40th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing

Awwww - come on, we ALL know that they never really got there, it was all done with smoke and mirrors on a Hollywood set.

More seriously, I will never forget watching the landing on TV (in France at the time) as a very young trainee engineer and being so excited by an amazing feat of engineering and more importantly "vision".

Hard to believe that it was 40 years ago -ho-hum.

The actual landing took place 4 days later (whatever a day means when one isn't on the Earth). The whole world held its breath while watching the television coverage live. The relief and joy when the Eagle had landed was phenomenal.

At the moment, several UK television stations are peppering their output with Moon-related programming and snippets, some looking backward and others looking forward towards the prospect of future Moon missions.

There has been a run on plastic construction kits for models of the Saturn V rocket, and they are practically unobtainable.

Sorry - post 1 was me - forgot to log on.

Not really... everybody knows that it was actually recorded during night in the Mojave desert... hehehe.

What sort of things are happening to mark this significant anniversary of this prominent historical event?

For one thing, you started this discussion!

I remember it well!

Unbelievable---it's been 40 years? Great post! I vividly remember watching the newscasts, the shadowy, ghostly images once the Eagle landed...

I haven't read of anything commemorative to mark the anniversary.

In that case, you're all invited to my humble abode. Liftoff at 7 pm EDT.

<...all invited to my humble abode. Liftoff at 7 pm EDT...>

Bring (full) bottles and a few spacecraft models, eh? That sounds like fun!

In that case, you're all invited to my humble abode. Liftoff at 7 pm EDT.

If LIFTOFF is at 7 pm, the count down (Toast) should start hour before. Let us know address of your Abode.

Here at NASA we're celebrating by feverishly trying to go back again.

There's going to be a party for any of the old timers who are still around that participated in Apollo. I'm lucky enough to have a neighbor, John Young, who is the only man to have visited the moon twice.

I wish the awe that we all felt in 1969 could be recaptured, but for most people, space travel is nothing to get excited about.

If you want to do something yourself to commemorate the mission, there are plenty of fine books about the program and the mission. They make for great reading. One thing you realize from reading about Apollo is that the space program, like soylent green, was made of people. It was a tremendous effort by 100,000s. And a great reminder of what a simple idea, some determination, and a gazillion dollars can accomplish.

... specially exciting to figure out remembering that at that time aerospace instrumentation was held basically by electric and mechanical gauges, am I right? Man, I was not alive yet at that time (was born in 76-end), but I really admire that people doing everything manually! I would have had a great time working in that cenario... I still do these days. There's a joke related to Apollo 13 mission stating that if you're an engineer, you agree that the real heroes were the engineers at the mission control. I agree... Of course, my greetings to everyone that was involved in the mission, knowing that it was a great accomplishment of a giant project, in which everyone was important. From a huge fan.

It was largely electromechanical, but they did have a simple computer for calculating guidance. You can find a schematic of it here:

http://klabs.org/history/ech/agc_schematics/index.htm

Wish I could join you!!!! Guess I'll have to lift one solo.

At the time I was in the middle of my apprenticeship as a machinist at Langley Research Center. I worked on a lot of the projects involving the excursion module.

Unfortunately, at the time of the landing I was having loads of fun flying around a certain Southeast Asian country in my Chinook, so I missed all the parties.

By the time I got back in early '71 we were too busy with Skylab and Viking to reminisce.

Hooker

Well at least you will know where "POL" in my name came from...My father named me after the launch (rather of making it "PAUL")...I know you guys won't get any problems calculating my age ;)

reciting, one small step for men, but a giant leap for mankind saying?

next will come

Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.

That time I spent my compulsory military service at a radio relay station. It was strictly forbidden to listen to civil - especially Western - radios but we all tuned our monitoring receivers to the short wave broadcasting frequencies and were listening to the news.

How times have changed!

How much did the Space Race influence pan-European peace?

I'm afraid the cold war swapped with a war in the economy...

Lunar landing--you can just imagine the rush I was feeling along with about 100 other boy scouts who filled the dining hall at summer camp.

Filled the dining hall with what?

40 years. How time flies.

I was 12, camping with my parents in Bancroft Ontario during that flight. One of the other visitor to the campground brought a B&W tv. The reception was terrible, very snowy, but we could make out images . The whole campground huddled around it to watch as Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin came out of the LEM and begin to explore the surface. It was truly exciting.

Does anybody else think it's disgraceful that we can't do today what we did 40 years ago?

Yes, but we have better technology to not do it with!

What about you are talking?

It is not disgraceful, but I doubt if you CAN do "THAT" even after 40 years!

Based on the level of public support NASA gets these days, I'd say no - no one else thinks it's a disgrace.