Moon day plus 40 years

Today was the 40th anniversary of the day man first walked on the moon. I have vivid memories of that Sunday evening, July 20, 1969. I was 12 years old, and went to a friend's home to watch the events. (It was not a particularly close friend - not sure how I ended up there. I think they were in our ward. I remember two sons, David and Dale Johnson.)

The black and white video was extremely grainy and the audio scratchy, but there was no denying the historic import of what was taking place. We didn't see images as clear as these at the time (the higher-resolution stuff was not able to be transmitted live) — but they convey the emotions that we experienced. This first one shows the moon landing module (Eagle) detaching from the command module (Columbia) and starting the descent, with the earth rising (setting?) over the moon in the background.

There was a lot of drama during the descent; computer errors being reported, fuel gauges running low (they eventually landed with less than a minute of fuel to spare), Neil Armstrong having to land the craft manually. There was discussion of how critical it was to land level; if they came down on a boulder or the side of a crater, they might not be able to lift off again. They didn't know how far they would sink into the dust. Lots of uncertainty — pretty high drama!

They did finally land safely in spite of all those issues ("Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."). I recall the excitement when they decided to prepare right away to exit the vehicle; the original schedule had a rest period first, but there was too much excitement for sleep. That worked great for American TV viewers. It was about 9 p.m. in Utah when the first footstep on the moon was taken. ("That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.")


As I see these photos now, the Eagle looks so tiny and primitive. It's astonishing that men could travel a quarter of a million miles through space, then trust their fate to a little craft like that, to not only get them safely to the moon's surface, but then back to the command module!

What a miraculous event this was. Through my youth, we witnessed five more lunar landings plus the aborted Apollo 13 mission. There was a great deal of "American pride" in having beaten the Russians in the moon race.

The last moon landing happened in 1972. Since then, no human has left low earth orbit.