[FPSPACE] Apollo 11

[Brett Harrison]

Born in 1959, I grew up in far-off Tasmania nevertheless surrounded by the  
fanfare of the Space Race.
I vividly remember running around the schoolyard playing at being in a  
Gemini space capsule.  Naturally, being kids, we added aliens & lasers to  
the mix.

During the Apollo Program (which we all pronounced "A-pole-oh"), thing  
went into high gear.
Kelloggs cereals supplied simple plastic spacecraft kits in every box, and  
my mother was pestered constantly to purchase more Corn Flakes!
(They were great little models BTW - a mix of real & paper spec hardware.   
I still have some today.  Who else remembers them?)
Newspapers & magazines were full of the plans & exploits of NASA, and if  
any astronauts had ever visited Tasmania, they would have found themselves  
well-known, and lauded as heroes.
Weetbix had a series of cards you could collect, and a book to stick them  
into.
Space toys were in all the shops.

On that fateful day (mid-morning, July 21 here), I was at home sick with  
the mumps.  There I was, sitting on my beanbag chair (a hot item in 1969),  
watching the mission in vivid black & white (colour was to come to  
Australia 6 years later), thinking, "Ha!  Being sick isn't so bad after  
all! The kids at school won't be seeing this live!".  I was wrong, of  
course.  At schools all over, everything stopped & students were crowded  
into rooms around the few TV sets that schools had, to watch the historic  
transmissions.

Being a child, I soon got bored with the whole idea.
I thought that the whole program had taken too long - they'd been talking  
about it my whole lifetime, after all!

Only later did I come to realise what a magnificent achievement it was.
I have visited Cape Canaveral, seen Apollo hardware in museums all over  
the world, met Apollo astronauts, have a large collection of books on the  
subject, and still marvel agape at its scope & complexity.

The common wisdom in Tasmania was "Those Yanks can be a funny lot  
sometimes, but when they set their minds to something...wow!"


-- 

Brett Harrison

"Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography."
- Paul Rodriguez