Apollo 11 launch, July 16, 1969
An evening pause: If all goes well, I will be watching a variation of this live from Florida tomorrow morning. The action really begins at the five minute mark. Also, this particular video gives you the best flavor of what it was like to see the launch live, rather than on film or video.
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I never tire of watching this footage since I watched it live as a five and a half year old boy in Queens Village, New York City. My kids express the same awe when watching…wonder where they got that from?
Early in the Shuttle program I saw a composite video displaying a Saturn V and Shuttle launch side-by-side. The Shuttle cleared the tower in about half the time it took the Saturn. While the Saturn V stack massed half again as much as the Shuttle, it was still an instructive illustration.