Blast from the Past: To the moon!

So, back in '69 when I was a wee lad, I got to ride on a rocket and take some photos. I know the picture is not that great, but my hands were too small to properly hold on the camera, and my skills were not up to snuff yet (not to mention the helmet gets in the way).

It was a ton of fun - but, I'll tell you, blast off scared the snot out of me. We blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A at 8:32 am EST on July 16, 1969. The Saturn V packs a wallop! About 76hrs later, we hit lunar orbit insertion.

The next day, we landed at Mare Tranquillitatis. Neil had to manually fly the module to locate a safe landing spot. Luckily I missed this harrowing event. I slept through the landing (the time was 20:17:40hrs, sadly past my bedtime).

While the real astronauts performed experiments on the surface I mostly took photos. Although, I did take my favorite Wham-O Superball to play with, I found that it didn't hold up to vacuum.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were all real friendly and I enjoyed the ride.

To this day, I still don't understand why they let a 5 yr boy come along, and why it is not better documented.

Anyway, Apollo 11 was a great success.

Perhaps in a future blast, I'll discuss my participation in the 1972 Super Bowl VI - That Staubach is one class act.

This is the last Blast from the Past Wednesday - I'm moving it to Saturdays.