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APOLLO 11: The Bill Whittle Edition “He told the computer, ‘Execute order number 66.”

Start watching this brilliant series right now and then go on to parts 2 and 3 with more to come.Fullscreen and sound up unless you have a smart TV with the YouTube app installed. In that case, kick back for this incredibly well-made and deeply felt documentary.

“We were able to go to the moon in the sixties because our dads were the kind of men who would let their kids smash rolls of gunpowder with a claw hammer.”

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  • Terry July 17, 2019, 7:38 PM

    Holly cow, did those rolls of caps make a big boom or what! Once we started doing that the intended purpose of the caps became moot. Then it was match heads in sealed water pipe. My family being in gold mining, there was no shortage of fuse and we had a ball. No, we did not fool around with Hercules powder. We may have been a little wild, but not stupid.

  • Terry July 17, 2019, 7:40 PM

    Forgot to write, this was in California. Can you imagine that-

  • jwm July 17, 2019, 8:37 PM

    The best tool for a roll of caps was a pair of channel locks. Probably part of why my hearing doesn’t work so well.

    JWM

  • RosalindJ July 17, 2019, 9:15 PM

    Thank you for posting this. I was one of those kids with a hammer too.
    The first eight minutes of part II .. talk about a visceral response to what I recall of that time. Parents were not happy. I think Whittle hits it; it was the first time American culture bent the knee to commie bastards. Too bad they seem even today to be constitutionally incapable of appreciating the wonder of accomplishment. Good that the rest of us still do.

  • Dan Patterson July 18, 2019, 4:06 AM

    Hurts to see what we’ve become, doesn’t it?
    Terrific series and exactly on the mark.

  • greg July 18, 2019, 6:14 AM

    Wow, I haven’t thought about smashing dud blackcats with the claw hammer since way back in the 70’s. I couldn’t believe my eyes the first time they blew up with a match. It was terrifying fun. I imagined if I put enough of the firecrackers together that the claw hammer would fly back in my face! Then the homemade black powder cannons. Finding all the ingredients to make the powder from the pharmacy, the steel pipe and firecracker fuses. Early teens, with no adult supervision doing all this in a residential neighborhood. Are those days lost? Maybe so. Hopefully not.

  • Frank Vernet July 18, 2019, 6:40 AM

    at 1:00:05 “….it was enough to make a grown man…squint a little”. LOL. That was great.

  • Casey Klahn July 18, 2019, 7:36 AM

    Whittle, who it turns out was the same age as I when the LEM landed on the moon, has outdone himself with this one.

    Thanks for bringing it to my attention. So much I never realized. These guys who went in the Sixties and Seventies to the moon were giants. It pains me to say that aviators actually have something going for them.

  • Auntie Analogue July 18, 2019, 2:27 PM

    “Four,” schmour.

    It was just One. We Americans got our men to the moon because, unlike today when we’re a shrinking percentage of a polyglot made up of increasing numbers of needlessly imported foreigners who hate us, back then we Americans were still One People.