As experts point out, the technology used to send a man to the moon doesn’t even match up to today’s pocket calculators, let alone our smartphones.
However, there’s one thing all these TV specials do have in common: They all elide over the question of whether the U.S. Science 11 things you never knew about Apollo 11 Instead, there are a plethora of specials, billing the moon landing as everything from “America’s Greatest Triumph” to cynically exploring how it was sold in the first place.
But try as television might to unite the entire world in watching a man take a short walk off a ladder, it can’t roll back the clock and get everyone to watch the same thing. The sheer wealth of footage means there are still brand-new images to see, even 50 years on. On the 50th anniversary, it’s not surprising viewers are once again turning back to their televisions to tell them what to think and feel about it. Former astronaut Wally Schirra sits beside him. Walter Cronkite holds up a copy of the New York Daily News with a "Man Lands on the Moon" headline during his coverage of the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969.
It’s likely why those who grew up in the Soviet Union are most inclined to believe it was all a hoax, and movies like “ First Man” upset conservatives by merely existing. It was sold as a worldwide moment, but an America-first one. He treated the moment with a fever of patriotic wonder, driving home that, in 69 years of the 20th century, the world went from traveling by horse and buggy to traveling in space. Walter Cronkite - who had an unbelievable 45 percent share of all America audiences - hosted 27 hours of the coverage straight through. But for many, it’s an anniversary of the time that Earthlings watched as the first human officially become a Moonman.īut it is remembered that way because that was how it was packaged. On the surface, this is the 50th anniversary of a few men blasting out of Earth’s orbit to another heavenly body. It’s that sense of togetherness that still permeates the story of the Apollo 11 landing today.