July 20, 1969: Apollo 11

[Dmitry Markov]

This anniversary is without any doubt amazing. Though I have quite mixed feelings about it (as any former USSR citizen probably has ;-) ) - of course I am happy for humankind to be able to travel to distant objects in space, happy for those three brave men (among others Space pioneers from USSR, USA and other countries) to be the First ones to step on the Moon, I feel lot of respect to USA for launching a Lunar program that had success, but the same time I feel regret for our Soviet Lunar Program was stopped after Korolyov's passage - yes it had it's narrow points but it was in very high degree of readiness (both orbit module and lunar module were ready - problem was only the rocket which could have been tweaked I believe) - shame that we didn't launch if only one piloted mission ((( but that's a kind of sport fan's regrets when his team doesn't make it.
However, this story may be interesting to our american colleagues - in USSR there were very good theme monthly magazines about specific countries named accordingly: "America", "England" etc. Well, when I was in a high school in early 90-s I was lurking through my parents's bookshelves in search for another interesting reading and I've found a pack of magazines America dated 1968-1975 years!!! They were printed on a very good paper with very high quality of pictures and photography. Among other issues there was one dated 1969 and it was totally dedicated to Apollo 11 as I can remember !!! It even included special pages with printed details of carton model of Lunar Module ! Being devoted modeller I cried WOW - and immediately built that little model - and it still is somwhere in my parents's home :-) . And much earlier Space model project I can now remember - in 1987 my parents bought me a carton model of Apollo-Soyuz - it was my first serious model project as it included both Apollo which has quite a simple geometry and Souyuz which is a difficult prototype to model from carton. So I could only handle with it with my father's help of course.