July 20, 1969: Where Were you?

I was a teenager in the 60’s which for me translates into a few key trigger points etched in my mind. The day President Kennedy was shot I was in shop class. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, I was off on active duty with the U.S. Air Force wondering what in the heck was happening back in the states. Another of those very clear memories was the night the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon. Since I was at the time stationed at a Royal Air Force station in the UK, it was more than just evening.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins entered lunar orbit in the middle of the night in England. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong touched down about 2 or 3 am as I recall. I watched on a TV in our day room surrounded by everyone else from our barracks waiting to hear the words, “Houston, the eagle has landed.” The room went wild when the words were spoken.

I think back now about what an incredible achievement it must have been using 45-year old technology to send three guys to the moon.

What have we done since that so captured the attention and respect of the world like our space program? For those of you who haven’t heard, the shuttle flights will be ending soon meaning our return to space will be a long way off if it happens at all. To most Americans there seems to be no point. President Kennedy pointed us at the moon not because we necessarily needed to be in space, but to prove we had the ability to muster the minds to make it come together successfully.

What goals do we as a country have that are as life-spanning as these?

I’ve had a chance to meet three of the astronauts personally over the years – Gene Cernan, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell – and each time I shook the hands of a new member of the team I felt special … because they’d done something special. More than special. These guys had cheated death and been to space and returned to tell me about it. That’s precisely what Frank Borman and I talked about (photo above) over lunch one afternoon in a little New Mexico restaurant. He spoke to me of space flight like another pilot swapping lies over breakfast. Boy that was cool. I felt 15 again.

Rob Mark