Can you possibly imagine being shot into Outer Space
atop the most powerful rocket ever built by humans,
inside a glorified ash can with primitive electronics?
To me, thats tantamount to an Ojibway Indian canoeing 25
miles to Lake Superior's Isle Royale in a birch bark
coffin..To mine Copper! Bravery and an overwhelming sense of
adventure thats is hard to even put into words.
For the ones still breathing of MY Generation, there are those
unforgetable moments frozen in time...
The JFK/Lee Harvey Oswald Murders
The Bobby Kennedy/MLK Murders
AND...The First Man on the Moon!
I was in my buddy Dallas Griffus's back yard, watching his
12 inch B/W with aluminum foil attached to the rabbit ears!
I remember it like was yesterday....
Fearless Pioneer!!
You took that first Giant Leap...
Rest in Peace Brother.
18 comments:
though i was alive i was too young to be cognizant of this event. can't imagine the breathless anticipation of the nation when he stepped out of the lunar module.
I thought it was cool that I was 11 when Apollo 11 made that landing.
And yes, I did go outside and wave at Armstrong and Aldrin, so they'd know we were proud of them. :)
would be pretty cool...and scary...so much could go wrong....spent a bit of time yesterday talking about it with another guy...
Oh, I SO loved this post!
Well said. Took my family to the San Diego Museum of Air and Space and showed my son all we could about the first man to walk on the moon and the eleven men who followed.
Yep--and now it's all over. No more manned space flight, or space exploration out of the US, unless some private corporation heads out there to take rich people for rides or build ponzi scheme credit swap derivatives on Martian condos or something.It's almost fitting that Armstrong passes now, to set the seal on the end of it all.
Well captured.
Aloha from Honolulu
Comfort Spiral
=^..^=
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I remember watching the moon landing on TV - it was so E.X.C.I.T.I.N.G. and I.N.C.R.E.D.I.B.L.E.!
Remember what John Glen said how he felt in the Mercury capsule years later when asked:“I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of 2 million parts—all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”
Apollo was still bid that same way 'cept it was more like 4 million parts. Those were times of deep respect for accomplishment.
Thank you for this wonderful post! I miss the space program. Now we can't afford it. Now we have to spend all our money on war. I, too, remember the moon landing like it was yesterday. We had just returned from a camping trip in the Rockies and my Dad turned the TV on and told us all to watch, which in itself was memorable as we were seldom allowed to watch TV. We huddled around on the floor, chin in hands. Thanks for the memory, the reminder of what we can achieve when we aren't focused on arming the world.
Wow love the B&W with foil rabbit ears! we had those-yup- do not remember exactly what I was doing when moon walking happened- but I remember
being all over the news! I wrote a poem
about the day JFK was shot ( the timing was off) my events did happen-just not exactly "When" I recall!
I can't even imagine having the kind of courage he had.
I was 5 and still peeing the bed.
I guess outer space trips are now what to get someone who has everything..
xoxo
I so appreciate this post, Galen. I was living in Cambridge, MA, at the time, like you, glued to the set and downing vodka with my dad, of all people. I'd just finished nursing school and was there for a visit. That was one of the most exciting events of my lifetime and I had tears in my eyes. He was, indeed, a brave human being.
Very stressful job. Mission Control is no picnic either i assume.
Me, too, G. I stood outside the front door on that hot July night, looking up at the nearly full moon and trying to imagine a man standing on it, as I listened to him say, "one small step..." I still get chills remembering it.
Thanks for this, G.
We tend to think of those moon-shots as just flawless marvels of engineering (well, OK, except Apollo 13, but that was an amazing engineering feat just to get the guys home alive. . .)
It doesn't get a ton of attention these days, but Armstrong had to scoot horizontally 50ft or so above the moon's surface, coming withing seconds of running out of fuel, 'cuz the programmed trajectory was taking them into the middle of a field of boulders. Which would NOT have been good. . .
Funny, too, to think that those 'state-of-the-art' computers were probably less than the calculator I carry in my briefcase. . .
And. . . The shirt sounds like a bit of dialogue from any Joe Pesci movie. . .
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