The Paschal High School graduate could have been any one of millions around the world watching Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong take that first step on the moon July 20, 1969. But this was Alan Bean, who was scheduled to take similar steps in a few months. For that moment, however, it seemed as unbelievable to him as it did to non-astronauts. It was the same unreal feeling that people not in the space program had. Bean was among astronauts and space workers at Houston's Mission Control who held their breath that Sunday evening as the Eagle touched down on the moon.
Cheers rang out.
It culminated years of difficult and risky work, he said. For the next 2 hours and 14 minutes, Armstrong and, later, astronaut Buzz Aldrin bounded across the moon's surface like kangaroos in one-sixth the gravity of Earth. They planted an American flag, left behind a disc with messages from 76 national leaders and collected two boxes of moon rocks and soil. Within minutes, it was business as usual for Apollo 11 astronauts and those in Mission Control. Bean and Conrad were exuberant during the landing, but Bean said his brain immediately switched to a check- off list.