Where were you?

Sitting in a Howard Johnsons Motel in Chambersburg PA, surrounded by family and friends. You could hear the cheers erupting from rooms all over the building when Eagle landed.

I was a permanent fixture in the TV lounge of the dormitory at Valparaiso University in Indiana.

One thing I wish I'd bought: three days later, the local newspaper ran a once-in-a-lifetime, true headline:

MOON MEN INVADE EARTH!

I was still 7 years from conception. I was robbed.

...but just barely because I was just 5 1/2 at the time. My mom used to roust my brother and I out of bed when there was a launch or other significant NASA event so we could see it on TV as it happened.

I guess that planted a seed because I was one of the many thousands of people who trekked out to the lake bed at Edwards AFB in 1981 to watch the Columbia make it's first landing.

I was in Vietnam and out on patrol when they landed. I don't recall being too impressed, I was just trying to survive another 30 days and go home.

I was sitting with one of my college boyfriends in his bedroom, watching it on a black-and-white set (of course). We were blown away by it, but in a way I don't remember feeling surprised that we'd done it because back then it wasn't unusual for our government to actually set a goal and have the determination and expertise to ACHIEVE it. If you haven't seen "In the Shadow of the Moon," it's well worth it to be reminded of the astonishing courage it took for those astronauts to do what they did.

Working with Buzz and Neil trying to figure out how to stop the damn flag from waiving, such a pain in the ass. Its so hard to go home at the end of the day after working on one of the worlds great lies and when asked "So what did you do toady?" you've got to reply with "oh nothing much. then change the subject."

Oh wait I was born in 82, hell my dad was only like 13 at that point.

My family and I watched it live in our small 5th floor apartment in Madrid, Spain. We had an early 60's B&W TV.

My recollection is a sense of pride that humankind had achieved this; the fact that the achievement was the USA's and not Spain's was not even considered (that I recall).

We knew history was being made, and there was no doubt this was real.

We never went to the moon, and you know it! Stop spreading your lies!

Seriously though, I wasn't born yet.

I was working at a small summer theatre in Vermont. I remember seeing the images of the landing and of Armstrong stepping onto the moon in the living room of the producer's house, though I could not swear whether I saw the actual moment or reruns. We put on a play a week, so my days tended to be long and somewhat run together. I was aware of it when it happened, though, not like some other major events that I slept through and only heard about from friends the next day.

My wife says she was in Amsterdam, watching it on TV in a social hall for young people, with people from all over the world watching on TVs that had been brought in for the purpose.

Frank Moorman, skeptic

I was in a small room in a sixth-floor apartment in a brownstone in Harlem, New York. I had impulsively hitchhiked into Gotham from Wyoming during my nineteenth summer.

I don't recall in detail how I got in front of that BW TV. Something about someone said, "I know where theres a set we can watch." And off we went.

I'd followed the space program since before Mercury. Astronomy was shown to me by some thoughtful folks when I was in elementary school. I was captivated by the whole notion of going "way far up in the air." (Bradbury, roughly.)

If I had a care back then for all mankind it came to the fore that day, in a hot, small room with a group of strangers. I saw, with my own eyes, undeniable evidence that we had taken the first step of a new kind of journey. A journey so long and so far that not only would it be impractical to return, it would be beyond possibility to do so. And so, small bits of humanity zoom away on separate trajectories. At that moment they begin to evolve separately.

Should their descendants meet, would they recognize their kinship? If so, how would they regard it? What if some descendants looked markedly different?

It'll be a long time before this happens, in terms of ourselves and our children and theirs. But, eventually, by virtue of the apparent number of destinations when it comes to seriously considering a long term space voyage, some of us will be saying goodbye to the rest of us and then they shall be gone, save for their messages, as long as that is possible. But they will be irretrievably gone from us, and we from them. Physics and orbital mechanics rule destinies.

Today I went to the air show in Dayton. The air was alive with invention and speed. I turned and saw a singular sight. A replica of the Wright B Flier had been rolled up beside an F-22 Raptor for a photo opp. The one a contraption of wire and wood and fabric. The other a contraption of composites and networks and vectored thrust. Both the product of human observation and speculation and technical expertise. Both dreams and pure science. Separated by only a hundred years . . .

I was 10, and it was 4am here in the UK when Armstrong stepped onto the moon. It took some doing, but I'd managed to get my parents to let me stay up to watch the big event live.

If you're wondering, the sound was low because my parents weren't quite as enthusiastic about it as me, and were asleep in the next room.

I remember watching Walter Cronkite give instructions on how to take pictures off of a TV screen (of the first steps).

Not conceived yet.

(But my parents did save the next day's newspaper featuring it.)

--
"Ponies are atheists, you know, technically."
- Me

I was a counselor-in-training at a Camp Fire camp, and I don't think we were even aware of it.