Monday, July 20, 2009

Man on the What??

I am an astronomy teacher at a H.S. in New Hampshire and this is one of my favorite subjects to teach.  Forty years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon.  Those men are in their 70's now but made such a huge impact on where we are today in our space exploration and where we are headed in the future.  

I had dinner with my parents the other night and we were discussing the fact that we are going back to the moon.  My dad wasn't quite sure why we would go back there if we have already been.  But after talking with him and explaining the innovations that have happened in technology in the last 40 years he was a little bit more receptive to the idea of going back.

Do you remember this night?  I was not born yet but I bet it was amazing!  I have seen the news clips and the recaps but please feel free to comment and tell me what you remember.  It is always nice to have first hand accounts to relay back to my students when we discuss the moon.

1 comment:

  1. I was 5, and believe it or not I remember bits and pieces of it.

    I grew up in a city, about 2 blocks from a main road. My street had enough traffic that it was very difficult to play ball in it, although not impossible. In 1969 we had a single TV in the house, it was a 13" black and white, it went from Channel 2 through channel 13 -- nothing higher. The dial didn't "click" into position either, you had to turn it slowly to "tune" in the stations. The TV sat on a stand in the family room.

    What I remember specifically about that day is that both of my parents were watching TV during the day. This is something that hardly ever happened and they wanted me to watch it with them, but I wasn't that interested. They let me go outside and play and called me in when it was time. I can remember going inside and watching them open the hatch and come down the ladder. I didn't watch the landing itself.

    When I went back outside to play, the thing I remember most is that NO ONE was out. There weren't even cars. Even in a city there weren't a lot of fences back in 1969, you could see the yards from house to house going down the block.

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