dual personalities

On this day in 1969, Apollo 11 went into Moon orbit. The following day, July 20, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon at 20:18 UTC. I remember watching on a small black and white television and thinking it all had such a surreal quality to it.

Of course, we joked about the whole thing being faked on some soundstage somewhere.

One small step for man…

I mean really, doesn’t this have the look of a bad fifties movie? But our joking masked our worry and the strain of witnessing such an amazing event. It was incredibly stressful watching it. Disaster was always imminent.

After about 2 1/2 hours on the lunar surface and seven hours of rest, the crew lifted off and headed home.

A group of British scientists interviewed as part of the 40th anniversary events reflected on the significance of the Moon landing:

It was carried out in a technically brilliant way with risks taken… that would be inconceivable in the risk-averse world of today… The Apollo programme is arguably the greatest technical achievement of mankind to date… nothing since Apollo has come close [to] the excitement that was generated by those astronauts – Armstrong, Aldrin and the 10 others who followed them.

On August 7, 2009, an act of Congress awarded the three astronauts a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Apollo 11 crew at the White House in 2004 with President Bush

Yes, the summer of 1969 was quite a summer. Besides the moon landing, these important events took place within a few weeks of each other:

July 25: Sen. Ted Kennedy received a slap on the wrist (a 2-month suspended sentence) for leaving the scene of a fatal accident at Chappaquiddick, MA.

August 9-10: The Manson murders were perpetrated during a two-night rampage.

August 15-18: Nearly 400,000 people showed up at a farm in Bethel, New York, for a music festival–Woodstock.

August 17: Over 250 people were killed when Hurricane Camille struck the U.S. mainland.

And after all that, our brother headed off to college at the University of Vermont.

Our mother must have been a basket case. At the beginning of eighth grade, I was mostly oblivious.