASA programs and built models of the Saturn V and the L.E.M.  Very Cool Memories

[Russell Shaffer]

Sitting in a dayroom in a barracks at George Air Force base in California.  We had a good TV and I've never forgotten that day. 

[john e. holliday]

After reading this it came back.  I knew I hadn't taken a day off as I had only been back to work with Southwestern Bell Telephone for three months.  Was off work work because of a motorcycle accident that happened on halloween night  1968. 

I still remember sitting at home years before with my Dad watching Sheppard go up into space for a short duration.  Then it was listening to the radio at Ray Smith Motors when Glenn orbited the earth.  It is hard to beleive the many things that have happened in just the last few years.  We have far surpassed Dick Tracy and his wrist raadio watch.  Have fun, DOC Holliday

[Frank Sheridan]

I was ten years old, and on summer break from school. I remember the grainy black and white pictures on tv. What I remember more than that was the carboard Lunar module that you built from a Gulf gas station giveaway promotion. Anybody else build one of those?

[Matt Colan]

Absolutely nowhere, my parents were weren't even two on July 20.  I was born 24 years and 364 days after that day in 1969 (July 19).

[Paul Smith]

July 20 was and still is  birthday, they're always doing something to upstage the event.

The moon landing.
That nasty scuffle in Detroit that closed the bars for two weeks during my 21st,
and of course, that Valkrie fiasco.

[Bill Heher]

I just realized that the landing was on the 20th.  I really wish I could have seen a Saturn V lift-off, people I've talked to who saw one said it was a whole different experience than a Shuttle launch.

Does anybody remember the plastic Tang container that once it was empty you hung from the rack in your oven and when heated it changed shape into a Command Module that you could use as a bank? I had one, painted it Sliver, but the paint did not want to stick to the special " shaped memory plastic".

[Jack Pitcher]

I was aboard an Air Force WC-135-B en route from Yokota AB, Japan to Eielson AFB, Alaska. We flew this weather/nuclear recon mission, code named "Robin Charlie", every day of the year in one direction or the other. We were proceding along the route north from Japan, passing offshore the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka and across the Aleutions and the Bering Sea into Alaska. The late stages of the moon landing were in process during the flight and our pilots were constantly trying to keep a radio station tuned that we could monitor for details. We would get one for a while and then it would fade out, then find another till it faded out. We missed the actual moments of the landing itself when we were making our own approach and landing at Eielson. I remember the excitement among our ground crew when we blocked in. We had to rely on them for the final details of the landing. An eventful day to be sure.

Jack

[Steve Scott]

I think I saw just about every launch, moon walk, splashdown or the Apollo program. I can remenber setting the alarm clock to get up in the middle of the night for a couple moonwalks - and my dad was there, even though he had to go to work in the morning.

That would describe me as well.  I remember getting up at 4am on Christmas Eve to watch Apollo VIII emerge from the back side of the moon to see if their critical lunar insertion burn was successful.  Then to hear Frank Borman read from the Book of Genesis...  It was about a religious experience as I've since encountered.

I drank Tang, built models, collected newspaper articles, lived and breathed the space program. It was a great time to be a kid - and it saddens me to no end that todays youth don't seem to have anything that fills them with a sense of wonder and excitement that seeing a grainy picture of a guy in a bulky suit stomping around in the dirt did for me.

I was a 4th grader in a rural Tennessee WWI-era school building (my old man was active duty at Sewart AFB in Smyrna) when Alan Shepard had his historic flight.  Our school principal rounded everyone out of the classrooms into the auditorium where an old B&W TV on a spindly metal stand showed Shepard's 16 minute sub-orbital flight.  I still remember the newspaper headlines the following day - in big bold red lettering,  SPACE SHOT SUCCESS

We were lucky to experience it.

God Bless America!!

To take a quote from Charles Dickens, those were the best of times, and the worst of times.  We forget the Vietnam was was tearing the country apart and we weren't too popular in the rest of the world but it was certainly a stunning scientific achievement.  I believe something like 450 million watched it on TV.

Those of us who have lived through Sputnik, Khruschev, Toody & Muldoon... "oooh, oooh!!"

[Dave Adamisin]

I was stuck at work. I was working 6am to 6pm shifts at a gas station. One of the owners was supposed to relieve me at 6pm but didn't show (this happened about 4 times a week) the jackass was next door at the bar getting hammered and probably watching the landing. I stayed till 1am then locked up and went home. Luckally I was able to see it in the morning on the news. Thank goodness they taped. I called in the next day to tell my boss about the new job I was looking for......

[Steve Scott]

 I really wish I could have seen a Saturn V lift-off, people I've talked to who saw one said it was a whole different experience than a Shuttle launch.

My HS history teacher saw an unmanned test of the Saturn V.  I also had that 3' model of it.  He said it was awesome, the fire engulfing the entire vehicle then to see it slowly rise from the pad.  The noise hit you a bit later.  Then you felt the heat.  That, he said, was incredible.

[Steve Scott]

Who can forget this epic shot taken on Christmas Eve, 1968 from Apollo VIII?

[Steve Scott]

  If memory serves me correct, and I think I've won a soda pop bet or two on this the landing was in the afternoon, and the EVA was that night.

Official timeline of the entire mission:

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_11i_Timeline.htm

And yes, the landing occurred 20:17 GMT on 20 July which equates to mid-afternoon US Central.  Armstrong's EVA occurred just prior to 3am GMT on 21 July or roughly 10pm US central (still on July 20 for us Norte Americanos).

[peabody]

I was in Lawton OK, Fort Sill.....orders hot in hand to go to Viet Nam and a cannon cocker...watched on the TV in the day room.....

[Brett Buck]

I recorded the event from live TV using a Sony reel-to-reel stereo tape deck and microphones. I still remember those immortal words as the LEM Eagle (Armstrong was also an Eagle Scout) maneuvered for it's historic touchdown:

...series of beeps...
Aldrin: "30 seconds. Contact light. Okay. Engine stop,"
Armstrong: "Shutdown. (pause)... Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed".
Mission Control: "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again".

Deke

   I listened to it on the AM Radio in a '66 Chrysler Newport, while my dad drove us down Alligator Alley on a vacation. As they called out the altitudes, my dad would pull up on the car in front of us to match the distance so it was easier to visualize. I figured they were going to abort due to computer alarms - I knew vaguely that those were not expected, although obviously not that it was a task overrun because of a mis-configured rendezvous radar and a software bug.

    We watched the EVA on the TV at a Holiday Inn in Fort Lauderdale. While I put together my paper model of the lunar module w got at a gas station (
http://jleslie48.com/0206pr/gulflem_100pc.zip )

    A couple of days later, we did the Kennedy Tour, and stood on a balcony in the VAB where Apollo 12 was all stacked up, Apollo 13 was about half-done, and parts of 14 were laid out on the floor. Same balcony shown in "Apollo 13" where Deke comes to talk to Jim Lovell (and at about the same "time"). Heady stuff for anyone, heaven for a very space-minded 8-year-old (actually, 7 years and 358 days).

     Brett

[Dennis Adamisin]

Laying down behind the 3rd seat of the Mercury Colony Park SW, with an eye on the airplane trailier, as we made our way home from the '69 NATs, listening to it on the radio...

"The Eagle has landed'

[Michael Floerchinger]

I was sixteen years old, my dad had just built a Heathkit color TV, the old round tube, we were the first in our neighborhood to have a color set. I remember sitting there amazed that something like that could happen in my lifetime, watching man walking on the moon! We talked of colonies on the moon and the next step Mars ……………….. seems that we have gone backward.

[don Burke]

Read in the paper today that NASA has issued enhanced, more clear, copies of the original videos of the first moon steps.  They had to use newsreel tapes of their shots since some dingbat at NASA erased the original tapes.

[Dean Pappas]

Hi Gang,
I was a 12 year old; huddled, along with all my troop-mates at the Floodwood Mountain Reservation Boy Scout camp in the Adirondack mountains of New York, around an olive-green plastic cased GE transistor radio listening to every beep, crackle and word like our lives depended on it.
Thanks for the opportunity to remember the moment,
Dean Pappas

[Glen Wearden]

I was in Vietnam on my second tour, assigned as the XO of a heavy artillery battalion in northern I Corps.

Glen Wearden

[Clayton Berry]

My dad was a model maker for Boeing at the time.  Those simulations that we all got to watch were things the ol' man built.  1/4 scale mostly, but all sorts of stuff.  What a cool job.  Was laid off in 1970 or 1971 when it all came to an end.  Huntsville.  19 years with Boeing.  Broke his heart, I assure you.

In our house, the ol' Sylvania was tuned to it every time.  Which might explain why I brought a TV to work the day the shuttle blew up.  What a sad day.

And know, ol' Walter expires.  Think I'm gonna turn the sound down and play a bit of canasta.

[Roger Vizioli]

Was right there at launch for Apollo XI and all the preceeding and remaining missions.
Worked the program from Conceptual Design, Proposal submittal, Preliminary Design and through the last mission.
It was a great time and I am glad/privileged to have been a part of it.  
Roger V.

[ChrisSarnowski]

I was a month short of being 7 years old at the time, and we got to watch some of the Apollo action on TV in school.
They would roll in sets on wheeled carts so we could see what was going on.

-Chris

[Steve Scott]

Wow, all interesting recollections.  And now, with the passing of Walter Cronkite yesterday, another chapter closes on the legendary figures of the 20th century.

I was also saddened to learn of the passing of a USAF LtCol John A. "Shorty" Powers back in 1980.  To those of us who remember the Mercury missions, Shorty Powers was the voice of Mission Control.  He was 57 when he passed.  My age today <sigh>.

We'll probably never witness such an epic event again in our lifetimes but I am glad I was around to see it.

Attachment (from Wikipedia) of Cronkite, Powers and Aurther Godfrey during a Mercury mission.

[Bill Little]

I was *home* with my Granddad, who raised me, and a couple friends.  It was totally awesome, something beyond *real*.  A man on the moon........  My Granddad was taken by it, since he had seen the first *airplanes* and then this.  I am happy to have been alive during a period when so many things changed and possibly the only time when so many things changed.  Technology doubles at astronomical speeds now, but there was a time when it took decades to double.

A great time to be alive, actually.

Mongo

[Bill Heher]

I remember Walter Cronkites coverage- later he has those cool models that had every component so he could demonstrate the Command module seperating and docking with the LM, LM Ascent Stage docking after moon lift-off, Command Module  / Service Module seperation for re-entry. I really wanted a set of those!

But it wasn't all serious science all the time - anybody remember singing the theme from this TV show-with slightly altered lryics??

http://www.tvparty.com/recits.html

[Brett Buck]

But it wasn't all serious science all the time - anybody remember singing the theme from this TV show-with slightly altered lryics??

   Endlessly.

     Brett

[John Stiles]

Camp Roberts Calif. Sniper School. 

[Robert McHam]

I had just tuned twelve and was on vacation in the Los Angeles area of Ca. visiting relatives. We were all gathered 'round the TV set watching in awe!

Robert

[Chris McMillin]

I remember it was about 8PM in Huntington Beach, CA, Mom and my sisters and brother were there watching. The flashing of LIVE FROM MOON.  Dad was on a trip and we had just returned from the '69 Nats. I was 10, watched it on the TV wondering why the picture was so bad, why the camera was fixed, and couldn't wait for someone to answer all of my questions!
Got to eat dinner with Neil Armstrong in '04 and my wife asked him all about the moon landing, I asked him all about the X-15. He seemed amused at the difference.
Chris...

[Steve Scott]

Got to eat dinner with Neil Armstrong in '04 and my wife asked him all about the moon landing, I asked him all about the X-15. He seemed amused at the difference.
Chris...

I remember seeing one of the Mercury capsules at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.
I attended high school with both of Chuck Yeager's daughters 65-66 while at Clark AB.

Re:  X-15...  While on a business trip in the 1990s, I picked up a book at the airport to kill some time, "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe.  It primarily detailed the Mercury program and how the X-15 drivers (apparently not including Armstrong) looked down upon these new "astronauts".  No piloting needed.  The late Scott Crossfield was perhaps the best known of the X-15 elite and there are some who argue that this group was the first to travel in space.  Great read and if you can find a copy, highly recommended.  They really heaped the praise on Yeager but perhaps were a bit unfair to Grissom.

I became so fascinated with The Right Stuff that I went out and read Yeager's autobiography.  In it, he spoke of Col. Jack Baughton, the F-105 pilot whose group came under fire from a Soviet freighter on a mission to Haiphong Harbor.  He returned fire, then tried to conceal the gun camera film and was Court Martialed.  Yeager had to sit on the board and said it was the most distasteful task in his distinguished military career.  Baughton also wrote a book called "Thud Ridge" which I bought.

[mike hartung]

Ft. Polk, LA. ( Tiger Land) becoming a G.I.  Watched on the TV in the day room.

[James Mills]

I was about 11 months old (and had been walking since 6 months, so I'm guessing I had my mom pulling her hair out ).
James

[Clint Ormosen]

I'm right there with James. I was almost 2 months old when the event happened, but at least I can say it happened in my lifetime.

[James Mills]

I'm right there with James. I was almost 2 months old when the event happened, but at least I can say it happened in my lifetime.

I hear that, I still like seeing the video.  I think my parents are still mad I skipped crawling and went to walking.

Jame

[RC Storick]

This is the day I can Verify Tom Wardens Continental. My dad had a contest in West Covina in the parking lot of his Hobby shop and it was there. I know this because we talked about it for weeks.

[dave siegler]

I was 9, there was a party at our house, I can remember going outside on a clear wisconsin night and lookng up at the moon.....   

I had a sterling mustand with cos power and a whole bunch of rockets at the time
Why isn't this a national holiday?  or somethng. 

[Steve Scott]

I can remember going outside on a clear wisconsin night and lookng up at the moon.....

And none of us gazes upward toward the moon with quite the same feelings as we had prior to that date 40 years ago, do we?

And we didn't do it just once, we did it SIX times!  Twelve individuals representing an entire planet have left their footprints up there...

Shame JFK didn't live to see his challenge answered.

[Robert McHam]

Oh my! I just remembered something!

As I mentioned in my previous post, Our family was on vacation in the Los Angeles area during that time. Now, I gotta say we drove from Alabama to California and stopped at a number of Gulf Oil service stations for gas. Gues whbat I got nearly every time? Yep, One of the promo paper punch out model kits of the Lunar lander! 

How many of you remember these? They used to sell them but if memory serves correct (er, sometimes it doesn't) you got one free with a fill up of at least 8 gallons or more. I don't recall my dad having to pay extra for the model. I do recall there were at least a couple of stations we stopped at that did not have any because they went fast. As a twelve year old I was severely bummed about this even though I already had some and would have opportunity at the next stop or two to get another. Kids huh?

I did have a great time with these and it did help the trip for me to have a super cool, highly relevant,model kit to put together that required no glue, no cutting, was already colored, so no painting either!

As for many Oil company promos, there was a cost if you didn't buy their gas or needed less than 8 gallons to fill up. Does anyone remember how much these sold for at the time? I'm guessing maybe a quarter? Could not have been much.
Oh! must show a picture!

Robert