Going to the moon is cool again, just in time for a new museum exhibit on the Apollo mission

The most suspenseful reality show in human history began at 9:32 a.m. on July 16, 1969, witnessed by more than 500 million television viewers and an estimated 1 million on the causeways and beaches of Florida’s Space Coast when Apollo 11 lifted off for the moon.

The mass of humanity gathered around Cape Kennedy to witness history in the making included my parents, me and three of my siblings; all of us had spent the night before cramped in a 1962 Ford Galaxie. (In those days, even Detroit automakers reflected the fascination surrounding America’s space program.)

For those who didn’t live through those times, it may be hard to comprehend how captivating those launches were, but a new touring exhibition at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science — “Apollo: When We Went to the Moon” — does a marvelous job of capturing that era.

The timing of the exhibition, as NASA stands poised to launch Artemis, the first moon launch in 50 years, is coincidental but fortuitous.

“It’s coming to Denver at the perfect time,” said Kelsi Cowan, the museum’s “educator” for the Apollo exhibit. “For our younger generations, space travel is becoming more and more of an excitement. It’s been a thing of history – going to the moon – and now it’s within our lives again.”

It’s important to remember that the Apollo lunar missions were incredibly complex and dangerous. Three astronauts died when a flash fire broke out in a capsule atop a rocket during a pre-launch test in 1967. Clearly, success could not be taken for granted. And, when Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, a television audience estimated at 650 million around the world was unaware of how close the mission had come to a disastrous end.

Details emerged later, and that story is told in an exhibit at the museum titled “A Close Call.” The descent engine on the Lunar Module, dubbed the Eagle, was running low on fuel and warning alarms were sounding as Armstrong shifted from computer control to manual piloting to avoid crashing in a dangerous boulder field. When the Eagle finally landed, only 30 seconds of fuel remained.

The entrance to the exhibition, which will run through Jan. 22, sets the stage with facing video panels showing President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev declaring competing Cold War visions. Kennedy is shown saying the United States would land a man on the moon and achieve other ambitious goals “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

On the opposite wall, Khrushchev is shown saying, “We believe that the people of all nations will see themselves as brothers. There will only be one flag, a flag of friendship, peace, brotherhood. And on that flag will be written, ‘Communist society.’ ”

That serves as an introduction to an exhibition space that includes scale models of U.S. and Soviet rockets, a replica of a Mercury capsule, a three-minute immersive experience that will allow visitors to see and feel the Apollo 11 launch, and an amateur 36-foot scale model of the Apollo 11/Saturn V rocket which actually flew more than 4,400 feet into the air in 2009. Other displays include:

• Biographies of Wernher von Braun, the head rocket engineer of the Apollo program, and Sergei Korolev, chief designer for the Soviet space program. Von Braun had been part of the Nazi rocket development program during World War II. Korolev helped the Soviets acquire German missile technology after the war.
• A timeline of the “space race” from the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 to Apollo 11.

• A replica of a lunar rover, “the first electric car in space,” in which visitors are welcome to take a seat to pose for photos. Lunar rovers used on three Apollo missions remain on the moon’s surface.
• Replicas of space suits, helmet, gloves and boots.
• Various Apollo mission manuals, replicas of tools used by astronauts on the lunar surface, and an engine fragment from an Apollo launch found decades later on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
• Displays that describe the socio-political ferment of the 1960s, including the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.
• Information boards briefly describing the moon missions that followed Apollo 11 until the final one, Apollo 17, in December 1972.
• An information board listing Colorado astronauts, including one in the Mercury program, three in Apollo, one in Skylab, five in the Space Shuttle program and two who flew with SpaceX.

The exhibit also includes a look at NASA’s plans for the future, including the Artemis lunar program. The exhibit includes a large model of the Artemis rocket, which will be as tall as a 25-story building.

Artemis is the most powerful rocket ever built. Mission goals include landing the first woman and person of color on the moon, establishing a “long-term” human presence there, and laying the groundwork for crewed missions to Mars.

The first Artemis launch, twice delayed by technical issues and tentatively scheduled for Nov. 14, will orbit the moon without landing. That will be followed by an uncrewed lunar landing, possibly in 2024. The first crewed moon landing could happen in 2025.