Star Trek in Real Life!
Listener Bob Morehead was just 5 years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. He remembers how his family made a moon-themed cake for his mother’s birthday, which happened to fall on the same day.
Music:
View Transcript
Speaker 1: Major funding for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.
Brian Balogh: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory. Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Brian Balogh.
Nathan Connolly: And I’m Nathan Connolly.
Brian Balogh: If you’re new to the podcast, we’re all historians and each week, along with our colleagues, Ed Ayers and Joanne Freeman, we explore a different aspect of American history.
Nathan Connolly: On September 12, 1962 President John F. Kennedy gave a speech declaring that America would be first to land on the moon and that it would happen by the end of the decade.
John F. Kennedy: Why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, “Why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.
Nathan Connolly: Turns out America was up for the task. When Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface 50 years ago, July 20, 1969, the whole country watched as Neil Armstrong uttered those famous words.
Neil Armstrong: That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Nathan Connolly: A few weeks ago we asked you, our listeners, to cast your memories back to that momentous day and share your moon landing experiences. Here’s what one listener had to say.
Bob: Hi BackStory. This is Bob calling from Barberton, Ohio. My moon landing story, I was six years old, just turned six the previous month. The whole family was watching the preparation for the landing rather religiously that week. On the 20th when they actually touched down, that happened to be my mother’s birthday. My sister is 12 years older than I was, so she would have been 18 at the time, just graduated high school. Angel food cake was my mother’s favorite. So while we were all out in the living room watching them walk around on the moon, my sister was out in the kitchen and decorating this angel food cake.
Bob: She did it with white frosting and then she put these little gel candy rings on it, looking like craters. We celebrated my mom’s birthday with a moon cake while watching the first astronauts walk around on the moon. That was pretty special. I had taken to watching Star Trek with my brother. Geez, some of my earliest memories. My brother’s also quite a bit older than I am. He watched Star Trek, so I watched Star Trek. Lost In Space was on at the time too and I watched that. I was pretty into space by the time the moon landing happened. So it all just slid right into that as far as I was concerned.
Bob: I was excited by the whole thing. I’m watching Star Trek happen in real life right in front of me on the evening news. Looking back, the moon landing really represented tremendous progress to this date. I mean I carry around in my pocket a computer a million times more powerful than the one that put the thing on the moon, but even with that, we have still not yet, we are 50 years down the road. We have not yet equaled that achievement, let alone exceeded it. That is still the pinnacle of human advancement. It’s the farthest we’ve ever gone.
View Resources
Moon Landing Lesson Set
On July 20, 1969, the United States celebrated an amazing scientific achievement: landing the Apollo 11 on the surface of the moon. As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two men to walk on the lunar surface, the American public watched with nationalistic pride. This singular moment was the culmination of a decade of extensive efforts by the U.S. government and the scientific community. It also served as a public declaration of international supremacy during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
This lesson reflects on the legacy of the “space race” during the 1960s. Fifty years after the fact, the moon landing is still celebrated as one of the greatest achievements in human history. However, this era is also often treated with an uncritical nostalgia. For many Americans, the Apollo 11 mission represents a moment of unity at a calamitous time in American history. For other Americans, the “space race” was a distraction from the fight for civil rights and the intractable conflict in Vietnam.
As you go through the lesson, encourage students to think critically about these contradictions. Why does the Apollo 11 mission remain the subject of American nostalgia after fifty years? What role did the space race play in advancing social, economic, and geopolitical interests? How should we reflect on this time period as students of history?
