"Godspeed, Apollo Eleven..."

Well, we're almost there...I personally thought it would have have been pretty cool to have the Shuttle launch today, but alas it was not meant to be. I also thought it would have been cool to go out and launch a few, commemoratively, of course, but Mother Nature will not cooperate, what with 15 mph winds out of the east. Nevertheless, I'll bet that that the events of 35 years ago, transpiring before our eyes on the TV screen, launched more than one or two of our imaginations into the hobby that brings us all together today through the medium of this and other online forums. Personally, for me it was the Gemini missions, what with Ed White's space walk and all. Maybe for the 40th anniversary, a National scale event could be planned...

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^^^^^^^^ (36 years)
The Objectivist Center is proposing a new holiday/commemoration, Human Achievement Day, to be celebrated on July 20th.
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/text/ehudgins_rff-human-achievement.asp
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I remember all of the fuel cell problems that they had during the Gemini series, and how they worked to solve them. I still have a scrapbook at my mother's house that I put together from newspaper articles during that time.
I dropped by Boeing's Museum of Flight yesterday afternoon and spent some time reflecting on the whole program while gazing at a piece of lunar material returned by Apollo 17.

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Here in California (Sacramento area) the local government won't cooperate.
KT

Funny you mentioned Gemini, because I was thinking the same thing. For me, it was probably because I was 10-12 years old for Gemini, manned space flight was especially awe-inspiring. Several years later while Apollo is going on, we are a teenager driving a car, too wrapped up in trying to be cool and popular.
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wickball wrote:
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There's just somethin about that long, sleek Titan with that black capsule on top. It's the first image in my mind when I think about those days.
But there's no doubt that the rockets which got me really interested were the Nikes - Ajax and Hercules. Those things just "looked" like a rocket to me. They looked fast just sittin on a rail with all those swept fins. And when they took off, they "looked" like I thought a rocket launch should; fire and smoke and speed. Even their repeated failures against flying saucer attacks never diminished my enthusiasm for them.
:)