The future is here

[jeshyr]

I was feeling grumpy and I couldn't sleep last night so eventually I gave up trying so hard and turned on the radio to ABC 774 like I usually do for a bit of overnight company. Most of the time that's decent talk radio overnight, but on Saturday nights, 774 has Saturday Night Country - country music - which I hate, so I flicked over to Radio National, my second choice listening ...

... but on Saturday Nights RN has some World Music show which I also hate, the music is not to my taste and I wanted to hear people anyway ...

... so grumpily I switched over to ABC News Radio. I don't like News Radio much - I'm not a news person at all - but it's programmed into my radio thingy. I think the last time I listened to it for more than 10 seconds was probably 6 months ago or more. So this was REALLY random …

News Radio after midnight is just streaming the BBC world service, which is OK. When I flicked over they were discussing something about how China was going to land a rover on the moon today, that's interesting enough. Without any fanfare they crossed to a correspondent somewhere - I wasn't paying much attention, really ...

... except then I was paying ALL my attention because I realised their correspondent narrating the moon landing live!

There was only about 5 minutes of it and I'm not sure where the guy was, physically, to be doing it. Everybody seemed quite taken by surprise, apparently it happened quite a bit earlier than predicted because they used an unexpected landing site.

Last time an unmanned lander soft-landed on the moon, I was one year old. I've talked to my Dad occasionally about what it was like to watch Apollo 11 land on the moon, and felt envious that nothing similar had happened in my lifetime. Now I feel immensely lucky that, quite by chance, I got to hear this one... an unmanned lander in 2013 isn't nearly the same as a manned mission in 1969 of course, but it was still pretty amazing to hear!


Love to you all,
r

Comments

[badgerbag]

I heard it live too! (Up at about 4am Pacific time) It was 2 dudes who were at least somewhere right nearby if not in mission control though I htink they were at least right outside it. They showed shots of the scientists looking very excited, right after the landing. Anyway, it was pretty exciting!!

[acelightning]

the first human-made object to reach the Moon was the Soviet impactor Luna-2 in 1959. the first unmanned Moon lander was the Soviet Luna-9 in January 1966, followed in May by the US Surveyor 1. naturally, as a space-mad teenager, i followed news coverage of all of them.

the first manned Moon lander was, of course, Apollo 11, in July of 1969. i had a very small part in building the Lunar Module, the piece that got them down to the lunar surface and stayed there (and, for Apollo 13, the piece that, completely beyond its design parameters, got them safely back to Earth). (i've told that story a number of times.)

it'll be interesting to see what the Chinese rover finds.

[dragonsally]

I'm glad you got to experience a moon landing. I will never forget that day in July 1969, sitting in the porch (anteroom) at State School watching the astronauts.

[xanni-au.livejournal.com]

Great timing! I didn't catch it live, but there are some early photos and short video clips available now. So cool. The Indians, Pakistanis and Japanese are also working on various space missions.