Apollo 11 Liftoff with Tower, Saturn rocket fire
“Shake, rattle, and roll! Noise, yes, lots of it, but mostly motion, as we are thrown left and right against our straps in spasmodic little jerks.” – Michael Collins, Apollo 11, Module Pilot
Apollo 11 lifted off at 9:32 a.m. (EDT) on July 16, 1969. For the Spectators, located 3.5 miles away, the rocket rose in silence. The roar reached them 15 seconds later accompanied by “tremors under the feet and pounds to the chest.”
Television viewers across the world saw Walter Cronkite pelted by ceiling tiles and insulation falling from within the broadcast trailer. The roof of the Petrone’s Launch Control Center rolled “like an earthquake”.
Slowly the rocket rose. The Spectators screamed, “Go! Go! Go! Go!”
“There was this enormous light, and the rocket goes up and up, and then it goes through the first skiff of clouds, and then through the second skiff of clouds, and then you see a puff of smoke – the first burnout -- and then the rocket disappears,” selenologist Harold C. Urey remembered.
Inside the rocket, Neil Armstrong had a different reaction. “The reality is, a lot of times you get up and get in the cockpit, and something goes wrong somewhere and you go back down. So, actually, when you actually lift off, it’s a really a big surprise.”