A half a century ago tomorrow, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon with a pledge that they “came in peace for all mankind.” | DeadlineDominic reports
, and he invited us to his house where he was having a viewing party. He had a really nice house in the Pacific Palisades and the biggest color television you could get back then. Although the images were in black and white, Walter Cronkite was certainly in color, and I remember it incredibly well. It was this Hollywood family party where we went swimming, had a barbecue and watched the event.
The thing that I learned spending a lot of time around the Apollo astronauts and the mission controllers, is that while they recognized the risks, they were all fundamentally test pilots and elite engineers. They expected to succeed. They acknowledged the risk but they assumed it was going to work. They had so many contingency plans. It was those contingency plans that ultimately saved the Apollo 13 crew.
It’s said over and over, but there are so many social programs, that if our nation put that kind of focus on achievement in those areas, we could solve a lot more than we give ourselves credit for. They came from the mentality of, work the problem. That’s what a test pilot does. If their aircraft is in trouble, they don’t waste a second on panic. They use every second available to them trying to solve the problem and not thinking about what would happen if they don’t.
That moment in time, I was in high school, and I recall being moved to tears. I watched it in Northridge, at my parents’ house, my dad, mom, younger sister and younger brother. My friend and his father came over, he worked in the aerospace business for Lockheed, and he was very plugged in. And Matt, his son, that was my best friend.
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