Once More Down Memory Lane... In early 1968, I did National Service at Burnham Military Camp. Some of our training was in the Southern Alps foothills at Little Malaya, which was right under the flight path out of Christchurch to Australia, and I used to lie in my bivouac at nights and watch the lights of aircraft flying out to the world. That was when I heard the call of the Wild Goose and when the Army finished with me, I flew out too. More than a year later, I made a brief, and final, return to the family home in Dunedin, by coincidence, in time for a pivotal moment in history, when, on 17th July, 1969, my father and I sat up in the early hours of the morning, listening to the launch of Apollo 11. In those day, there were no high-capacity TV satellites, so New Zealand was not able to watch overseas events live. Perforce, we had to listen to them happen on the radio. So, we listened to the countdown as it moved towards zero, and heard engine start, launch commit and, at 1:32 a.m., lift-off at “thirty-two minutes past the hour”. And then we heard the gigantic crackling roar of the Saturn 5 rocket as three thousand tons heaved themselves off the launch pad, and we were never more aware than in that moment of being caught up in history in it was happening. Four days later, we listened on the radio to Neil Armstrong’s One Small Step and yet, as momentous and awe-inspiring as that was, my main memory of that time is the colossal noise and power of the rocket that sent Armstrong to the Moon. Since then, I have seen a Saturn 5 rocket close up and, while you *know* how big they were, nothing prepares you for the moment you first see one. The first time my wife and I saw it, all we could say was “Holy shit!” tinyurl/keg3zpo
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 10:45:00 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015