A lot of people key on BIG birthdays, like 16 or 21 or 50. I've gotten to where I think any of them is a key milestone. My own pending big day is "69", sometimes considered phallic or prurient, but by this age, some of that thinking seems... well, mostly thinking. Feeling, emoting, sensing -- all seem better than thinking on occasion, and this feels like one of those occasions.
On my 29th B'day, Neil Armstrong strode confidently onto the Moon's surface, and an editorial in today's San Jose Mercury-News lamented that within another sixteen months, America will have foregone the opportunity to keep that technological capacity. It is a good editorial, by Charles Krauthammer. See http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_12852490
I was impressed, of course, on July 20, 1969 that we were able to SEE the foot land on the moon. Until 4 months before, the plan had been to do a radio broadcast, not TV, but the HP1300A with a modified 20MHz z-axis amplifier enabled space video transmission. This is the semi-famous box that earned me the dubious honor of The Medal of Defiance from Dave Packard, awarded a mere thirteen years later.
Question -- since we learned today also (front page story) that NASA erased the Moon Walk video some years later (seems they were too broke to buy new videotape, so they erased 200,000 tapes and started over) ; see the story titled "Oops, we erased the Moon Landing" -- how significant was this event? How many people watched it? How memorable was it?
What compares with it for audience reach? Would it have made as much impact if only radio?
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