40 Years of Fascination

This Thursday marks the 40 year anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve been fascinated with spaceflight ever since I can remember, and Apollo 11 was the pinnacle of exploration for mankind. Nothing before, or since, has had such a lasting impact on society, or sparked the curiosity and imagination of as many people as the Apollo project. Apollo 11 was the culmination of a nearly decade-long endeavor that will probably never be matched in scope. Nor will anything, save for maybe a manned mission to mars, capture the public’s attention the way the first moonshot did.

Way back when, my grandpa was on the team at Battelle – here in Columbus – that developed the solid rocket fuel for the Apollo spacecraft. People from every corner of the country made contributions to the project and everyone had a vested interest. Ask anyone that’s old enough and they can tell you exactly where they were when the Eagle landed.

To commemorate that historic mission, the John F. Kennedy Library has launched We Choose the Moon, an interactive website where we can follow the mission in “real-time.” The site will use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and desktop widgets to allow you to follow the whole endeavor like it happened in 1969, minute by minute.but this time we’ll have access to a lot more details than the public did back them. There is audio from mission control and the cockpit as well as photos and videos showing every aspect of the Apollo 11 mission. There are even Tweets from the astronauts.

This may be as close as I get to following a mission to the Moon in my lifetime.

[IMG via Google/Time]