Apollo: The Week We Became Spacefarers

Space History Tuesday (ShoT)

Apollo Week

This is the unforgettable week in space history.

54 years ago, I watched out the window of a small plane while, perhaps 12-15 miles away, a giant Saturn 5 ignited with a flame that captured the attention of the world. The plane was a rented Piper, flown by my dad who worked at the plant in Vero Beach. In the coolest thing in the history of dads, he flew my brother and I up to a vantage point outside the 10-mile radius of the exclusion zone (I’m sure today it’s several times bigger). I still remember the orange-red flame, brilliantly intense even from that distance, as it lifted the rocket from the pad. You could tune the old Automatic Direction Finder (ADF)) then used in Pipers to get some AM commercial stations, and I remember the radio voice saying, “And Apollo 11 is off for the Moon!” Four days later, I tried to stay awake while the first steps were televised from the Moon. I still can’t remember if I actually saw them or dozed off for that moment.

In the ensuing days, we watched as grainy black and white images, interspersed with network TV simulations, followed the progress of Armstrong and Aldrin. Moments I recall specifically included Buzz saluting the flag and an astronaut’s feet lifting from the surface as he forced a hand-powered drill down to get samples of the regolith. And then they were home.

We expected the program to keep going and do greater and greater things. It did, to a point. We were on the beach south of the Cape when Apollo 17 split the night sky in a display seen in the Carolinas. Then Skylab. Then…

Everything faded. I remember an article in Weekly Reader about 1970 with a couple of skeptics saying we didn’t go, but the topic was laughed off. But people wrote articles and even books pounding on this ridiculous theme, and of course used the internet as soon as it was invented to claim there had never been a lunar mission. I pointed out to one denier that, “I was there. I watched them leave.” His reply: “But you didn’t see them land.” Me: “I wanted to, but NASA wouldn’t take nine-year old astronauts…” My daughter brought home a high school text about ten years ago that gave one sentence for “an expensive race to Moon” without a single detail or name. Unbelievably, one of the authors was Paul Dickson, who wrote a popular book on Sputnik. I sent him a “what the hell” email but never heard back.

The flurry of remembrance events in 2019 brought a hint of the glory back and gave some impetus to Artemis, NASA’s third attempt at a program to return to the Moon. It looks like Artemis is going to make it, albeit much later and costlier than originally projected. I wish NASA every success. It’s about time we went back.

Favorite Apollo Books:

Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys, by Michael Collins

Shoot for the Moon, by James Donovan

First Man, by James R. Hansen 

A Man on the Moon, by Andrew Chaikin

NASA's main site

Follow the mission: Apollo in Real Time