I belong to a family of nerds. We just love nerdy things, and with that I've grown up with a fascination of all things Space. Whenever there was a meteor shower growing up my Dad, brothers, and I would drive to the Sierra Nevada foothills, away from city lights, to get a good show. Solar eclipse. Moon eclipse. Etc. We love it.
On Saturday my family was over having a Talea meeting, and we decided to combine our meeting and celebrate the Moon landing. Robbie and Lindsay brought freeze dried frozen ice-cream sandwiches for everyone as a surprise.
All weekend I've been listening off and on to Apollo 11 in Real Time, which has been so fascinating! Seriously, being able to switch between all the Mission Control stations in real time has been fun, though I mainly listen to Capcom, communication with the astronauts. It's a slice of time, living history 50 years later.
There was chaos in our house as we waited for the moon landing at 2:17 pm mountain time. A few minutes before the landing one of my baby nieces broke a plate, so Steven was vacuuming it up. Robbie was showing Ty virtual reality stuff he's been working on, so there was that chatter. Kids running everywhere. Michael and I listening intently to the audio on the speaker, trying to not miss nuances. But then, a minute before the landing, we all gathered around to listen, and then cheered when, "The Eagle has landed," sounded through the speaker. Then we broke out the freeze dried ice-cream.
This is how we have fun.
It's great, really.
I'm listening right now to the audio. The space craft is coming back to Earth and the flight crew is sleeping, so it's pretty quiet. There's still active channels. Calculations. Making sure information is right. Does anything need to be corrected? Some guy is now talking about the Vector and asking how confident someone else is about calculations with the fuel cell purge, and water. It's eavesdropping, 50 years later to the second.
I've heard interesting stuff. An hour before Neil and Buzz walked on the moon I heard someone say, "I don't know who's listening to this channel, but whoever you are, wherever you are, Man or Woman, let's all take a moment to thank God." That was so great and humbling to hear.
When Neil and Buzz were coming out of the spacecraft later that night my Mom and I were doing a late night fast food run. Healthy, I know. I sat in the drive through listening with ear buds, and when a bacon lettuce cheeseburger was handed to me I heard, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Oh, and just listening to their observations. Describing the moon. The fine sand dust like floor quality. Craters. Boulders.
When they were coming back into the space pod, is that what it's called?, I think it was Neil who said, "Well maybe we can finally get some sleep." "Oh no, not now Captain" was the response.
Right around midnight, as I was drifting to sleep, I heard two guys randomly chatting, "Now what was Neil saying? Did he say he saw an arm in the crater?" "I don't know. We should get some sleep. See you in the morning." "See you in the morning." (I don't have a good auditory memory, so this is the essence of what I heard.)
I've been nerding all weekend. Listening to the flight director debate when the astronauts should be woken up, sleeping on the moon. The surgeon admitting Neil had been awake for over an hour. Buzz was still sleeping. Leaving the moon. It's been cool.
Anywho, Hope you guys had a great weekend.
Really, It's been amazing experiencing the moon landing in real time, in quite an interesting way.
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