The steps that changed humankind

Lynbrook, East Rockaway residents remember the moon landing

Posted Wednesday, July 24, 2019 11:00 am

Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar module on July 20.

Courtesy NASA

Timeline of the moon landing

July 16, 9:32 a.m. – Apollo 11 took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fl.

July 19 – Apollo 11 entered into lunar orbit.

July 20, 1:46 p.m. – The lunar module separated from the command module.

July 20, 4:17 p.m. – The lunar module touched down along the Sea of Tranquility.

July 20, 10:39 p.m. – Neil Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module.

July 20, 10:56 p.m. – Armstrong stepped onto the moon, and said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

July 20, 11:15 p.m. – Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the moon, and together they planted the American flag.

July 21, 1:11 a.m. – Both astronauts returned to the lunar module and closed the hatch.

July 21, 1:54 p.m. – The Eagle began its ascent back to the command module.

July 21, 5:35 p.m. – The lunar module rejoined the command module.

July 22, 12:56 a.m. – Apollo 11 began its journey back home.

July 24, 12:50 p.m. – Apollo 11 splashed into the Pacific Ocean.

Source: History Channel

By Melissa Koenig

For Richard Baroni, 1969 was an eventful year. His eldest daughter was born. His favorite teams, the Mets and the Jets, won their respective leagues’ championships. He attended Woodstock, and he watched the first three humans walk on the moon.

“It was a very fruitful year for the country,” the Lynbrook native said. “The impact on the American people from that time on was incredible.”

Baroni was 29 at the time, and had left the U.S. Air Force a few years earlier. He was living in West Haverstraw, upstate, and watched as the 32-kilobit computers overloaded and Neil Armstrong took over manual control to land the Apollo 11 lunar excursion module on July 20, 1969. Baroni then heard Armstrong say, “The Eagle has landed.”

“You could watch the people in the control room, and they all went crazy,” Baroni recalled, adding that as an Air Force veteran, “I was just happy to see that it was successful.”

Others across the country had similar reactions, as Armstrong stepped out of the module and onto the moon, with the famous words, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

In response to a Herald Facebook inquiry about the day, Lynbrook resident Jim Hunter said that his entire family was “glued to our brand-new color TV, proud and amazed” as they watched history, and East Rockaway resident Karen Kennedy said her father woke her and her brother up to watch the event.

“My dad doesn’t get too excited about stuff, but he was awed by this,” she wrote, “and I’ve been hooked ever since.”

She was not the only one. Interest in computing skyrocketed after that live broadcast, according to Baroni, who was working in computers at the time.

He said that he wanted to help reduce the size of the computers while increasing their computing capacity, and by the time he retired in 1972, industries were working on computers the size of a desk.

Since then, computers have become even smaller, and according to National Geographic, the rapid development of the microchip that was used on Apollo 11 helped pave the way for personal computers and, eventually, smartphones. It also helped expand NASA, which is now testing the systems needed for missions to Mars, according to its website.

Baroni said he believed that the country would not be the same if the moonlanding never happened.

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