My memory isn’t very good.
Which is to say that I remember lots of facts, but much of my personal memory, my life, tends to be a gestalt, a blur of impressions and fragments. People wonder why I blog, and take so many photos? That’s why.
So my own memory of the first Moon landing isn’t the sharp, crisp, “everyone remembers where they were” kind of thing that so many people (who were alive at the time) is posting today.
I would have been 8 years old — a bit younger than Katherine now, but still in that range. We were with my Mom’s folks up in Santa Barbara, on De La Guerra Terrace. The TV was in the downstairs (virtually a basement, except that they lived on such a slope). And I remember the event happening, and perhaps even some images on their black and white TV (was it actually black and white?) of the landing, and then of the climbing down. I remember my folks, and Nono and Nona, watching the TV.
And that, unfortunately, is that. No remembered great resolve to someday go into space myself, or anything like that. Flickers of memory far less substantial than the video.
A shame, that. Though less of a shame than how mundane it all became, before we decided that, no, spending money on manned space flight was a waste.
Of the War Terrace? funny. =P
Me being even younger only remember the whole thing as something covered in history class.
I don’t remember it at all, being 1 at the time, but I do recall one of the later missions clearly, spending my summer at my Grandparent’s in Florida and watching the footage on their (color) TV , but the images being in black & white.
Unless we can get to Mars, I imagine we may be the last generation for a loooong time to be able to have these kinds of direct interactions with extra-earth exploration. I have grave doubts that the Indian space program will have any success getting to the moon in our lifetime . . .
Being almost exactly the same age as you, Dave, I share your experience. I have a clearer memory of my father showing me a space capsule through binoculars, but I’m not sure which mission that was.
In response to your last paragraph, I always remember what Arthur C. Clarke said was the one thing he could not have predicted: that we would reach the moon and then just stop. We’ll never see the future we imagined when we were young. 🙁
On the other hand, given the various apocalyptic / nuclear / eco-collapse / soylent futures of our youth, that might be just as well.
Still …
I have vague memories (bewing just six and awaiting first grade), but clearly remember that my dad took movies (on our B&W 8mm camera) of the TV, which we converted to VHS nearly 20 years ago. My most vivid memories are of the splashdown and the post lunar isolation of the astronauts in an Airstream trailor (that looked just like the one my grandparents owned). Also many of the frogmen the Apollo missions were trained locally, and we saw stories about them on the news after the recovery.
Considering the great technological leaps that would need to be made to make manned travel to Mars a possibility, I wonder if we should spend the money. As Jim Lovell of Apollo 8 said “”The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.” I understand the drive to reach higher, but I wonder if we need to do better by own original home.
Oh and if you haven’t seen Google’s home page today, you should. It’s cool!!
I did. Very nice.
I watched it with my mum, who kept me up all night , and kept saying (apparently) “do n’t go to sleep- this is history”
What precisely she thought someone at 2 days shy of 5 months would be getting out of the experience I’m not quite sure.
The second shuttle launch I remember, as our science teacher took us to the lecture theatre where the year was gathered (my year being the ones in science class at the time) with the phrase “We’re going to see if the Yanks can get that heap of scrap to launch again.”
There was a rather fine NASA history on BBC a few weeks ago to tie in with the whole anniversary, and I was telling a work collegue about it, and how knowing the shuttle launch they were on at one point in the programme was the one that exploded made all my hairs stand on end- knowing I was about to watch 7 real people die. The two 20 somethings in the room DIDN’T EVEN KNOW 2 shuttles had been lost- being babies at the time!
Amazing to think of what is “ancient history” that seems so recent.