I was asking the same question even before I started to read the second sentence. Godspeed, John Glenn.
BTW, I had to watch while in utero. The view sucked.
I have this vague childhood memory of an Atlas booster seen TV being prepared for launch, with wisps of ice-crystal vapor from vented liquid O2. I have no other memory of the event apart from seeing what I then and now know to be an Atlas.
I have vivid memories of the space program starting with the Gemini 3 mission with Grissom and Young, including the discussion of John Young smuggling aboard a deli sandwich. I even have a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the Gemini flights — might have been a Cub Scout project.
I was 10 when I watched Glenn’s flight. My level of interest was especially high because I had recently learned that his family and mine had a connection in the early 19th century which made him a distant relative. Considering the modest population of Ohio at that time, I suspect that is not a particularly uncommon distinction among present-day Americans whose families on one or both sides trace back to Ohio’s early statehood era. But, at 10, I thought it was way cool.
I would not enroll in first grade until the fall of that year, so I got to watch at home on my parents TV. Walter reporting from Cape Canaveral in a makeshift studio out of the back of a station wagon I believe. I remember watching the white rocket take off with the black capsule atop. LOX venting, the rocket flame tending to overload the TV camera’s videcon tube and the animations with digital numbers rolling by ON PAPER CARDS. lol. It wasn’t until I was a bit older until I understood why the Mercury-Atlas rockets were white in flight while Atlas rockets on the ground were silver. I just thought they were painted differently for some reason…
What a bunch of geezers we are! I was 11 for most of 1962 (turned 12 in September).
I had just turned 12. I watched the launch on TV at school. The teacher wrote “Mr. Kruschev, put that in your pipe and smoke it!” on the blackboard. Good times.
I watched astronauts walk on the moon in my pajamas. Top that!
After they’d been on the moon did you get them back? They’d be worth something now!
Hope your mom didn’t wash them!
Alright! OK! I’ll order the veal!
A few of us younger folks drop by occasionally. I didn’t discover Space until Star Wars came out in 1977 when I was 9. I still regret having no memories of Apollo at all :-).
The preview for Star Wars effectively ruined Ralph Bakshi’s movie, “Wizards” for me. Otherwise Wizards was a fine film, maybe not as famous as Fritz The Cat, but still enjoyable. But it’s like having The Beatles as your warm-up band….
Buh-dump, CSSSHHHHH!!!
I was asking the same question even before I started to read the second sentence. Godspeed, John Glenn.
BTW, I had to watch while in utero. The view sucked.
I have this vague childhood memory of an Atlas booster seen TV being prepared for launch, with wisps of ice-crystal vapor from vented liquid O2. I have no other memory of the event apart from seeing what I then and now know to be an Atlas.
I have vivid memories of the space program starting with the Gemini 3 mission with Grissom and Young, including the discussion of John Young smuggling aboard a deli sandwich. I even have a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the Gemini flights — might have been a Cub Scout project.
I was 10 when I watched Glenn’s flight. My level of interest was especially high because I had recently learned that his family and mine had a connection in the early 19th century which made him a distant relative. Considering the modest population of Ohio at that time, I suspect that is not a particularly uncommon distinction among present-day Americans whose families on one or both sides trace back to Ohio’s early statehood era. But, at 10, I thought it was way cool.
I would not enroll in first grade until the fall of that year, so I got to watch at home on my parents TV. Walter reporting from Cape Canaveral in a makeshift studio out of the back of a station wagon I believe. I remember watching the white rocket take off with the black capsule atop. LOX venting, the rocket flame tending to overload the TV camera’s videcon tube and the animations with digital numbers rolling by ON PAPER CARDS. lol. It wasn’t until I was a bit older until I understood why the Mercury-Atlas rockets were white in flight while Atlas rockets on the ground were silver. I just thought they were painted differently for some reason…
What a bunch of geezers we are! I was 11 for most of 1962 (turned 12 in September).
I had just turned 12. I watched the launch on TV at school. The teacher wrote “Mr. Kruschev, put that in your pipe and smoke it!” on the blackboard. Good times.
I watched astronauts walk on the moon in my pajamas. Top that!
After they’d been on the moon did you get them back? They’d be worth something now!
Hope your mom didn’t wash them!
Alright! OK! I’ll order the veal!
A few of us younger folks drop by occasionally. I didn’t discover Space until Star Wars came out in 1977 when I was 9. I still regret having no memories of Apollo at all :-).
The preview for Star Wars effectively ruined Ralph Bakshi’s movie, “Wizards” for me. Otherwise Wizards was a fine film, maybe not as famous as Fritz The Cat, but still enjoyable. But it’s like having The Beatles as your warm-up band….