Anybody else here see the Apollo 11 landing live?

[Gus]

I imagine I'm one of the few. I was 8.

[FlamedSteak]

Nope, I was 7 years away from birth. I'm going to be bitterly dissapointed if I don't see at least one before I die.

As far as I'm concerned we should have permanent settlements up there by now. Instead we have incredibly advanced military weapons.....which is a pretty crappy trade off.

[rotorwashed]

I'm very jealous. That must have been absolutely mind blowing.

[doggie015]

That was well before my time.... We REALLY need to back there even if it is only to set up the best telescope possible within earth's gravity!

[Crown]

You are officially old.

And very happy to see the first steps into a new era.

[CalculusWarrior]

I really wish I could have seen one, but alas I am much too young to have seen it. It has only been recently that my interest in space has really been piqued (a large part due to KSP), and so I didn't pay too much attention to the Shuttle launches when they occurred. Now I really wish I had, but I watch the astronauts up in the ISS, and am very interested in the plans to send humans beyond LEO such as the SLS.

[Uncle Mort]

15 at time ~ I remember it vividly.

[JaneKermen]

I saw it. I was 13. I remember at the time that the Russians were the very bad guys of the time (exactly like Iran is viewed today) but for that day the entire world was united and the entire world was watching their televisions together.. The video were blurry and full of static and they were only black and white The next day pretty much every newspaper in the country had the picture of Neil Armstrong taking up half of their front page. I had that newspaper photo framed on my wall for many years.

America has never been as great since nor more admired.

[Necandi Brasil]

I will be VERY disappointed if i don't see neither a moon or mars landing in my lifetime (I'm almost 24) from the U.S. , because I can't expect anything from my really bad Brazilian government.

[Gus]

I remember saying that we'd be on Mars by 1980. I really do.

If someone had told me it would be over 40 years before we went, not to Mars, but back to the moon!?, I would have laughed and thought the person an idiot.

[Scarecrow88]

Hands up to say I too am old enough to have been able to watch it live. One of those moments that will always be in your memory.

[tssn1611]

Unfortunately, no. The moon landings were about 20 years before my time.

[togfox]

I heard curiosity land live. Im content. My last goal in life is to get Jeb off the Mun.

[kenny'sghost]

I was not to be born for another 18 years... Hopefully I will get to see a moon landing in my life time..

[Akinesis]

Although it was 14 years before I appeared on the planet, I'm just glad that media accessibility has made it so easy to see video's and read text today. Sure, it would have been amazing to watch it for the first time, but we can relive so much of it today in a way that was impossible at the time.

I follow the Voyager's progress, of which I am super excited to be witnessing. And I got up early to watch Curiosity land. I'm also super excited about Horizons!! There's just so much to look forward to It's just a shame that there was an apparent slump in space exploration, but that definately looks to be changing now. And I fear I may have wondered off topic...

[Apollo1391]

Well sadly I wasn't around in that great time but NASA hopes to go back to the moon in 2017 and 2019 and establish a base in 2025 as well as go to mars as early as 2023 but we could only do those if NASA had a larger budget so they might get shelved

[Decho]

Nope, that was 23 years before I was born. And as others have said will be disappointed if I don't get to see a manned mission at least to the moon in real time at some point.

[dlmarti]

Yes I remember it.

[el_coyoto]

I'm way too young (I would have been -12 years old), but my father saw it on TV and he was 21 yo at the time. I remember he told me his only complaint about it was the inconvenient time of the landing and firsts steps in our timezone (France).

He used to tell me that this was one of the three most defining events of his life, along with the Cuba Missile Crisis and the premiere of '2001 : A Space Odyssey'...

Yeah, my dad was awesome and gave me with his passion for space.

Edited July 31, 2013 by el_coyoto
typos

[Mr. Scruffy]

Nope, that was 23 years before I was born. And as others have said will be disappointed if I don't get to see a manned mission at least to the moon in real time at some point.

This thread just gets more and more depressing for anyone like me, who is not old enough to have seen it live, yet old enough to be almost twice the age of other forumites...

[bracknellexile]

This thread just gets more and more depressing for anyone like me, who is not old enough to have seen it live, yet old enough to be almost twice the age of other forumites...

You're not alone in being old but not quite old enough.

I was born in time to see Apollo 16 and 17 (or at least my father tells me I saw them, I have no recollection) but I'm just young enough to have missed one of the most pivotal moments in human history

[Epthelyn]

I was -25 years old, so no. I can't say I'm really disappointed by this since I'm fairly young in a time when technology is far superior to what it was back then and therefore, provided NASA or any other space agency/organisation get on with it, am likely to see something almost as special in my lifetime. Take Mars for example; the idea of watching a Martian landing in HD in 2023 (1080p transmitted very quickly over 225 million km by 2023, anyone?) appeals to me more than watching a Moon landing in black and white (in 1969). I really hope that mission goes ahead, if only to prove that actually people do care about space exploration...

I guess it's one of those things that you have to experience properly to really have an opinion and realise how important it is. After playing KSP for months it's fairly easy to dismiss the Moon as, well, just the Moon In fairness real life doesn't have infinite money and 100,000x warp though

[Rhyunix]

Well, im 13 - It would be nice that withing our lifetimes (collective "our") that we really cared about exploring. Everyone goes:

"90% of the ocean hasn't been explored and blah blah blah"

But do we get the excitement from looking at the blue - For one minute in the whole of mankind's war-torn history, we stopped fighting, we stopped arguing, hell, we nearly stopped trembling about superpower politics. One man changed history yet an army of people helped him there. For one minute, we all looked up at the grey sphere and thought about what we can achieve. So I look up now as the Moon rises and I'm actually able to see it and I think about all that this world suffers from - I think to myself

Why can't we just do it for humanity?

The moon is an interesting place for science and stuff but look at what it does to people. It unites them which leads me to where I leave off

Why can't we be united again.

[Levelord]

I'm envious of the 60's.

We live in an age now where we haven't gone back to the moon in almost half a century. Now, people deny the moon landings ever happened. We live in a time where the dreams of supersonic passenger airlines died with the Concorde, the space shuttle program was cancelled, and the aspiration to achieve great things are lost from an entire generation.

We spend more money in the business of killing other people than in the space program. Soldiers garner unanimous respect from the public, because of the perception that they risk their lives for others. But nobody mentions respect for astronauts, who routinely put their lives at risk for the benefit of furthering scientific knowledge.

Then again, if we landed on the moon today, it's probably likely that people will be more interested in tuning in to shows on Kim Kardashian or Justin Beiber than watching anything related to space travel. An unfortunate truth of the current generation.

[Skorpychan]

My mother saw it live. I was too busy not being born yet.