Anybody else here see the Apollo 11 landing live?

[Sid]

I did see it, but I was too young to really understand the full significance of what I was watching. By the time the Apollo program was winding down though I was obsessed with spaceflight and astronomy and have been ever since.

[SRV Ron]

What? Admit my age? I saw it live as I stayed up after midnight to watch those extremely blurry first steps live as they took place. You can thank private enterprise that researched and developed those first cameras for use on Apollo for the tiny digital hi def cameras that are so affordable and often built into our cell phones and other devices.

[Mr. Scruffy]

What? Admit my age? I saw it live as I stayed up after midnight to watch those extremely blurry first steps live as they took place. You can thank private enterprise that researched and developed those first cameras for use on Apollo for the tiny digital hi def cameras that are so affordable and often built into our cell phones and other devices.

Yeah, today, if they sent someone, they´d probably find out on the surface, that they dont get any ´bars´ to call mission control..

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I wasnt even born that day, but my parents told me they have seen it live while they were still Kids, too.

[Munstation]

What I'm looking for is either NASA mmassivelyng to come back, SpaceX to manage to get a massive achievement done or, if all else fails, Copenhagen, you need to start making large rockets.

Edited September 10, 2020 by Munstation

[AlternNocturn]

I wish I'd been around to see a Moon landing, that would have been awesome. The most the most the people of this generation have to look forward to is a possible manned flyby of Mars in 2018 with Inspiration Mars, a possible Mars landing by 2025 (unrelated), yet another Mars rover, maybe an asteroid mission that may or may not happen and possibly a return to the moon. I'm not even allowed to be optimistic about NASA any more.

Private space companies are our only hope if we're ever going to go anywhere.

[Guest]

I remember it vividly. Even got to see the launch in person.

[Themohawkninja]

Sadly, no. My parents were only 8 when it happened so I wasn't even a though in their minds.

I did get to see one of the ATV-4 cargo vessels dock with the ISS live a month or so ago. Docking is a LOT more lengthy/boring IRL than in KSP. They spent probably half of an hour with the ATV about a meter away from the docking port trying to get everything precisely aligned (plus I think some piece of software went down for a little while), and they weren't even allowed to access the cargo for another few days!

[BostLabs]

I was nine. Oh yes, I remember.

[Skyrunner27]

No I was non exsistent at the timebut I did get to see the GRAIL mission crash into the moon live and the launch and docking of Expedition 35 and numerous shuttle launches and the final Atlantis landing.

[TinfoilChef]

I discovered the space program in time to watch the coverage of the Apollo 8 mission and followed it since. I was 10 when I watched the Eagle land on the moon and Armstrong do that first Lunar EVA.

If it were not for politics (poli meaning "many", tics meaning "insect vermin") I'm certain that we'd have had a thriving permanent base there by the '80s.

[Max Grant]

I was peas porridge in the pot.

Nine days old.

My dad watched the landing with a set of huge over-the-ear headphones so that it wouldn't wake me up. Maybe I rolled over and looked at the TV while it was happening, but I wouldn't have seen much.

He still has the headphones, which is why I know the story.

[LameLefty]

I was a year and a week old. My parents watched but I was too young. The first mission I remember paying attention to was the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project when I was about 7.

[Max Grant]

I discovered the space program in time to watch the coverage of the Apollo 8 mission and followed it since. I was 10 when I watched the Eagle land on the moon and Armstrong do that first Lunar EVA.

If it were not for politics (poli meaning "many", tics meaning "insect vermin") I'm certain that we'd have had a thriving permanent base there by the '80s.

The next step was Mars, and the NERVA rocket was a real thing, it actually existed. It was canceled to "save the budget," according to the wiki article I read.

Of course I can't help noticing that it was saved to spend on Vietnam . . .

[OptimumAmoeba]

I was 18 months old, I was brought into the room for the big moment by my father but I don't remember a thing. My parents still have the newspaper from the next day which is a great read.

I just remembered I had lunar lander and Saturn V Airfix models when I was a kid they where great I wish I still had them.

[electricsheep]

I got to watch it first hand. Still very young but already reading my way through pop's hundreds of sci-fi books, of course I was thinking "heeere we go!". Oh well...

Just re-watched this mini series, it's a great KSP instruction video: From the Earth to the Moon

[Jackissimus]

Even if I were alive at that time, I still wouldn't be able to watch it, because they didn't show it on the TV in the eastern bloc. They just mentioned it in the newspaper somewhere, but there was very little information. I heard that it was on TV in Poland though, it must have been great to see it.

[HeadHunter67]

I probably watched it on TV - but I was 2 at the time, so I don't recall. My earliest memory of watching the Space Program on TV was the Apollo-Soyuz docking in space in 1975.

[lazarus1024]

I am hoping the next stop is going to be "one way to Mars". Fingers crossed it'll happen in my life time. One potential perks of having missed the moon landings is I have an intsy bit better chance of being alive for Mars landings.

I would be been born 14 years prematurely to have caught the Apollo 11 landings (and my parents would have barely been of legal age to get married where they lived then, at least they were dating at the time).

Sadly my earliest memory of a space related thing was watching the Challenger disaster. I was almost 4, but I still remember watching it on TV. We used to watch most of the Shuttle launches back when they were still shown on TV.

I am going to be sad if we never go back in to space in any meaningful way in my life time.

A trillion dollars for war, but barely anything for space. Makes me want to cry.

Edited July 31, 2013 by lazarus1024

[DChurchill]

I was 4. I vaguely remember it.

[Rainbowtrout]

No, but I will cry in a corner if I don't see a landing before I'm 29.

[Sof]

So many old people here. How do you even know how to use a forum?

[Geschosskopf]

I was 6 at the time and remember it well. All 4 of my grandparents were in the room, shaking their heads in amazement. I suppose it was even more amazing for them than it was for me. After all, I was born at the height of the space race; all my young life I'd known we were going to the moon and for at least the last few years I'd been watching the steps toward it unfold. So to me, it was just another milestone in the normal course of business of the time, especially because I knew we were going back again in a few months.

My grandparents, however, all said they never thought it would work. Thinking about that now, I'm somewhat surprised. Those folks lived pretty much the entire 20th Century so saw more amazing things happen in their lives than most folks in all of history before or since. When they were born, like most people they lived with technology little changed from the days of Rome. But they saw WW1 and WW2 totally change how the world was organized. They saw airplanes and even cars come from nothing to being commonplace. They saw electricity spread across the country (they didn't get it until the 1930s). They saw all the earliest steps of the space race that happened just before my time. So you'd think nothing would have surprised them. But I guess they paid more attention to the earlier steps and knew the failure rates .

[Cydonian Monk]

I was -9. (Yes, that's a negative nine.) If I saw it I don't remember it.

I suspect we're reaching the point where the majority of people didn't see STS-51L live (or hear about it within moments).

[bracknellexile]

So many old people here. How do you even know how to use a forum?

Documentation on stone tablets, a working punch-card reader and a 9600 baud modem!