…join the club. (How many blogs are going to have this title today?)
Forty years ago I was six years of age, attending Grade One at Lota State School, where my mother was a teacher. Because we lived across the street from the school (33 Richard Street), a group of children came over and watched the moon landing there. This was back in the dim dark ages. I thought the school owned one television, but Margaret doesn’t think hers did, so ours may not have as well. In any case our lounge room was packed. (Probably with my mother’s class, plus I can’t remember how many others.)
It was a time of wonder, all the more so because I was young, but because the future really did seem to be arriving so quickly. President Kennedy had committed the USA to putting men on the moon within ten years and the goal was attained. It was a lofty goal, by no means guaranteed, and its achievement was a testimony to single minded determination.
To be sure I don’t know what it achieved in concrete terms. Teflon and Velcro? But it encouraged dreamers and achievers. Sadly the USA would find itself mired in Vietnam and embroiled in the Nixon scandal. No one seems to speak in those terms any more. Politicians articulate their goals in very guarded terms. Aspiriational without being concrete.
When the first two men landed on the moon in 1969 it seemed like we all could go there. So far only ten more have made it. No women as yet. I was hoping for flying cars, Dick Tracy watches and the like. (I was only six)
Any way, there are times in your life you remember an event, but you also remember the spirit of an age. The moon landing was one of those.
NASA would imprint itself on the public conciousness less than a year after with the drama of Apollo Thirteen and again another decade and a half later with the tragedy of the loss of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.
Depending on your perspective on the moon landing I suppost you can either watch The Dish, for those sentimentally inclined, or for the more sceptical Capricorn One. (Which I saw at the Wynnum Imperial Picture Theatre, but that’s another story.)
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