‘Something Out of This World’

Ken Tweten was hoping Saturday he would run into some old friends who worked on the Apollo 11 project so he could reminisce about the craziness leading up to the mission that mesmerized the world 25 years ago.

Tweten, 82, worked as an assistant foreman at McDonnell Douglas, where he helped inspect parts for Apollo 11, and made sure they were tested and put through a special cleaning process.

“Everything was so critical,” he said. “But it was worth watching something you worked so hard on go up and come back down. It was very special because it was something out of this world.”

On Saturday, Tweten came to the McDonnell Douglas plant here with his three grandchildren, joining 700 other former and current employees who came to celebrate their part in the mission that put the first person on the moon July 20, 1969.

The celebration was a chance to see old colleagues, watch highlights of the mission and remember the time when they were are part of history.

“I have been trying to find people I know so that I could reminisce, but it seems I have had a tough time,” Tweten said. “I think I outlived them.”

The crowd filtered into a room covered with enlarged photographs of the historic landing, the view from mission control and some pre-flight events. There were speeches, including one by former Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad.

People glanced at old newspaper and magazine clippings and walked through a full-scale lab module. They also glimpsed at the future of space travel, watching a video of test flights for the Delta Clipper experiment, which engineers hope will make missions more affordable and quicker by creating the first fully reusable rocket.

But for some, the only thing on their minds was the 195-hour-long mission that spellbound more than 600 million Americans, who were riveted to television sets and radios, as astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the lunar surface.

Casey Patelski was 39 when he talked Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin Jr. through the first part of the mission, informing them of their flight path, capsule temperature and speed.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Patelski, the mission control Houston manager for McDonnell Douglas at the time. “I still know every move I made and every thought I had. (The mission) was so impressive and everyone after that was just as impressive.”

Patelski spent much of Saturday afternoon signing autographs and shaking hands with teen-agers and old friends.

“This has been fantastic,” he said. “It was an important time and knowing you participated in something that was key in history is a wonderful feeling.”

But to some it was no more spectacular than other space explorations.

“I have seen so many rockets launch that by the time the Apollo 11 went up, to me, it was just some rocket in the air,” said 72-year-old Maxwell Hunter, who was the chief design engineer for the Apollo 11 and currently works on the Delta Clipper project. “I am not saying it wasn’t stunning, but so were all the other missions before and after Apollo 11.”