Apollo 11 50th anniversary

[Soundfield]

As a child in the sixties I was obsessed by the Apollo programme – reading every book and magazine on the subject, building models, creating scrapbooks, doing school projects etc. I recorded the broadcasts of the Saturn V launches by holding a microphone of a cheap miniature reel-reel recorder (like the Mission Impossible one!) to the speaker of our TV. I was blown away by the Apollo 8 mission (the ‘earthrise’ poster decorated my bedroom for years) and the audio of mission control trying to regain contact with the command module as it came back from behind the moon moves me to this day. The highlight for any nerdy boy was the first moon-landing itself of course, and I shall always remember my brother and I setting our alarm clocks for 3a.m. to get up to watch it live with Dad. Just the very idea of watching TV at 3 in the morning was extraordinary (it was the first time that either the BBC or ITV had broadcast TV continuously for 24 hrs – TV in UK in the sixties usually ended at about 11.30 with the playing of the National Anthem!) Those wobbly black and white images were simply inspirational and the sheer scale of the engineering endeavour was doubtless what spurred me on to an engineering career myself a few years later.

I always thought it was odd that the US never marked the event at the time with a special coin, just one commemorative postage stamp. But that’s been put right this year with the US Mint producing a series of coins to celebrate the achievement. I placed an order for one of the 5 ounce silver dollars in January, but the first minting was oversubscribed, so I’ve had to wait awhile to get mine, but it has just arrived:

It’s a sizeable lump of solid silver (8cm / 3 in in diameter!) but very difficult to photograph, sorry, as not only does it have a mirror finish it is domed to emulate the curvature of the spacesuit visor.

A great souvenir - and it’s only taken 50 years!

 

[jimfisheye]

I can't remember the last time I've been to a movie theater. (I'm told you reserve seats online now?) Definitely going to see this on a big screen though! I'm also pretty obsessed with the Apollo (and Mercury and Gemini leading up to it) program. I see this as a high point of humanity. A dick measuring contest that didn't happen in a theater of death. We all have computers and devices now directly as fallout from this contest. Landing on the moon and coming back to talk about it is also still the most daredevil thing anyone's ever done!

Heh, wonder if this film will have any kind of nod to Pink Floyd performing a live improv on the BBC during the lunar landing.

 

[ubertrout]

I'm really bummed the Apollo 11 film isn't getting a 4K release. Still might try to see it in IMAX.