To the Moon

Where were you 40 years ago today? I was in Statesboro, GA... a newly married college senor sitting in my off-campus home with my eyes glued to the television. I don't know what I expected to see as I stared at the TV, but what I saw sent chills through my body as it did most every other person in the world. I can remember talking about how exited I was at having seen the actual landing, only to have someone say that it was bunk and probably filmed in an Arizona desert.

It must have taken great strength of will to put ones self into a small capsule that would rocket to Earth's orbit and then be catapulted on to Moon's orbit. This weekend I visited the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library & Museum to see the Apollo 11 exhibit and view the 70+ minute movie on the launch, orbit, moon landing, and the travels about the moon surface by the astronauts.
One thing about the video that struck me is the quote by one of the astronauts, I paraphrase:

I don't know how this all works. I don't know how we get from Earth's surface to the Moon. I know it is a huge team effort that has precise mechanisms at work and I know that I will do my portion to make it successful. This mission will not fail because I did not do my part right!

Replica of Apollo 11 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon as command module pilot Michael Collins circled the moon alone

Flight suit

Astronaut's garb

Authentic Soviet Vostok spacecraft that carried a dog into space in 1961

Life-size replica of the U.S. space capsule Freedom 7 that swooshed Alan Shepard, the first American in space, into the cosmos on May 5, 1961

It is fitting that this display be at the LBJ Museum since the Apollo program began under the Kennedy-Johnson administrations. President Johnson carried out the plan proposed by President Kennedy in his famous speech on May 23, 1963 to have a man on the moon by the end of the decade. From the Austin American Statesman: "Even though Richard Nixon was president when American astronauts landed on the moon, the exhibit stresses that it was Johnson's crucial backing during most of the 1960s that led the country to that historic moment." Exhibit: U. S. Space Program

The LBJ Library & Museum presents To the Moon: The American Space Program in the 1960s, a major exhibit celebrating man’s venture into space.

From the time he was Senate Majority Leader in the 1950s, Lyndon Johnson did more to facilitate the rapid progress of the space program than any other American leader. Johnson co-sponsored legislation for the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, and as Vice-President, was appointed Chairman of the National Space Council by President John F. Kennedy.

The primary focus of the exhibit will cover the period of “Sputnik” (late 1950s) through the first moon landing of Apollo 11 in 1969. Each step of the space programs Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, will be featured, as well as the “milestone” flights of astronauts Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and Ed White. To the Moon will feature eye-catching, visually attractive state-of-the-art elements to match the ambitious scope of the subject.

The LBJ Library’s space exhibit will coincide with a space exhibit featuring Skylab, the Shuttle Missions, and the International Space Station at the George H. W. Bush Library at Texas A&M University at College Station.

The exhibit runs until the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, July 20, 2009. The exhibit also coincides with the 50th anniversary of NASA.