If you spend any time on the web you know that today is the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing and the first steps of humans on the lunar surface. There’s been some great coverage from We Choose The Moon, to the live Twitter feed “replay”, to Kottke’s (now-finished) real-time TV coverage playback, to the Google graphic that actually has changed to follow the progression of the landing (and earthrise)!

The commemoration has caused me to reflect personally on the impact of the moon landing. Despite what you may have heard, the name of this blog references the upper half of the lunar lander, the stage that ascends to rendezvous with the command module for the journey home. My choice of that term came from a period of my life of intense interest in spaceflight* partially because of the sheer thrill of it, partially because of the series From The Earth To The Moon, but mostly because, at the time, I was a young project manager in a massive organization who saw in the moonshots the attempt to do something amazing with lots of smart people, cutting-edge technology, and a common goal. I didn’t want to be Neil Armstrong so much as Gene Kranz.

In the tributes, you’re not hearing a lot about the thousands of private contractors who helped plop the 12 guys on the moon. But the organization of that many people to do something of that magnitude in just a little more than 7 years may be as remarkable as the outcome.

IBM, the company that I work for, was a large part of this effort and I admit that this is a source of pride for me. I’ve had this photo of mission control taped to my cube for as long as I can remember.

These are my people. Practitioners of a timeless nerdiness that I think of often when I confront organizational bureaucracy or technical hurdles in my own job — one which ain’t, after all, rocket science. IBM has a great subsite up on our contribution to the space race.

Closer to home, I have the memory of my wife’s grandfather, William Boulet, who went to work as an engineer for Boeing after leaving the Army Air Corps after WWII (where he survived a year as a Nazi prisoner). At Boeing Grandpa Boulet designed a particular bolt that was used inside the fuselage of the Saturn V rocket and for his service he was given a commemorative medal — a keepsake I was given by his family when he passed away in 2005. I grabbed it before I left for work today. Not exactly sure why, but I felt like having it with me.

It isn’t nostalgia, of course, for I was not alive for any but the very last landing — and only a newborn then. For me, the Apollo program is equal parts inspirational and aspirational. Whether you agree with the purely political motives that set us on the course to the moon or not, my feeling is that what the effort itself represents is the very best of what humans can do when given a massive challenge packaged in a disheveled box of constraint.

We certainly have freighters full of that particular parcel today. Let’s get unwrapping.

_{* An interest, it should be noted, that has not so much waned as been tempered by the seeming lack of grand purpose that NASA has fallen into as an orbital trucking company.}

Lots of things happening heavenward today.

An astronaut whose mother was killed by a train while he was on the International Space Station for 120 days will return to Earth on the Shuttle.

The US Navy will attempt to hit a satellite moving at 22,783 MPH with a warhead-less missile launched from a ship in the Pacific. (Note to military: ever considered a self-destruct button on our spy sats? Or just telling the world we’re testing a new weapons plaftorm? That would work too.)

A total lunar eclipse will occur at 10:01 PM ET tonight.

Apollo 8: December 24, 1968

OK, so here’s an inspired idea, the kind of thing devised by idiots who’ve been drinking all weekend.

You know the game called 500? Basically you throw a tennis ball into the air. Players then run under it, pushing, shoving, and perhaps groping for the ball as it comes down. You get 100 points for catching it on the fly, 75 for one bounce, 50 for two, etc. If you touch it on the fly and drop it you lose 100 points, with negative points for touching the ball mirroring the gains for catching it. (At least that’s how I grew up playing it.)

So this weekend. My college friends and I were gathered for our annual Fall session of telling stories like none of us had ever heard them before and being demonstratively juvenile. We discovered that the house we were staying in contained a model rocket and loads of propellant. Of course we had to shoot it off.

I had not done this since I was little. I was soon reminded that the key to the whole thing (or rather the key to doing it more than once) is the secondary charge that goes off to spring the nose cone and deploy the parachute which floats the whole fuselage* back to Earth.

We were doing in this in the middle of a prairie. It wasn’t exactly parched, but I’m not sure Smokey the Bear (or NASA or the FAA) would have approved. As soon as the first one went up a small group of the inebriated ran out into the field, matching — or attempting to match — the trajectory of the descent with their own jagged strides. Just like 500, you see. But the problem was that it was dusk and the rocket went way the hell up. At it’s apogee (yay, SAT!) it was lost from human eyesight. Only a few hundred yards up did it become visible and usually it was hurtling down with a half-opened, if not outright flaming, parachute. Dangerous as all hell. If you’re not pegged in the face with a rocket strut you’re scalded by the hot cylinder itself. It was pure comedy.

Try it sometime and remember where the game was invented, right here on Ascent Stage. For added difficulty play in an urban area with lots of obstacles.

[*] A descent stage, you might say. But you would be wrong. A descent stage is a powered rocket whose purpose is to counteract gravity during a descent (as in to the moon). But that’s a great idea. Where are the model rockets with descent stages!?

Looks like my shout-out last year to the world’s first female Italian-American in orbit will be my last for her. The press just loves the story of Lisa Caputo Nowak’s alleged melting-down over a love triangle — as though astronauts aren’t human. She’s an Italiana, fercrissakes! Of course she’s fiery!

I think it’s fair to say that she’s not going to pass the next pre-flight psych check. My guess.

If you’re catty in space, can anyone hear you growl?

UPDATE: And the whole fascination with wearing diapers for the long drive. C’mon, how do you think they spacewalk for 8 hours? She’s just used to efficiency.