Most people in this newsroom remember it as a very hot day on the Prairies. The news stories and the sheer audacity of the mission insured a massive television audience that day – July 20, 1969, when a man first walked on the moon.
Mom was cleaning the basement that day, a relatively cool job during a summer scorcher. My mission, as I chose to accept it, was to watch the television and call her upstairs to witness the crucial parts of the lunar adventure.
We saw the eagle land in the Sea of Tranquility. Then, after what seemed an interminable amount of time, Neil Armstrong backed down the steps and set foot on the lunar surface. I had thought he might sink knee-deep into green cheese, but as he recounted in the television broadcast, he sunk only one-eighth of an inch into moon dust. And his footsteps are still there, probably as pristine as the day he made them 30 years and two days ago.
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In fact, the July issue of Life magazine has photos of lunar footprints, and speculates they may last for a million years.
The magazine also talks about the hazards of a headcold in space, where there is no gravity to help your sinuses drain, and shows the golf club and the dune buggy that were used in other Apollo missions in attempts to maintain public interest in the space program.
It tells of one astronaut, Alan Bean of Apollo 12, who quit NASA in the 1980s to become a full-time artist. He paints – you guessed it – moonscapes.
A shocking fact, to those of us with journalistic leanings, was the note that John Glenn had to buy his own camera to take with him on Apollo 9, because NASA hadn’t thought about taking photographs. Thankfully that oversight was rectified on future missions.
At the outset, those on Apollo 11 gave their odds of success at no better than 50-50. One can only marvel at the strength of their belief in the importance of the mission.
In musing on that day 30 years ago, I guess you could say nothing has ever been quite the same since, back here on earth. Apollo 11 proved the surly bonds of earth cannot restrain the dreams of man.
