Anybody else here see the Apollo 11 landing live?

[roosterr]

2/10 trolling. Come'on, dumb@ss, you can do better. I may be 61, but I've spent over 40 years as a computer programmer/developer. That's how I know how to use a forum. I've written forum applications.

I was 17 when I watched the moon landing live. I was living in Japan at the time.

Ditto here Apollo, I'm 43, am a programmer/developer and on the side run a popular CMS News site, among many gaming sites back in the day. You and I will forget more than the trolls will ever remember

[rdfox]

I was still -8 at the time of Apollo 11 (my first space-related memory is flying out of bed at full speed screaming "TODAY'S THE DAY!" at five AM for like three weeks before STS-1, and always having to be reminded that no, it wasn't launch day yet), but my father was in the Army at the time, assigned to a listening post in Berlin.

He was on-duty for the launch, but because some of the tech guys had rigged up a couple of spare receivers, a speaker rig, and an oscilloscope into a makeshift TV, he got to see a three-inch-tall green Saturn V ride a tail of green flame into a green sky for the launch, courtesy of Armed Forces Network. (While he was off-duty for the landing and EVA, apparently the same rig was used for that and the re-entry/splashdown/recovery for those on duty on the site...)

[Mr. Scruffy]

[...] (and such nonsense. I'm in Arizona, I don't even have grass. LOL!)

I pity you in all ambigiouty (i cant spell this word - possibly becaue i pity you so much right now)

[Mr. Scruffy]

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.

Totally missed this one until i saw some quotations of it.

Yeah, that´s actually what space flight is all about and (wo-)manned more so than probes: To do to the whole of mankind what the pyramids did for egypt. A task to unite over. The Kennedy speech (´we chose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard...´) is pivotal. Huamns are just this way: They need something to unite against. The 13 colonies united against the british. Germany united against France... Mankind should unite against the challanges of space - and it offers enough of that to try the best of our skills even without aliens. If such an era of such globally united and serious effort (on a warlike-scale, so to say) would persist only for a few decades with enough to show for it to make it worthwhile, the term ´mankind´ or ´human´ would have their meaning drifted to a new understanding, afterwards, just like the inhabitants of the nile valley started to call themselves ´egyptians´ some 5,000 years ago. And just like with pyramids, that ´worthwhile´ can be utterly devoid of any rational function.

Spaceflight, manned at least, is - or was - the modern tower of babel. In the end, we might end up learning more about ourselves, than about the universe.

PS: Hopefully?

Edited August 2, 2013 by Mr. Scruffy

[NeoMorph]

Yup... I watched it "Live"... or as close to live as was possible. Remember NASA had it on a time delay because they were worried of showing their astronauts dying on live tv. There was a guy with a finger on the button in case something went wrong.

But yeah, watching it happen on our black and white TV (think it was B&W) and seeing those low quality tv transmission pictures of Armstrong and Aldrin was amazing. I was bouncing around the living room when they landed. I was 8 as well.

[NeoMorph]

2/10 trolling. Come'on, dumb@ss, you can do better. I may be 61, but I've spent over 40 years as a computer programmer/developer. That's how I know how to use a forum. I've written forum applications.

I was 17 when I watched the moon landing live. I was living in Japan at the time.

I'm 52 and have a long list of the computers I have worked on. Mainframes, minis, micros and embedded. I bet most of these trolls don't even know a mainframe from a ham sandwich.

[Gus]

The moon is an interesting place for science and stuff but look at what it does to people. It unites them

Here's an Apollo 8 image that really blew peoples minds:

Oh, and this:

Images like these definitely had a profound effect on people... for a time at least.

And in KSP we get views like this all the time. That's one of the joys of playing this game.

Edited August 2, 2013 by Gus

[KevinTMC]

I was around for the last Apollo flights to the Moon, but was too young to understand or remember what was going on. The earliest missions that seized my imagination and that I remember were the Viking Mars landers.

Coming on the scene when I did, then, landing a man on the Moon was still fresh in peoples' minds, but a done deal. Obviously, Mars was next. The first images from Viking were electrifying, and I couldn't wait until astronauts got there in person.

I'm still waiting...as sure as ever that a manned mission to Mars is the next frontier, but less sure that I will live to see it myself.

P.S. Glad to see so many people in this thread are my vintage and older. The KSP user base stretches both older and younger than I might have guessed...it must have one of the broadest age ranges one can find outside the realm of "casual" games. Not to mention one of the sharpest user bases, ever eager to learn more (even when it involves--gasp!--math and science).

Edited August 2, 2013 by KevinTMC

[1D-1()T]

It's sad that politicians have no vision anymore. Look at the space race, or the Caledonian Canal, or the Snowy Mountain Hydro-Electric scheme.

These things took years, but they got done. They benefited humanity not just with the product, but with the doing.

A book written in 1977, Colonies in Space, demonstrates this spirit. It predicted giant orbiting colonies in space, mining the Moon, sending power back to Earth.

we had the technology, but lacked spine.

But now enterprising private organisations are picking up the baton. Hopefully.

[Hrdina]

I was around for the last Apollo flights to the Moon, but was too young to understand or remember what was going on. The earliest missions that seized my imagination and that I remember were the Viking Mars landers.

Coming on the scene when I did, then, landing a man on the Moon was still fresh in peoples' minds, but a done deal. Obviously, Mars was next. The first images from Viking were electrifying, and I couldn't wait until astronauts got there in person.

I'm still waiting...as sure as ever that a manned mission to Mars is the next frontier, but less sure that I will live to see it myself.

P.S. Glad to see so many people in this thread are my vintage and older. The KSP user base stretches both older and younger than I might have guessed...it must have one of the broadest age ranges one can find outside the realm of "casual" games. Not to mention one of the sharpest user bases, ever eager to learn more (even when it involves--gasp!--math and science).

Same for me. My dad says I saw Apollo XI, but I was only 1.5 at the time so don't remember any of the moon landings.

I remember being excited about the Vikings, and thinking it was just a matter of time until we had people there. I was 10 and wanted to be one of those people.

[Tankbuster32]

This thread makes me feel small and insignificant at a mere age of 15, but i hope i can add something to both this thread and to the exploration of space. If i don't see a mars landing within my lifetime i will probably lose all faith in humanity. Now however i think that if anybody are going to do something, it'll probably be either China or a private company (the US has however taken a step in the right direction with the Orion spacecraft which, if I'm not mistaken, will fly next year). I hate my generation for their short-sightedness and indifference to science and technology that doesn't concern their smartphones or Facebook-accounts. And also for the current politicians that think that "if I don't get a huge paycheck from this tomorrow or if it doesn't blow people up, it's not worth spending a dime for". one thing that I'm sad about is the fact that i didn't see the curiosity landing live. I've always been interested in space. I'm really glad that both old and young people are appreciating KSP and I love its community, I wish more people were like you.

[Spamal0t]

It's sad that politicians have no vision anymore. Look at the space race, or the Caledonian Canal, or the Snowy Mountain Hydro-Electric scheme.

These things took years, but they got done. They benefited humanity not just with the product, but with the doing.

A book written in 1977, Colonies in Space, demonstrates this spirit. It predicted giant orbiting colonies in space, mining the Moon, sending power back to Earth.

we had the technology, but lacked spine.

But now enterprising private organisations are picking up the baton. Hopefully.

I haven't seen the Apollo events, and I don't expect to see any manned landings of any kind in my lifetime (30 now). I might be a pessimist, but I think more like a realist: What potential benefit would we have from a base or colony on the Moon or on Mars now? apart from a proof of concept, we'd have so much cost for so little benefit that it would hurt...

We can send probes anywhere we want in the solar system, and land them in most places. It's relatively easy - compared to manned flight including landing and a roundtrip ticket - to place instruments like rovers and telescopes on the Moon.

[roosterr]

At the time, the only program I wrote with it was:

10 PRINT "I AM AWESOME!"

20 GOTO 10

Thankfully my programming vocabulary has substantially increased. I'm still awesome, though.

From what I remember, your code would create an endless loop:

I AM AWESOME!

I AM AWESOME!

I AM AWESOME!

I AM AWESOME!

I AM AWESOME!

I AM AWESOME!

......

LOL!

I forgot the kill command in BASIC though. Was it "end"?

[karolus10]

My first landing broadcast in my life was Mars Pathfinder TV coverage at age of 6 (I don't remember too much, but I was bit over-exited about this one).

I believe that Buzz Aldrin saw first steps live, but we won't had pleasure to meet him here Yet.

EDIT_1:

Everyone who won't saw lunar landings Live had quite large chances to see Chinese edition soonâ„¢ .

Edited August 2, 2013 by karolus10

[The Jedi Master]

Far, far, far too young. I'm always surprised how many older people play KSP. The closest thing I ever got was seeing Curiosity land... and I didn't see it live. Although I did watch the Redbull space jump, if that counts as a space mission.

[Arkantos22]

I missed it by a quarter century.

[Langkard]

I was 10 years old. It was the first time my parents let me stay up all night. I watched from several hours prior to the landing until Armstrong and Aldrin returned to the LEM from their excursion outside. I fell asleep not long before the Armstrong and Aldrin got their own sleep.

[pslytely psycho]

I was 10 as well. Sat there with my Official NASA models of the LEM and Command modules. They came with a set of continuously updating books you got each month with sticker pictures and models of the different space programs ships. The Saturn V, the Gemini, etc....

On a grainy, B/W 20" TV.....a memory unmatched for it's sheer magic.

[Flixxbeatz]

Nope, I'm 25 years ahead. Neither my parents did, since one was just a year old and the other one was about to be born at that time

[Kermudgeon]

Yup, my parents used to drag out the baby pictures from that day with my 4 year old carcass laying on the bear skin rug staring like any 4 year old can stare at the television. Although if it wasn't for the home pictures & my parents telling me about it years ago I'd not even be able to remember seeing it.

[Sid]

This thread makes me feel small and insignificant at a mere age of 15

It shouldn't do - people like you are the future. Now go make it happen, dammit