WORLDS APART- APOLLO 11

"I was on the moon!" replied Edwin Buzz Aldrin @TheRealBuzz, when asked , "where were you 49 years today.." by @linn_LeBlancon on twitter. @maitra_gaurangi was delighted to join the conversation "I was eight years old and following the entire journey on our Grundig radio with my father. Today I am on Twitter with @TheRealBuzz!!Thank you for a two way ticket to the moon!"

July, in my dictionary is connected with the Apollo 11 Mission. The memories of listening to Neil Armstrong's voice from the moon and audio time lag for the conversation to reach earth, reverberate, even after 49 years. Tracing the splash down in Pacific Ocean on a large Reader's Digest Atlas with my father,  the immense joy and relief at their safe return, are indelible images of 24 July, 1969. In that pre 1975 era, our home in small town Kotagiri, Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu did not have access to television (only seven cities in India had some access). What TV did not beam in, radio and newspapers brought in ample measure. My scrap books were full of paper cuttings of the Apollo 11 Mission, the blast off from launch pad 39A at Cape Kennedy, the astronauts-Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E.(Buzz) Aldrin Jr;  the landing of the Eagle on the Sea of Tranquillity on the 20th July at 4:18 pm and Neil Armstrong  putting his left foot on the moon at 10:39 pm in silicon rubber soles  reinforced with aluminized plastics. If the Apollo 11 Mission needed a trade mark, it was this footprint, its highpoint, imprinted in the lunar surface. No other mission before or after would ever be identified with that footprint. Aldrin took first took photographs and then walked down while Collins circled above in the Command Module. Today at the click of a button, I can relive the entire phenomenon by reading EP-72 Log of Apollo 11- thanks to  https://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/apollo11_log/log.htm

A planet and its satellite were no longer worlds apart; they had been brought closer by one that one giant step for mankind. And 49 years later, the technology in the second decade of the 2000s, that lets us access, relive and celebrate the event is once again a world apart from the 6th decade of the 1900s. The same can be said of the technology that enabled the mission in the post-World War II era. The Saturn V launch vehicle (363 foot long and weighed 7.6 million pounds) owed its genesis to the German V-2 rockets; vital German expertise was recruited through Operation Paperclip bringing in 700 German rocket engineers and the man to lead them - Wernher von Braun. Computers that had come into their own in the World War II and beyond, were not the final word for the early astronauts Alan Shepard ( 1961-Freedom 7 Mission)  and John Glenn ( 1962-Orbital Mission), they only trusted Katherine Johnson's hidden figures on the final trajectory analysis. The US-USSR Cold War accelerated the Space Race (begun in 1955); it finally resulted in the US victory crafted by Apollo 11 (in 1969). Of the three astronauts, all born in 1930, all five feet, 11 inches tall, only Neil Armstrong, like the good Commander has passed on before his crew. And no matter where you go paper work is essential & this Apollo 11 U.S. Customs declaration form after the first moon landing is priceless - made available on twitter @BeschlossDC

In the wide sweep of human achievements, particularly in the history of Science, few events have the power to unite an entire planet like space travel - that is again a world apart in our increasingly divided Blue Marble.

Tags: Priceless paper work!