My Apollo 11 memory....
Jul. 20th, 2019 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr150 years ago today, the crew of Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. (Technically, only Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed while Michael Collins remained in the orbiter.) What was I doing that day? Watching the coverage on CBS, with Walter Cronkite, on a black-and-white TV, and eating cherry chip birthday cake. (Yes, July 20 is my birthday.) It's the earliest memory I have; I can't remember anything from my life before that day.
What I -- or many other people watching -- didn't know how close they came to not making the landing. They had only 30 seconds of fuel remaining, and the folks in Mission Control were holding their breath. This segment from yesterday's NPR Morning Edition recounts those minutes leading up to the landing.
After they landed safely, they were instant celebrities. Neil hated the limelight and mostly kept to himself. He had a farm near Lebanon, OH, and briefly taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati in the 1970s. He passed away in 2012. I would have loved an opportunity to meet him and have a beer with him.
What I -- or many other people watching -- didn't know how close they came to not making the landing. They had only 30 seconds of fuel remaining, and the folks in Mission Control were holding their breath. This segment from yesterday's NPR Morning Edition recounts those minutes leading up to the landing.
After they landed safely, they were instant celebrities. Neil hated the limelight and mostly kept to himself. He had a farm near Lebanon, OH, and briefly taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati in the 1970s. He passed away in 2012. I would have loved an opportunity to meet him and have a beer with him.
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Date: 2019-07-21 07:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-21 08:25 pm (UTC)