20 Years Ago Today
After watching a few commemorative videos on YouTube, I was a bit struck by the fact that Walter Cronkite died only two days before the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings that he reported on. As the NY Times said, Cronkite was the “proxy for a nation.” That was never more true than for the “giant step for mankind.” He is doubtless the voice in many peoples’ heads as they recall their experiences on this day 20 years ago.
As George Leopold reported in his piece on the exhibit of Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean’s art at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 is very special because there is less than a five percent chance that all three astronauts will be around for the 50th. It seems appropriate that one of NASA’s sharp analytical minds would turn to insurance actuarial tables to understand the odds of getting the whole team back together in 2019.
Cronkite’s passing along with the probability of of the Apollo 11 crew surviving another 10 years are reminders of just how long ago the Apollo missions were. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling old today. Although I can honestly say that I’m just a little too young to recall the moon landing telecasts, I can assure you that I was probably not far from the television where the rest of my family hunkered down for hours on end.
Although Apollo 11 and the moon landings are not a real memory for me, I do remember watching many other launches and missions. Unlike most of our neighbors, we could actually see the picture since Dad had performed a few high-wire acts getting an antenna into the right position to get a good signal from the broadcast towers nearly a hundred miles away. I remember watching other launches and missions, but I was still too young at the time to recall which.
NASA’s Apollo program was everywhere in those days. The technical achievement was not oversold by any of the media coverage or the world’s interest in each milestone as it came. It was an event that deserves what I usually describe as hyperbole – a defining moment, life-changing, pivotal. For me, it cemented the idea that technology was cool, and it set me on my way to becoming an engineer.
The web site “we choose the moon” is a reminder how much the world has changed technologically since 1969. The web site recreates the Apollo 11 mission in real time. You can even choose to get the mission updates via Twitter. Come to think of it, maybe we haven’t come all that far.