The Saturn V launched at 9:32 AM this morning and everything worked.

The five F-1 engines ignited at T minus 8 seconds, building thrust while hold-down clamps kept the rocket in place. At T zero the clamps released. The rocket rose — slowly at first, because slow is what 7.5 million pounds of thrust looks like when it’s pushing 6 million pounds of rocket — and then faster, and then it was gone.

One minute and twelve seconds after launch, the Saturn V passed the speed of sound. First stage separation at two and a half minutes. Second stage ignition. Third stage. Earth orbit. Translunar injection.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins are on their way to the Moon.

I watched from the living room. Harold and Edna came over at 8:00 and we drank coffee and waited. Betty made pancakes that nobody ate. The launch coverage began and we sat in front of the television and didn’t move.

When the rocket cleared the tower and began to rise, I heard Harold say, quietly, “There it goes.” Just that. There it goes.

There it goes.

The crowds at Cape Canaveral — half a million people, as projected — reportedly made a sound when the rocket launched that the correspondents struggled to describe. Not a cheer exactly. A roar of voices and then a gasp and then sound again but more intense. The television correspondent said, “You can feel the ground shake from here” and his voice was not steady.

I sat in Ohio and I felt something shake that wasn’t the ground.

I’ve been waiting for this since 1957. Not for this specific mission — I didn’t know what the specific mission would be twelve years ago. I was waiting for the meaning of it. The moment when the country I live in, and the species I belong to, did the thing that Sputnik made imaginable and Kennedy made a commitment and ten thousand engineers and scientists and astronauts made possible.

We are going to the Moon.

We are on our way.

Four days to landing.