Mercury Gemini Apollo

When I was growing up, my parents insisted that we watch all of the manned space launches.  None could be missed.  Since they were usually early moring launches in Florida, it was real early in California.  We dragged ourselves out of bed and stared at the static image on the screen narrated breathlessly by Walter Cronkite.

I don't think every family did this.  But we saw every single darn blastoff.  Mercury, Gemini, Apollo were the names of the programs with Apollo being the one that went to the moon.

At the suggestion of my small writing group (originally dubbed Inner Circle now Poker Group) though we do not play Poker, I wrote a piece about watching the launch specifically the Apollo 11 launch.  There were some great transcripts and television versions available on the web.  Actually pretty fun to go through the actual countdown with the family watching.

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Liftoff!

The Apollo 11 rocket on it's launchpad 1969.