Lunar landing: Mel Jackson

Mel Jackson, 76, of Hempstead, president, chief executive and founder of the Leadership Training Institute in Hempstead.

I worked at a place called Fairchild Camera and Space Defense Systems. I was a principal engineer. Sherman Fairchild had a passion for aerial photography. We made the lunar mapper, it was a camera that mapped the moon. All those moon pictures you see came from that camera.

That was great stuff and great fun. We sat in the parking lot reviewing designs, coming up with new ideas. A bunch of grown kids who finished engineering school, physics majors and all that.

The day would be over, had been over a long time ago. But when you have a passion for something you have ideas as you're shutting down and leaving the lab. We'd be discussing positions that you had on various things that you're doing and bouncing them off one another, either confirming or shooting down ideas that people had about one thing or another.

You didn't know if it was going to work because you're in a hostile environment. You didn't know if the other parts of the system are going to work. What was the moon's surface really like? When you touch down is everything going to be jarred loose? Would it even survive getting close to the moon?

And of course the big thing was what kind of raw imagery are you going to get? It wasn't like you could troubleshoot and do a test photo.

It worked unbelievably. We watched the man walking on the moon, everybody saw that. You saw it a thousand times. Over and over and over again and also at work. Couldn't watch enough of it.

It was very satisfying, very rewarding, because we had gear on it. It was a big deal for us. I had a small part. I was not the designer. But I did work on the project and there was a sense of accomplishment because of that.