Revisiting Apollo 11

As part of my ongoing project to transfer old VHS tapes to DVD, I came across a 6-hour broadcast of the Apollo 11 mission that was condensed from the original ABC News coverage. It had been broadcast on C-Span back in the 90's sometime and I taped it due to my interest in the space program.

I didn't have time to watch the whole thing, but during lunch I watched a segment that was broadcast during the mission's return from the moon. The crude cartoonish animation was quite advanced for the time, but looks silly today. And at one point science editor Jules Bergman used the newfangled telestrator to show on a map of the moon where Eagle had landed. He was quite thrilled with this new broadcast toy.

As you know, Vietnam was going full speed at the time, and at one point host Frank Reynolds made a few editorial comments about the value of spending billions on the space program and wondering a similar effort could result in world peace. They also interviewed a couple of soldiers in Vietnam and asked them if the moon effort was worth it. That got mixed results.

At another point in the broadcast they went to a newsbreak featuring an extremely young looking Peter Jennings. As he read the news items he came to an announcement from a Massachusetts police chief that charges were being filed against Sen. Edward Kennedy for leaving the scene of the accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne. Not many people remember that Kennedy's accident occurred the night before the moon landing. Had it come at a time when people weren't distracted by such a great achievement, he might not have survived politically.

There was one other cultural flashback during that broadcast. Jennings referred to a "negro boy" in one of his stories. You certainly won't hear that today.

Looking back, it's hard to believe the tremendous achievements that were made during the space program of the 1960's, and how much of it was done in craft with less computing power than my cellphone. The first landing on the moon itself was a brilliant piece of seat-of-the-pants flying by Neil Armstrong as he maneuvered his craft over a large field of boulders which is where the computer wanted to land them. The bravery and skill of those astronauts is to be greatly admired.

It's too bad that we don't seem willing to take those "giant leaps" in space exploration anymore.