16 July 2009

Apollo 11: The 40th Anniversary

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. Above, watch President John F. Kennedy’s speech about the necessity of space exploration, given at Rice University in 1962 (and clocking in at a TED-friendly 18 minutes). He says: “There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again.”

Inspired? Check out Bill Stone’s TEDTalk, on his ambitious plans to return humankind to the moon. Start at around 10:50 to hear Stone's astonishing vision.

Also worth checking out today (and within the next few minutes especially) is the interactive re-creation of the lunar mission, We Choose the Moon. Commissioned by the JFK Presidential Library and designed and conceived by The Martin Agency with Domani Studios, the site gives visitors minute-by-minute updates of Apollo 11’s lunar mission, with more than 100 hours of archival audio, 44 videos, 400 NASA photographs and “real-time” mission transmissions on the site and via Twitter. The event continues for the next four days. You can follow along starting with the launch at 9:32 AM EDT.

For those of you who can’t wait four days to get to the moon, head on over to Google Moon to see and read about the physical place where each Apollo mission landed.

Enjoy these links on this memorable day.

Posted by Mischa Nachtigal | Permalink | | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)