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I was nine. I remember our black and white TV, the crackling from the picture tube's high voltage wiring adding a tang of ozone. We stayed up late that night.
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Er, no. Nothing like it. Grabbed from your bed in the middle of the night, bundled downstairs to watch (grainy) and hear (crackly) weird things on a black-and-white TV, while adults, including strangers, whooped and shouted drunkenly. I understood the Apollo 11 thing only in the days after, through news reports. The live event was as impenetrable to me as a dream. Then again, I was half-asleep and five years old.
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I was seven, and I happen to have had a profoundly different experience than you. There was a massive rocket mania and all the kids I knew wanted to see the landing.

Russ Olsen does a great keynote about the life-changing experience for those of us so affected. I happened to be in the audience for this edition and it was something special to be old enough to remember it much as he remembered it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMZBA7KHnHQ

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My grandma was one of the only person with a TV where she lived, half of the town was in her living room, nothing comparable. I bet most people watched this on their toilet seat before scrolling to the next cool thing as if it was nothing
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> I bet most people watched this on their toilet seat before scrolling to the next cool thing as if it was nothing

I think GP tries to compare _their_ experience (not the experience of "most people") with what people felt 55 years ago.

idk about them, but I watched it in a live stream starting about an hour early, because I wanted to see the reentry (that plasma is something special) and I didn't want to miss things. Still I don't think it is the same. Not after Falcon 9 landings, double Falcon 9 boosters landings and catching of the Starship first stage. I expected it to be caught today. Got some doubts after the booster missed the tower, but still pretty sure that 2nd stage would make it.

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