It’s incredibly difficult for me to believe that this Tuesday, July 16, is the 50th anniversary of the liftoff of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission.

I was 13 years old, but it just seems like yesterday. It was the culmination and fulfillment of a challenge made by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 after Alan Shepard completed the first American manned mission into space. JFK challenged NASA to send Americans to the moon by 1970.

This was a daunting challenge, to say the least, because when he made that challenge to a joint session of Congress America hadn’t even put a man in orbit around the Earth. John Glenn wouldn’t do that for almost another year.

To be sure, the goal of getting men to the moon in the ’60s was for scientific exploration, but a great part of the motivation was also political and military. The Cold War was on and it was imperative that an American flag was planted on the moon instead of the red hammer and sickle of the communist Soviet Union. After all they embarrassed the U.S. by getting the first satellite into space, Sputnik, in 1957.

Then they really rubbed it in when they put the first man into space and in Earth orbit in 1961. They even launched the first woman into space. It was imperative that America catch up and beat the Soviets to the moon and exceed them in overall space and missile technology.

The race to the moon probably wouldn’t have happened as it did, though, without German scientists left over from the Hitler-World War II era.

They were at the leading edge of rocket development and both the Soviet Union and the U.S. had them in the fold. The V2 rockets were developed by the Germans and were constantly hitting Great Britain and other European ally targets during WWll.

The V2 was developed by Werner Von Braun, who eventually ended up on the American side with NASA. In fact it was Von Braun who designed the Saturn V rockets that launched Apollo astronauts to the moon. There’s never been a bigger, more powerful rocket since then.

The 1960s pursuit to the moon was truly an exciting time. In less than 75 years we went from flying the first airplanes to landing on the moon.

As a kid I was really, really caught in the manned spacecraft program in the 1960s. In fact my best friend and next door neighbor, Don Falenczykowski, helped me build a space capsule of plywood in my backyard. We even went on pretend missions into space.

I remember the night in July 1969 before the Apollo 11 moon mission took off. I was so excited I stayed up all night before the launch. That almost proved to be a big mistake. I almost missed the launch but somehow, I woke up 15 minutes before liftoff and caught Walter Cronkite’s call of it on CBS TV.

As the Apollo 11 coasted to the moon in its three-day journey, I journeyed to CYC (Catholic Youth Camp) on Big Sandy Lake near McGregor, Minn., for 10 days. I almost didn’t go because I was afraid I’d miss the TV coverage. I had my Dad call the camp to make sure all the campers would experience this anticipated history. They promised that they would.

The rules of the camp prohibited transistor radios but I smuggled one in anyway and the first night I was there I crouched deep into my sleeping bag with my cheap earphone listening to any news I could about Apollo 11.

I never got busted.

Then Sunday, July 20, 1969, arrived — the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin climbed into the lunar module lander and left Mike Collins in the command module to continue orbiting the moon awaiting the moon lander’s safe return.

I remember the head camp counselor, Louie Grams, making the announcement over the camp loud speakers that we were invited to main lodge to watch the coverage of the moon landing. I was surprised that only about half of my fellow campers came.

We were glued to that little 16-inch black-and-white TV as Walter Cronkite proclaimed about 3:20 in the afternoon …. “Man on the Moon!”

Shortly after that happened we were shooed away from TV. I just wasn’t going to settle for that. I knocked on the door of the counselors’ lodge and short of pounding fists on the walls I insisted that I get to see more of the coverage. They didn’t want a scene so I got my way.

I wasn’t through, though, because that night Neil Armstrong was to set foot on the moon around midnight local time. Lights out for the campers was at 10:30 p.m.

I was prepared to listen to the coverage on my transistor radio in my sleeping bag, but by 11 p.m. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I sneaked out of the tent and once again pounded on the door of the counselors’ lounge where all the camp staff were crowded around that same black-and-white TV.

Once again I got my way and watched that historic moment when Neil Armstrong proclaimed, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Those ghostly images of Armstrong hopping around on the moon with Buzz Aldrin are burned in my memory forever.

In 2011 NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took among many images, high-resolution shots of all the Apollo landing sites, including Apollo 11, I included its image of the Apollo 11 site. The detail is amazing.

Appropriately enough on Tuesday evening we’ll have a full moon in the Butler skies, but as a bonus the planet Saturn will be camped just to the right of the moon. It’ll be an amazing celestial hugging.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is also the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at adventurepublications.net. Contact Mike Lynch at mikewlynch@comcast.net.