moon landing 40th anniversary coming up soon

I consider it to be one of the biggest moments in my life.
When one considers the engineering and training that had to happen to make the moon shots possible, it was truly amazing.
It also demonstrates what this Country can do....when it wants to.
TMT TMT
If you consider that one of the greatest moments of your life, it explains a lot of your posting. You do not have much of a life.

that was nice of cavelamb to tell us where he was. where were you calif bill?
b.w.

I was in front of my TV watching the landing. With my wife, and I was out of the service by then. Since I joined in 1965.

I thought I was old...

Just because someone is older, doesn't mean that I'm not old. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a frosty glass of Metamucil awaiting me.

I was 33 at the time and while I can't remember just where I was when I watched those brave guys landed, I do recall someone brought a small B&W TV into the R&D place where I was working so we could watch them taking off from the moon.
The TV was set up in the company's drafting room, the same place where I was in 1963, talking to a mechanical designer, when someone came rushing into the room to tell us JFK had been shot.
Does almost every american old enough on that day to understand what had happened remember just where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the President's assasination?
SWMBO and I were so put out by what happened that day that we "flicked out" that evening and took in a movie to take our minds off the subject for a couple of hours. I recall that we were far from alone in the theater.
Jeff

just came across this. wow, would like to have a look! yeah, i remember the grainy lousy images, would be cool to see 'em all crisp and clear.
b.w.
NASA reacquires original Moon landing footage Tapes discovered in Oz, agency confirms By Lester Haines
Posted in Space, 29th June 2009 11:02 GMT
NASA has seemingly confirmed that the original taped recordings of the first Moon landing have turned up in Australia - almost three years after the agency admitted it had carelessly mislaid them.
The Parkes Observatory in Australia captured the 1969 live images straight from the lunar surface to magnetic tape. What the US public saw, though was a compressed feed "downsized" to local TV resolutions, while NASA itself grabbed a 16mm copy from a TV monitor.
The Parkes Observatory tapes were apparently shipped to the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland a year after the landing, but in 2006 NASA confirmed that despite an extensive search, their whereabouts was unknown.
However, the Sunday Express now claims the footage was actually gathering dust in a storage facility in Perth among other tapes containing Moon dust data - presumably the same material which Oz scientists hoped to run through a vintage IBM 729 Mark V tape drive earlier this year.
A NASA spokesman confirmed the Apollo 11 landing recordings are the real deal, and said: "We?re talking about the same tapes."
He added: ?At this point, I?m not prepared to discuss what has or has not been found. The research team is preparing its final report and we?ll release those findings publicly in the coming weeks.?
The Sunday Express notes that "if the visual data can be retrieved, NASA is set to reveal them to the world as a key plank of celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the landings next month".
Whether the world will finally enjoy high-quality pics of Aldrin and Armstrong strolling the Moon's surface remains to be seen. When NASA coughed to having lost the original tapes, John Sarkissian of the Parkes Observatory noted that even if a machine could be found to replay them, they would be "so old and fragile, it's not certain they could even be played". ®

Like you said - *IF* we wanted to, we sure the hell could.
But it takes a reason to get everyone on the same page and pulling in the same direction. The 1960's Space Race was a balls-out United States Macho response to the Soviet Block trying to get there first, and we were NOT going to let that happen.
All you need is a compelling reason - For purposes of discussion, let's say they figure out there's a big asteroid out there with our name on it, and we're going to get knocked back to the Ice Age if it makes a direct hit on the Earth - Yeah, that ought to do it...
Let's say for discussion we have 50 years before it hits. That would be just enough time to get back into space big-time, figure out how to catch up to the asteroid and confirm the orbital mechanics, and come up with a way to correct the course - either blow it up, strap a big engine to it or take a big asteroid and bank a pool-shot off it to move the orbit /just/ enough.
And if all else fails, the space program is our life raft. Colonies on the Moon and Mars and elsewhere in the Inner System (large colony space stations at the L5 points, etc.) that will provide enough genetic diversity to ensure species survival. And with all the libraries backed up eighteen ways, we can stave off a second Dark Ages.
Those of us staying at home better stock up on winter woolies, and move to the tropics where we have a chance of staying warm-ish.
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An awesome read: 's_Hammer Cheers! Rich

absolutely!