Rant #2,410: Moon Shadow

On July 18, 1969, 50 years ago today, the Apollo 11 craft and its inhabitants--commander Neil Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins--entered the moon's gravity, and needed to make a slight course correction to do so.

The team checked out the Columbia spacecraft during a live television broadcast, and all seemed to be well, and the mission was right in front of them now, and certainly attainable.

With everything A-OK, the crew was given an extra hour of sleep, which they probably needed anyway, as perhaps the most difficult part of the mission was right before them.

Back on earth, the moon mission became the hottest topic on the planet, and it was getting the maximum coverage it deserved from all channels of the media.

The three-man crew was already being hailed as world and national heroes even before reaching their goal--landing and walking on the moon.

Everyone seemed to have a passion for space and for this mission, and it cut across all lines--young and old, black and white and yellow and brown.

My family was pretty much ensconced in our vacation in the Catskill Mountains of New York, and while we continued to play ball, swim and eat to our heart's content, the moon mission was certainly on our minds, too.

We received the local edition of the New York Daily News while vacationing, and the newspaper was giving the mission the stupendous coverage it deserved, with page after page of news and analysis about the Columbia, the crew, and the moon itself.

I don't remember if I read each and every article in the newspaper, but I read enough to keep me up to date on what was happening and what was yet to happen.

Yes, in between the sports and swimming, something stupendous was about to happen, and I know that while I probably was having a good time on vacation, I really could not wait to get home and experience what was going on in more familiar surroundings.

And as I said earlier, this entire mission--suggested by the late President John F. Kennedy just a few years earlier in a mandate that at one time seemed almost impossible to meet--was a moment of national unity in a country that was being split apart by the war in Vietnam.

No matter who you were or where you stood on the war, you could look into the sky and wonder and dream about what was about to happen, and it cut across all lines, beliefs, parties and cultures.

You wanted the crew to succeed in its mission, and you wanted to crew to then return to earth safely.

There was no political grandstanding by anyone on those ultimate goals, absolutely none.

Sure, there were some people who said we should be using the money we were spending on this project on the earth, where it was needed, but even those people had to be taken aback by the grandeur of what was happening.

And those people eventually got their way, so everything seemed to even out, although at the time, no one could realize that that was the path we would take after the moon missions ended in the mid-1970s.

Me, a 12 year old kid, didn't worry about such things; the stuff I had been reading in my comic books for years was actually going to happen right before my eyes, and that was all that I cared about.