RTE and the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing

Fabio

Does anyone here remember the rte broadcast. I assume it was live, of the 1969 Apollo 11 landing?

I'm 20 years old so don't remember it of course but looked on youtube for coverage and can find no real live footage which I imagine would be fascinating.

Does anyone here have any stories from seeing it?

ejmaztec

I watched it in the UK, and like many of my equally young pals, we only watched it to see if anyone was going to get killed.:eek: The Americans and the Germans were extremely excited however.

I thought that Capricorn 1 was a very good film, not to mention more interesting, a few years later. Even with "pics", some people think that it never happened.

Lizzykins

I was only six so I don't remember it at all. However my OH who was 12 at the time insists he was sent to bed before they landed and never saw it! I do remember the Apollo landings of the early 70s but by that stage it was old hat and damn all watched.

DublinWriter

I was only a glint in the milkman's eye at the time, but my Uncle recorded the audio onto his reel-to-reel recorder.

The footage itself was painfully grainy because it was being relayed from a camera pointed at a television screen in a remote satellite relay station in Australia. Go get the movie 'The Dish' for further edutainment on this.

Neil Armstrong fudged his lines - "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" is actually meaningless, what he meant to say was "one small step for *a* man, one giant leap for mankind".

Interestingly enough, play the above audio sample backwards and he says "Man will spacewalk".

McArmalite

Fabio wrote: »

Does anyone here remember the rte broadcast. I assume it was live, of the 1969 Apollo 11 landing?

I'm 20 years old so don't remember it of course but looked on youtube for coverage and can find no real live footage which I imagine would be fascinating.

Does anyone here have any stories from seeing it?

Here it is from youtube Fabio, though not the RTE one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMINSD7MmT4

I was a nipper at the time ( I am getting on amn't I )so to be honest it's very vague and hazey. I think the actual moment Neil Armstrong put his foot down was around 2 or 3 am Irish time, so most people were fast asleep, though RTE ofcourse carried the coverage thru the night. Brendan O'Reilly* who normally did sports, I think was the commentator at the time on possibly the world's most historic event.

But anyway, in the lead up to the landing as a child it seemed to take forever for them to get to the moon. From watching sci fi on TV you seemed to expect them to balst off, land on the moon, open a hatch and there it is. Most people in Ireland who were adults at the time would say that the most nerve racking/exciting time was the actual landing from the space craft to the surface of the moon which was around 7pm or 8pm Irish time. As you porobably know, the designated palce to land was too rocky so Neil Armstrong looked around for a more suitable spot. He found one with only seconds of fuel to spare. My father was down in the pub watching, but I beleive that when the live message came thru " the eagle has landed " there was a spontaneous huge cheering and applauding in the pubs like a goal or try been scored in a big match etc. Also some people listening to the radio in their cars started hooting horns etc

Also from what I remember kids were building little space rockets and moon buggies or whatever they were called that used to come in plastic kits in 'Lucky Bags' ( 40 something's - do you remember them ) and wee freebie's attached with comics and out of Frostie's boxes etc as well as colouring books of astronauts flying thru space etc. Even cowboy and soldiers guns were left behind and replaced by space guns etc ( I suppose most young lads were possibly hoping that the astronauts would get into some sort of titanic struggle with some nasty looking evil aliens after landing )


* http://www.rte.ie/news/2001/0401/oreilly.html

Fabio

Excellent post there McArmalite!!! Great video too!

McArmalite

Fabio wrote: »

Excellent post there McArmalite!!! Great video too!

No probs Fabio. I see your 20. I'm sure you'll be around to see the first man land on Mars, don't know if I will though

iMax

Allegedly my dad held me up to see it - I was 17 days old at the time... I'll take their word for it. Decades later I was at NASA in Florida & they have the suit Armstrong wore on the space walk on display (at least it's an old spacesuit with an Armstrong name label), but I was mesmerized by it...

Latchy

I was 9 years old but remember it very well .I was with my family on a cavavan site in Kilmuckridge co wexford ,watching the moon landings on a very small tv in a very small 60s caravan .Remember the feeling and excitement and wondering would they make it back to earth .There was a very surreal feeling to it all ,like is this really happening ? .Remember walking along the beach there with two local lads i made pals with and singing of all things 'a george fromby song ' we had picked up from somewere.Then when we were back home in dublin a day or so later i remember the spalshdown into the sea and the astronauts being greeted by President Nixon .Applo 11 with tom hanks reminds me of that period and the songs that were in the charts at the time such as ' sugar sugar ' by the archies .It was still a relitivly innocent time to live in ireland and great memories for me as a kid

Fabio

It all must really have felt other-worldly considering that computers were pretty much unheard of by many on Ireland at the time!