Apollo 11, 40 years on

July 20th, 2009 22:28 UTC ·

We were on vacation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Our parents took us to some fake-Western theme park (whose name I can’t remember) that featured saloon girls, Sarsaparilla, and shootouts. We were in the Red Dog Saloon (for some reason I remember that), probably enjoying the family-friendly floor show. Then someone cleared the stage, and placed a television on a chair.

It was in this unlikely setting that I, my family, and a few dozen others cheered when the Eagle landed.

This weekend, a Facebook post by Cynthia Gentry led me to wechoosethemoon.org, a project by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library to replay, in real time, Apollo XI’s VOX communications from liftoff to landing. Warning – it’s addictive.

The Library has also registered three Twitter accounts and is Tweeting select transmissions.

Even as Apollo XI was in space, dependent on computers and comlinks for success, what would become the Internet and The World Wide Web was beginning to take shape.