Friends,
Forty-three years ago, I got to stay up late to watch Uncle Walter Cronkite and Captain Wally Schirra hold their breath while the Apollo XI mission landed on the moon. They spoke in a nervous staccato to cover over the tension that July evening, but when word came that the landing was successful and they wiped the tears from their eyes, even a three year old could figure out that this was a very big deal.
Here’s a spliced-together version of footage of the landing from multiple sources that’s pretty great…
Apollo 11 Lunar Landing from Spacecraft Films on Vimeo.
…but click here to see what CBS News was actually able to send out that night, complete with models on sticks and dioramas recreating what they thought was happening. The embedded video above shows that events were much more dangerous than anybody let on at the time, but they were too busy not crashing to explain it to the rest of us at the moment.
There’s been a little gap between our first exploration of the moon and getting the base constructed there, as you know. After all, we’re going to need a jumping-off point to Mars and you can’t beat the neighborhood. Is it because they’re still looking for a really good architect?
– bob