FRIDAY SURPRISE: To boldly go...

Friday, April 18, 2008 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, Completely irrelevant, History, Technology

When I was a wee lad, America was at the forefront of space exploration. By the time I was old enough to know what was going on, we'd recovered from the shock of the Soviets beating us into space, and had responded in a big way with Gemini and Apollo programs.

In those days, our grade school classes would literally come to a halt as we gathered around a television set to watch a liftoff or a splashdown. The mighty Saturn V rockets - spewing a fireball that remains unequalled for sheer excitement - would take our astronauts into space for yet another thrilling mission. Landing men on the moon was our crowning achievement, watched by just about everyone in the country.

Space flights were national events on a scale that I haven't seen since - and probably never will again. The SuperBowl and American Idol Finals may draw larger audiences, but in terms of captivating our collective conscious, of instilling pride in our country and what we were capable of doing, they will ever equal the NASA of the mid 20th century.

NASA has put together a little retrospective of their first 50 years, using photos that have rarely been seen publicly. If you are a child of the '50s or '60s, this will bring back stirring memories of what we briefly referred to as Cape Kennedy.

-=[ Grant ]=-

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