Ask Hackaday: What are your Apollo memories?

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, which brought President Kennedy's challenge just eight years earlier. Three men went to the moon, two stepped on them and they all came home safe and sound in a spectacular demonstration of eight days of technical and scientific prowess broadcast live on the world.

If you have made more than 50 round trips around the sun, chances are you'll have memories of the first landing of the moon. An anniversary like this is a good time to take stock of these memories, especially for Apollo, who probably struck a chord with many of those who witnessed them and launched them into careers in the fields. of science and engineering. We suspect that a good number of Hackaday readers are part of this group and we therefore wish to ask you: what are your memories of Apollo?

A true American hero

My memory of the landing of the Moon is certainly vague. I had just turned five the month before, I had not even started kindergarten, but I had already caught the space virus in a big way. I lived and breathed the space program and I knew everything about the Mercury missions that were completed at the time of my birth and about the Gemini missions that had just completed. Apollo was incredibly exciting for me, and I had the courage to witness the landing as only a five-year-old can be.

The landing was probably the most exciting part of the mission for Armstrong and Aldrin. With both computer alarms during the descent and the need to burn almost all of their fuel, they were looking for a place to land that would not reverse the LM. But for me, it was a bit boring – the part we see today with a camera looking out the LM window the sown surface of moon blocks has not been transmitted live . We got moving pictures and a countdown with Walter Cronkite's color-by-play comments and the colors of astronaut Wally Schirra. Looking at it now, with synchronized telemetry animation, it was actually a nifty way to show what was going on.

The first steps on the moon would wait another six and a half hours, during which dinner was taken, the baths were taken, and the jammies put on. However, there was no chance that I would fall asleep, and like most parents at the time, mine rightly concluded that it was something of which my brother and I had to be a witness, whatever the time. So we met in black and white television to watch the proceedings. My only striking memory of all this was having all my G.I.The Joe figurines arranged in front of me, especially that of the space suit of the Mercury era, in silver. As Neil Armstrong descended the ladder and unfurled the camera in the nearby bay to show the first steps, I bounced my little astronaut in time, mimicking the historic steps that were taking place at 238,000 miles.

Your turn

At the end of the day, I remember exactly what I and my pejimas in the country remember about that night in July half a century ago, except perhaps for us. What matters is that for at least some of us, the magic of looking at ghostly images of a man struggling in another world was enough to take us on paths that would lead to lives spent in science and engineering. We would continue to build the world we live in, for better and for worse.

Now it's your turn. Were you there to see the story made? What memories do you have of the event? I guess many of our readers are older than me and have clearer memories of the period before Apollo 11 and the saturated blanket of the landing. We would like to hear your point of view and perhaps learn a little more about how this has shaped your life. We would also like to hear from everyone who has contributed to the success. after all, it took hundreds of thousands of people to put two pairs of boots on the moon, and all have stories to tell. Have you missed the excitement? We would also like to hear about this, and how knowing that the landing of the Moon is just a historical event shaped your perception.

Speak in the comments below about your Apollo memorabilia.