The Moon Shot: like yesterday
The world is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. Today – July 16 – marks the day exactly 40 years ago when the massive Saturn V rocket lifted itself off the surface of the Earth and accelerated its payload of three brave astronauts towards the Moon.
Liftoff of Apollo 11, July 16 1969
Unlike millions of people around the world, I didn’t see the launch on TV. Not because I was too young – simply because in those days South Africa didn’t have a television service. (Interestingly, it was the outcry from not being able to see this event live that, more than anything else, eventually forced the rabidly autocratic and Calvanist apartheid government to allow a television service).
I remember the launch as if it had happened yesterday. I was a 12-year old boy at boarding school in Johannesburg. It was a cold Wednesday afternoon and we had just finished a shortened soccer practice. A bunch of about eight boys gathered around my small Panasonic transistor radio, huddled against the cold wind on a grassy embankment on the side of the field. The excitement had been building all day and now it was almost unbearable.
When, at around three-thirty in the afternoon, the countdown began, our silence was only broken by our soft mimicking of the commentator: “Thirty seconds and counting. Astronauts report it feels good. T-25 seconds. Twenty seconds and counting. T-15 seconds, guidance is internal. 12, 11, 10, 9 … ignition sequence start … 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 … All engines running. Liftoff! We have a liftoff … 32 minutes past the hour, liftoff on Apollo 11. Tower clear.” (Play audio)
We knew the sequence exactly. We had listened to many of the previous Apollo mission launches and even mimicked the commentator’s American accent. We’d heard it all before.
But this was different. This was the mission: to the Moon! My heart was racing faster than the soccer coach could drive it up. There was an audible sigh of relief when Armstrong crackled, “OK, we’ve got a roll program”. We all made the roll with our hands. It was a moment to hug each other. Of course, we didn’t.
Later, when the broadcast stopped, we walked back to our House as if floating on air. The biting wind went unnoticed. I think we intuitively understood then that we were citizens of the World and together with millions of our fellow World citizens, we were celebrating this fact, looking up to the sky. It was a very special moment, and I wonder if my son – the same age as I was then and at the same school playing on that same grassy bank – will ever experience a moment like it.
I will be reliving the entire mission – this time with the visuals I missed the first time round – on the site We Choose the Moon. And I hope that a bit of my excitement rubs off on my media-numbed kids.
Comments
One Comment on The Moon Shot: like yesterday
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stan luntz on
Thu, 16th Jul 2009 1:32 pm
US President the late Richard Nixon addressed the astronauts: “Hello Neil, Buzz and Michael…”
In the theatre of my imagination he adds “…And Stanley…”
Because I was “there”. You know what I mean.
At age 11 I, too, knew every step of the sequence. And to this day, I stilll walk on the moon… (when I’m not singlehandedly winning the Battle of Britain).
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