The First Moon Walk

Conspiracy theories about the assassination of President Kennedy, his brother Bobby, and Martin Luther King abound. Add to those the theory that the moon landing never happened. Some actually believe it was a Hollywood type production to fool the American people. I think it really happened and it will happen again.

On July 20, 1969 Terry Conrad and I watched the first moon walk on television. Terry came over to our house and we watched it until about 2:00 in the morning. Becky wasn’t very happy because the noise of the TV and our excitement kept her up, too.

The lunar module landed on the moon late that afternoon. About six hours later Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder and set foot on the moon. When he stepped on the moon he said, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.” The first bit of controversy was whether he included that “a” that is in parenthesis in that sentence. It has a slightly different meaning if it is there.

Neil Armstrong has always claimed he included it. Sophisticated technical analysis recently has indicated it is there on the tapes but not loud enough to be heard under regular conditions. I think it is finally settled but at the time there was considerable amount of discussion about it. It was just one word and a one-letter word at that. I don’t know why they didn’t believe Armstrong in the first place?

Along with Armstrong in the lunar module Eagle was Edward “Buzz” Aldrin. He joined Armstrong on the surface a short time later and together they spent two and a half hours drilling core samples, taking pictures and collecting rocks. We were spell bound as we watched. Nothing would ever be quite the same after seeing the Earth from another surface in space.

A third astronaut, Michael Collins controlled the command module Columbia that orbited the Moon while the other two took their space walk. Armstrong and Aldrin spent less than 24 hours on the Moon’s surface. The Eagle docked with the Columbia and they headed back for Earth. The Earth averages about 238855 miles from Earth. They traveled at about 25,000 miles per hour on their trip back. It took them about nine hours to get back into the Earth’s orbit.

Thanks to television we could witness this event along with millions of others across the globe. In a difficult time, the nation took great pride in this accomplishment. We had beaten the Russians, our cold war enemy, to the Moon. In the process knowledge in technology, human health, and outer space had grown immensely. For the first time the Soviet Union blinked and I believe that was the beginning of the end for their empire. The country broke apart in less than twenty years.

I have to be honest and say that I had a bad habit of staying up until all hours watching things like the moonwalk or political conventions. It wasn’t considerate of Becky and thinking back on it I was pretty selfish in doing it because if I was up Becky couldn’t sleep. While I am glad I saw things like that I regret the discomfort I caused Becky and probably Angie, too.