UPDATE: I’m aware the video is no longer available. I will be looking for an alternateive source. If I do not find one, this article will stay in this state until such a time as I do.
48 Years ago today, on July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. There is a massive amount of information I could share about this event, and of course I’m saving much of it for the 2019 50th anniversary, so that will just have to wait.
What I will share today, though, while I have an opportunity, is this interview with Neil Armstrong from 2011, filmed about a year before his death, where he discusses some of his life, his military career, and most critically a synopsis of the Apollo program leading up to his mission.
This of course includes the Apollo 1 fire, the story of why Apollo 8 went around the Moon as it did, and the eventual decision that Apollo 11 would be the first attempt at a lunar landing.
Details of how it was to fly in the Saturn V, what the actual act of flying to the Moon is like, the landing and the return, and the troubles of living in space – things you don’t think about, but things that hearing about them from the people who lived it make the events more vivid to imagine.
Towards the end is Neil narrating video of the landing synced with modern imagery of the Moon and the Apollo 11 landing site. It’s fascinating to watch and hear him discuss, as well as compare the modern imagery to the 1969 film taken from the Lunar Module.
In the end Neil talks about the future path NASA is taking, but only vaguely – this is back when the Constellation program was still underway, before the change to the SLS and modern Orion program, but that’s another story.
On a final note, I love the commentary the interviewer, Alex Malley, makes at the end of the interview. It seems he, like so many others who care about the “golden age” of space travel see it the right way – as humans accomplishing these goals for humanity.
Here’s the interview. The quality isn’t the best, but it’s watchable. Enjoy!