There aren’t many instances when I’d be quite happy to be five or ten years older, but the 50-year celebrations of the first moon landing have fascinated me so much that I wish I could have experienced the excitement first hand back in July 1969.
Maybe it’s a “bloke thing”, or maybe it’s a “blokes of a certain age thing”, but watching the media’s excellent efforts (BBC “8 days to the moon and back” “Neil Armstrong” and “Stargazing”: ITV “The day we went to the moon”) to bring the moon landings back into the public consciousness has genuinely excited me. And though I watched all the programmes on my own (Mrs B. and the kids don’t seem to have quite my level of enthusiasm), I can’t be alone in feeling awestruck.
I have spoken to my parents and my older work colleagues to find out if their excitement at the time matches mine now. My mum’s feedback is that the coverage now is so much better than it was then and she has actually found the moon landings more interesting now than she did at the time. I’ll be honest, I really wasn’t expecting that.
I have found myself overwhelmed by the bravery and calmness of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. They really didn’t know if they’d get to the moon … or back. There were so many things that did, and could have gone wrong, that there was every chance that they had signed their own death warrants. And the technology that they were relying on was solid state and less powerful than a modern-day scientific calculator. Yet the astronauts strapped themselves to the most powerful rocket ever constructed and hoped for the best. Wow.
Listening to the wives/children of the astronauts talking about their husbands/fathers blasting off into the unknown had me reflecting on the bravery and resilience of the families that were left behind. I can’t imagine my mum being able to cope with the stress of my dad taking such risks when my sister and I were still in short trousers.
For Michael Collins, he took all the risks and never even got to set foot on the moon. There was a strong possibility he’d have to have made his back to earth on his own if Armstrong and Aldrin got stranded. Hearing him interviewed in 2019 about his thoughts and state of mind was/is inspiring.
When it came to the actual landing, Armstrong had to land the lunar module, something he had never even flown before, on the moon’s surface himself because the computer had targeted a boulder field as a landing zone. On top of that, the computer was overwhelmed and triggering alarm codes and the lunar module only had 17 seconds of fuel left. Again … wow.
The media all over the world was all over the launch and mission failure would have been very public indeed. Hearing about the pre-planned back-up media stuff if it all want wrong was a poignant reminder of the very real dangers the Apollo 11 crew faced. Thank everything that’s holy that the crew all made it back intact and the alternative press releases and announcements weren’t necessary.
When the astronauts returned to earth, thanks to all the media coverage, they had become global celebrities and subsequently toured the world promoting the mission and uniting people in wonder. I can’t think of anything in my lifetime that has been so enthusiastically embraced by so many countries and cultures.
As well as celebrating past achievements, the media programmes have also addressed the future of space travel. In addition to NASA’s endeavours, the work of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin will get more folk into space, and the moon is being earmarked as a suitable location for a base with permanent habitation. All that is very cool indeed.
And on the subject of cool, I have been to The Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics (Moscow) and the National Space Centre in Leicester. When I can finally get to The Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral and see the Saturn five, I swear I’ll be as excited as a child in a toy shop. In fact, I’ll be over the moon.
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Maybe it’s a “bloke thing”, or maybe it’s a “blokes of a certain age thing”, but watching the media’s excellent efforts (BBC “8 days to the moon and back” “Neil Armstrong” and “Stargazing”: ITV “The day we went to the moon”) to bring the moon landings back into the public consciousness has genuinely excited me. And though I watched all the programmes on my own (Mrs B. and the kids don’t seem to have quite my level of enthusiasm), I can’t be alone in feeling awestruck.
I have spoken to my parents and my older work colleagues to find out if their excitement at the time matches mine now. My mum’s feedback is that the coverage now is so much better than it was then and she has actually found the moon landings more interesting now than she did at the time. I’ll be honest, I really wasn’t expecting that.
I have found myself overwhelmed by the bravery and calmness of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. They really didn’t know if they’d get to the moon … or back. There were so many things that did, and could have gone wrong, that there was every chance that they had signed their own death warrants. And the technology that they were relying on was solid state and less powerful than a modern-day scientific calculator. Yet the astronauts strapped themselves to the most powerful rocket ever constructed and hoped for the best. Wow.
Listening to the wives/children of the astronauts talking about their husbands/fathers blasting off into the unknown had me reflecting on the bravery and resilience of the families that were left behind. I can’t imagine my mum being able to cope with the stress of my dad taking such risks when my sister and I were still in short trousers.
For Michael Collins, he took all the risks and never even got to set foot on the moon. There was a strong possibility he’d have to have made his back to earth on his own if Armstrong and Aldrin got stranded. Hearing him interviewed in 2019 about his thoughts and state of mind was/is inspiring.
When it came to the actual landing, Armstrong had to land the lunar module, something he had never even flown before, on the moon’s surface himself because the computer had targeted a boulder field as a landing zone. On top of that, the computer was overwhelmed and triggering alarm codes and the lunar module only had 17 seconds of fuel left. Again … wow.
The media all over the world was all over the launch and mission failure would have been very public indeed. Hearing about the pre-planned back-up media stuff if it all want wrong was a poignant reminder of the very real dangers the Apollo 11 crew faced. Thank everything that’s holy that the crew all made it back intact and the alternative press releases and announcements weren’t necessary.
When the astronauts returned to earth, thanks to all the media coverage, they had become global celebrities and subsequently toured the world promoting the mission and uniting people in wonder. I can’t think of anything in my lifetime that has been so enthusiastically embraced by so many countries and cultures.
As well as celebrating past achievements, the media programmes have also addressed the future of space travel. In addition to NASA’s endeavours, the work of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin will get more folk into space, and the moon is being earmarked as a suitable location for a base with permanent habitation. All that is very cool indeed.
And on the subject of cool, I have been to The Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics (Moscow) and the National Space Centre in Leicester. When I can finally get to The Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral and see the Saturn five, I swear I’ll be as excited as a child in a toy shop. In fact, I’ll be over the moon.
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