50th anniversary of the moon landing

[RooFlyer]

The Eagle landed at 20:17:40 UTC on Sunday July 20 . Armstrong stepped out at 2:56:15 UTC Monday, 21 July 1969, which was 12:56 on Monday 21 July, Australian Eastern Standard time. So its 50 years coming up ... a fair bit later than the 50 year anniversary of the B747. This may be pay-walled, sorry:

NoCookies | The Australian

www.theaustralian.com.au

For those old enough, what do you remember doing at the time? I have a memory of being in school, a 9 yo, and we watched it on TV.

(And please, if you want to troll and go on about the hoax thing, start your own thread).

 

[Denali]

My hubby remembers, he said he was at Stanmore public school. He said he was eating his sandwich in class at lunchtime and listening on the radio - no TV for him.

 

[VPS]

I was at a small high school in rural South Australia and we all gathered in the school hall to watch it on quite a small TV but still remember it vividly

 

[Hvr]

I remember watching at school and whilst knowing it was an important event was a bit bored with nothing seeming to happen for a long time. One black and white television for the school.

 

[RooFlyer]

If you wondered about the poor quality of the TV pictures . And of course then there was 'The DIsh'

Apollo 11 used slow-scan television (TV) incompatible with broadcast TV, so it was displayed on a special monitor and a conventional TV camera viewed this monitor, significantly reducing the quality of the picture. The signal was received at Goldstone in the United States, but with better fidelity by Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra in Australia. Minutes later the feed was switched to the more sensitive Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Despite some technical and weather difficulties, ghostly black and white images of the first lunar EVA were received and broadcast to at least 600 million people on Earth. Copies of this video in broadcast format were saved and are widely available, but recordings of the original slow scan source transmission from the lunar surface were likely destroyed during routine magnetic tape re-use at NASA.

 

[Cossie]

We were in the library at Narrabundah High School watching it on TV, the school had recently purchased a video recorder, but didn't have any spare tapes to record this.

I'm sure I still have a copy of the day after Canberra Times reporting the event, I'll see if I can find it.

P.S., the boss says she watched the film The Dish last night between Bangkok and Sydney.

 

[drron]

Well I was in my final year of medicine at Sydney Union.Quite a few of us went to the Union and watched it there.

 

[OZDUCK]

I was at High School in Perth and we watched it on a TV in a Science Room. My wife remembers it because July 21 is her birthday.

 

[oz_mark]

I was going to say I was on set in the studio - but the truth is I don't really know where I was. Probably at home!

 

[p--and--t]

I was a young fella at work in a microwave telecommunications relay station in a mild state of anxiety hoping nothing broke down as the world was watching and we didn't want to be the ones blamed by the US for loss of signal.

 

[JohnM]

I think I skipped a lecture, and watched it in my UWA residential college commonroom.

 

[jb01]

I was well off being born, but my grandfather was working at the Carnarvon tracking station. Lots of NASA memorabilia in the family, most of which currently resides in the museum in Carnarvon.

 

[serfty]

Watched the EVA on a 12" BW portable TV set up by the teacher in my Grade 6 classroom at Bunyip PS.

Earlier that morning from home I had monitored the Eagle landing (around 6:30am) before heading off to school.

 

[equus]

Was a young tacker (too young for school), but watched it at home - with the carpet layers who were laying new carpet taking a break to watch it with us.

 

[jb747]

I was 14, and was just recovering from being ill. My uncle and I watched it in the Inkerman Hotel, St Kilda.

Over the years, I’ve asked many an SO and FO how many men walked on the moon. Around 95% say 3! A couple have said none, at which point they had given away any chance of me letting them have a sector.

A few could name them all. Can any of you, without looking it up....?

 

[amaroo]

I was probably in the cot sucking my thumb

 

[mrs.dr.ron]

I was a nurse at RPAH in Sydney. We watched it on a small B&W TV in the Queen Mary Nurses Home where we all lived

 

[RooFlyer]

A few could name them all. Can any of you, without looking it up....?

Not me, but I can name the second last (to leave) - Harrison Schmidtt, a geologist! I also got to touch a moon rock. The prof at Uni when I was doing my geology degree was very high flying and was one of a few in the world who (at that time) was given moon rock samples to test (all up, 382kg of moon rock, soil, dust was brought back to earth over all the missions). He used to let post grad students touch a bit of moon rock he had. Actually it was a crumb and could have been anything, but he swore it was a piece of moon rock that got spilled early on.

 

[AisleSeat]

The Smithsonian is doing a project with the National Air and Space Museum and Tested for this. So far they've 3D scanned the Apollo 11 module hatch which you can download and print one for yourself, along with the engineering drawings and a bunch of other cool stuff.

Apollo 11 | 3D Digitization

3d.si.edu

 

[Pushka]

13 years old and watched it at school crowded around a tiny BW portable TV in Adelaide. Could barely make anything out but audio was fairly clear. And I remember Adelaide had a massive thunderstorm and lots of hail at the same time.