ac6000cw
Established Member
As we're 11 days away from the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing of a manned spacecraft...
If you are old enough to remember it first hand, what was your reaction to it at the time and your memories of it now?
If you're too young for that (especially if it's 'ancient' history to you), what do you think of it and the Apollo program in general?
(I'm in the first category - I was 11 years old at the time - and can vividly remember the 'world on the edge of its seat' feeling a lot of people had during the mission. As someone who subsequently has spent nearly 40 years working as an electronics engineer, the Apollo program stands out for me as one of *the* engineering achievements of the 20th century. Listening to one of the excellent '13 minutes to the Moon' BBC World Service podcasts the other day, it was talking about the Saturn 5 rocket - at launch, it was 110m tall, weighed nearly 3000 tonnes and produced 35,100 kN of thrust to lift that weight vertically off the launchpad - mind boggling numbers).
If you are old enough to remember it first hand, what was your reaction to it at the time and your memories of it now?
If you're too young for that (especially if it's 'ancient' history to you), what do you think of it and the Apollo program in general?
(I'm in the first category - I was 11 years old at the time - and can vividly remember the 'world on the edge of its seat' feeling a lot of people had during the mission. As someone who subsequently has spent nearly 40 years working as an electronics engineer, the Apollo program stands out for me as one of *the* engineering achievements of the 20th century. Listening to one of the excellent '13 minutes to the Moon' BBC World Service podcasts the other day, it was talking about the Saturn 5 rocket - at launch, it was 110m tall, weighed nearly 3000 tonnes and produced 35,100 kN of thrust to lift that weight vertically off the launchpad - mind boggling numbers).