Monday 20 July 2009

You got a bunch o'guys about to turn blue.

We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.

Apollo 11 - Touchdown and Radio Transcript


I can never hope to express my original feelings about this event. I was young and impressionable true, but I was well aware of earlier space missions. Nothing though, nothing before, ever had this intensity. This compulsion. Watching the TV transfixed for hours. I didn't really understand but I somehow knew I was seeing an Earth changing moment.

I had similar feelings when the Berlin wall fell, and when Nelson Mandela walked from Victor Verster Prison. You can feel the importance. But Apollo 11 was far more than that. Much more than the petty squabbles of politics or religion.

However, for humankind to be able to accomplish such amazing achievements does take politics. In some ways it involves religion, an age-old inspiration to the human mind, but then science pisses on them both.

Apollo 11 - baby's first step into the unknown.

2 comments:

yorksnbeans said...

That was the day my younger brother, who was probably about nine, said he wanted to be an astronaut. He think he saved everything about NASA from that point forward. He never did become an astronaut, though.

Andy Holroyd said...

But I'll bet the feeling has never left him :)