As 7/20/09 (or Year 41) approaches, the NY Times online edition is running an . I especially enjoyed the narrated by John Wilford, the reporter who covered the mission for the Times.

I was 21 days short of my 13th birthday at the time, and still remember it all like it was yesterday. It's still the most inspiring event that I've ever witnessed.

Yeah. I was eight years old at the time. My mother, a space flight fanatic, woke me up so that I could watch the event on our black and white TV. I never forgot it.

Cool article.

I swear that my earliest memory is being in a playpen in our living room, watching men on the moon. It wasn't from Apollo 11, though. More likely 14.

I've been trying to find a good 'toy' scale model of the command module/lander for years; there used to be one sold at the Smithsonian with the docking ports etc. I've had to make do with a Lego set to try to explain to my kids how spaceflight first worked.

I have to admit that I have only disconnected memories of watching the lunar footage at the time and can no longer clearly distinguish what I saw then with the hours of stuff I've watched since. I do very clearly remember watching the liftoff of Apollo 17 from the moon, and being sad because it was the last one for years and years.

And still is.

You really are a batch of youngsters. I was 21, and I sat and watched it in my parents' living room, staying glued to it for as long as the transmission went on.

I remember watching the Alan Shepherd downrange flight, too.

In the UK the television was broadcasting at hours it was usually silent, and I was glued to the set for most of them. I may have seen Apollo 8, and almost certainly Apollo 10, but I definitely saw Apollo 11 live.

In those days they filled in gaps while the astronauts were sleeping, crapping, etc, with useful information about the space program. Today it would be a bunch of entertainers speculating on what would happen if the astronauts found LGM, with a crawling Twitter feed from the audience.

Well. they have to vamp somehow while they're dressing the sets and adjusting the lighting.

I find it hard to believe that the "we never went" crowd has such solid presence and traction these days. Right up there with the "lunar glass domes" crowd. Aye yi yi.

And History channel ran junk on the Bermuda Triangle last night, which was completely debunked more than 30 years ago. (Berlitz included ships that sank for known reasons in the *Pacific Ocean*, fa crissakes.)

Any you wonder why we didn't find "Idiocracy" very funny.

Ditto. In the UK we never saw Cronkite, Clarke, or Heinlein. Aunty Beeb had her own cadre.

On the 21st? Really? I remember it being on my sister's birthday, the 20th; I always figured that was why she, my mom and other sister were out of the room. I remember watching it in the family room with my dad. He and I were the space buffs and sci fi fans in the house. We got up off the sofa and stood in the middle of the room, glued to the TV. I was about a month short of my 12th birthday. It would be the next year that I discovered Heinlein, but I was reading Bradbury's S is for Space, The Universe Between, and of course, A Wrinkle in Time.