My moon story:Was a kid back then and a big fan of the NASA program.
In the summer of 1969 my mother took me and my sister to England to visit the grandparents. Turned out that the flight back home was on the 20th of July. So I watched the launch from England, saw the splash-down from the U.S., but
I never saw the walk on the moon since we were in the air crossing the Atlantic at the time.
I was not pleased. The captain did announce the landing and the passengers applauded at the time, but everyone was tired and there wasn't much one could do in a cramped airplane.
posted by Quiddity at 7/20/2009 07:32:00 AM
I was with my parents at home when the first successful Apollo astronauts landed back on earth. What a momentous occasion. It's unfortunate that interest in space exploration seems to have wane over the years.
I saw the moon landing... On the TV, in my Grandparents home in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Thank goodness we'd taken a flight several days earlier (I was nine).
Some Scottish guy in the pub wasn't impressed, "The Yanks havn'a landed on the moon! They're away in the Sahara Dessert riggin' it up!"
Didn't think the guy would be the forerunner of today's internet.
I was a space nut when I was a kid. I was only six years old in July 1969, but I remember watching the moon landing. Little known fact: Gus Grissom was originally slated to command the first lunar landing and take the first moon walk. Had Apollo 1 been a successful maiden voyage, the first words from the surface of the moon a year or so later might have been "Fuckin' A, bubba!"
