mobeus's posterous

There's been a lot of talk and programs about the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. And it's making me think back to those days, as best as I can remember being only 5 at the time, what it was really like for everyone. I was lucky. My neighbor was an engineer who designed, built and tested one of the engines that they used to get there. And he would give me bits they couldn't use, all the time.

I remember everyone was excited about the mission, something that waned rapidly afterward. I was more than entranced by the whole event. I was entralled by it. I lived for it. I watched every news event, every flim (this was before video), every press conference. I had models and toys and books and anything you could think of. I even had the glasses Gulf stations were selling.

And I can remember vividly being awoken by my parents to see the astornauts stand on the moon. The living room of our apartment was full of people, mainly because we had a big color TV (not something everyone had back then), and the adults all made room for me upfront. And on that big TV was a grainy, blurry, over exposed image of a ladder and a white field. And Walter Cronikite was saying how awesome this was. They were explaining how the camera would come out of a niche once Neil Armstrong pulled a cord from the porch of the lander.

And then, after what seemed like a million years, the camera changed. And you could see a ladder, a white curving disk and blackness above it. And then something moved and you could almost make out a form. A person was slowly, methodically making his way down the ladder. People were talking on the TV and around me, but they stopped completely when the form stopped moving near the bottom.

He said, "I'm stepping off the pad now" and there was dead silence. No one dared make a noise. And then we heard Neil say those words we've all heard a billion times since. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". And the world changed.

I always thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Neil Armstrong grew up not far from where I lived in southern Ohio, in Wapakoneta. Near the end of every summer, my folks would take me to Wright Patterson AFB museum. And I'd get to see all those great airplanes and space ships. And when we learned that Wapakoneta was just on the way, we would stop off at a little place they had setup to commemorate it. Over time, they made it larger and larger.

I've wondered when we'd return to the moon, but I knew it would happen at some time. The money and reason just had to be right. And I'm hoping we see that soon.