Forty years ago, men landed on the moon

I was at Keira's house, eyes glued to the television like everyone else. We had a friend who was near Yellowstone and missed it. Hard to believe that an American would have missed this exciting, tense event. A giant leap for mankind.

This morning, they started showing old movies pre-dating the moon landing, about people going to the moon. Some of the fantasies were similar to those in the movies now. Though, of course, today the special effects are much slicker. I guess it took until evening to get around to covering the actual event.

NASA doesn't seem as exciting as it used to. Interesting piece from the WSJ about Celebrity Culture vs. The Right Stuff:

. . . Not enough has been written about the Apollo astronauts and, in particular, about their place in the history of American character. That’s a pity: What they have, or had, is something Americans could use.

That something is “The Right Stuff,” which in the movie version means fearlessness, ambition, unblinking patriotism and a penchant for understated irony. Most of us would probably think of the Right Stuff as some combination of piloting skills and a barrelful of guts.

But the really essential ingredient is personal modesty, if not in private then certainly in public. “One day you’re just Gene Cernan, young naval aviator, whatever,” recalls the commander of Apollo 17 in the documentary, “In the Shadow of the Moon.” “And the next day you’re an American hero. Literally. And you have done nothing.”

Mr. Cernan is the last man to have walked on the moon. Nobody can accuse him of lacking for courage. He is simply expressing the very human bewilderment of a sentient person caught in the blandishments of modern celebrity culture. Does America make men like Gene Cernan anymore?

Then again, Mr. Cernan is positively boastful compared to Mr. Armstrong. . . . . Modern parlance allows us the term “private person” to describe people like Mr. Armstrong. Closer to the mark, I suspect, is that he abides by a private code of conduct. He understands that fate has assigned him a historic, if somewhat fortuitous role, and he means to honor the terms of the bargain.

That this should seem at all peculiar tells us something about the age. Codes of personal conduct were once what Americans—great ones, at least—were all about . . .

Read the whole thing.

Update: Hoe did they do it without today's computers? Interesting retrospective here, with videos, photos and contemporaneous comments.

Plus, WD-40.