The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is bringing out a lot of space nostalgia and events. Here are a few that I know of in Concord, with more details to come:
I will moderate a Science Cafe-like event at the Discovery Center on July 16th, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. It will be like Science Cafe except you won’t be able to buy booze or food, but it will be free. We’ll have a few space scientists to answer your questions about what happened then, what has happened in space flight since and what might happen in the future.
Red River Theater in Concord is holding an interesting movie on Thursday, July 18: A 1929 silent called “Woman in the Moon,” which was director Fritz Lang’s follow-up to his sci-fi classic “Metropolis.” It imagines mankind’s first lunar voyage as carried out by a German Space Program. Lang consulted with top scientists in Germany, then at the forefront of rocket propulsion.
The film, which introduced innovations such as the first-ever use of a countdown to a launch, didn’t do well at the box office as people were stampeding to the talkies and silents were on their way out. Then Hitler came to power and suppressed ‘Woman in the Moon’ because of all the German rocketry know-how displayed.
After World War II some of the scientists Lang consulted came to the U.S. after World War II and worked under Werner von Braun to engineer much of the U.S. space program.
On Saturday itself, the anniversary of the landing, the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord will have a whole slew of events, including new moon-related displays and a 1 p.m. discussion by UNH space scientists.
Return to the Concord Monitor