At 9:34 AM, Alan Shepard rode Freedom 7, a Mercury capsule atop a Redstone booster rocket, into space on a suborbital flight. He was the first American to fly a rocket into space.
20 days later, President Kennedy proposed to Congress that the nation commit itself to going to the Moon by the end of the decade. Kennedy's speech at Rice University about going to the Moon was made on September 12, 1961. (Excerpt, full speech, full text)
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Thursday, May 5, 2011
3 comments:
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Dear Miss Fit:
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit startling as I realize that I recall the event quite well across a half-century. I was in 7th grade in NJ. It was a Friday and the school Principal set up a black & white TV on a table in the small auditorium and the older kids were marched in to watch the launch.
The picture was a bit grainy and hard to see from our seats, but we could not mistake the sight of Cdr. Shepard's "roman candle" soaring sky-ward for anything else.
It was memorable for a confirmed airplane geek like me...and, who would have predicted that just over eight years later another black & white video camera would show us Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon? Heady times, indeed.
History, yes heady times.
ReplyDeleteI was younger but remember it well. We dragged the TV into the kitchen so we could eat before off to school and not miss much of the preparation.
Looking back we went from computers being roomful and almost all transistor and black and white TV using vacuum tubes to computers being desk drawer sized using integrated circuits and color TV using solid state components being common by the moon landing. A lot of technology happened on less than 10 years. Even the computers in the CM and LM were out of date by time they flew the technology was moving that fast.
Exciting times.
Eck!
Thanks to this anniversary, I just shook Neil Armstrong's hand, and met Jim Lovell (Apollo 13) and Gene Cernan (Apollo 17).
ReplyDeleteI was attending a history symposium this morning at the Naval Aviation Museum here in Pensacola, in honor of 100 years of US Naval Aviation. They were just about to start the panel on the Battle of Midway when the speaker said, "By the way, someone just mentioned to me what today is." After discussing Shepard's mission briefly, he mentioned that those three astronauts were in attendance. I almost fell out of my chair.
After the panel I walked up to Mr. Armstrong, shook his hand, and thanked him for his service. I also greeted Mr. Lowell and Mr. Cernan. Talk about bookends - the first man on the moon, the last man on the moon, and the man in the middle of the space race's most harrowing drama.
If not for today being the anniversary of Shepard's flight, I would never have known I was in the presence of such historical giants. And, I would never have this memory.
Now, if only someone would blow up a Soviet N1 rocket on the house of a certain woman to whom I handed my camera to take a shot of me with Mr. Armstrong... and who proceeded to take a shot of the fucking floor.
Twice.