Godspeed Apollo 11...

[Bfgrn]

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
President John F Kennedy
Rice University
Houston, Texas
September 12, 1962

We Choose the Moon: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing


As we remember the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, there's a new website that is offering a unique, second-by-second, real-time recreation of that first moon mission.

WeChooseTheMoon.org combines animation with a vast library of archival audio, video and photography.

The site includes "over 100 hours of audio transmissions, news photos and video, and speeches from [President] John F. Kennedy. And it may be the new way that we aggregate, in this digital world, history," says Regina Lewis, consumer advisor at AOL, the Internet company that is hosting We Choose The Moon.

The site itself is a project of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

The adventure began on Thursday, 40 years to the second after the three astronauts roared into space atop their Saturn V rocket as announced by the "Voice of Apollo," Jack King.

"Liftoff, we have a liftoff, 32 minutes past the hour. Liftoff on Apollo 11. [pause] Tower cleared."

After that, it's the long flight to the moon and then the historic moon landing itself.

WeChooseTheMoon.org gets its name from a famous speech given by President Kennedy in 1962, after he set a goal of landing men on the moon before the end of the 1960s. You can hear an excerpt on the site.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Although the site tries to capture the historic feel of the '60s, some things are a bit updated. For example, this time we get a Twitter feed.

"This is the first really historic event that's been captured to this degree," said Regina Lewis. "Might not be the last. And I think it's just a sign of the times and a sign of how we're going to capture history [in the future.] And if it is - wow! We're lucky to have the bar set at this level."

At the end of the real-time re-creation, on July 20, the site will allow you to relive the Apollo 11 mission on your own schedule at WeChooseTheMoon.org, or get the link to this and more than 250 other Websites of the Week from our site, VOAnews.com.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Saluting the brave men who took a chance at getting microwaved on their trip to the Moon and back.

Imagine a prize so great that we would send people out to the Moon and back.

 

[Bfgrn]

Saluting the brave men who took a chance at getting microwaved on their trip to the Moon and back.

Imagine a prize so great that we would send people out to the Moon and back.

Imagine the acceleration of knowledge gained and leaps forward in technological advances that could only be created by necessity...

"If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours."
President John F Kennedy
Rice University
Houston, Texas
September 12, 1962