APOLLO 11 - ONE SMALL STEP...

Here we go, footage of the first humans on another world. And for those of us old enough, a moment to remember...

My friend Jules watched Neil Armstrong’s first steps in a London pub with friends. It stayed open all night so people could see the TV footage being broadcast around the world, and as Armstrong’s ghostly figure went down the ladder, a hush fell across the beery watchers, and all were aware that history was being made.

As for me, I watched it all on my parents’ black-and-white TV, while they slept soundly in the bedroom above. I took lots of transparency slides of the TV images, which I still have in storage - they’ve gone a little blue with age, but still record ‘that moment’. I do remember more than a twinge of disappointment though, when that lunar horizon didn’t suddenly come alive with strange alien lifeforms.

It was a weird moment for reflection too, as at that time the news media were usually headlining the latest battles in the Vietnam War. Yet here was the US, deeply involved in the Asian combat zone, but also capable of magnificent adventure on another world. And Neil and Buzz went in peace, for all mankind. It may have been the US flag up there, but we felt it stood for the rest of the world, too.

One last thought - Apollo mastermind Wernher von Braun and his team seriously reckoned we could land on Mars by 1986, and had the pencil designs to show that it was possible. But here we are 40 years later, wondering if we ‘might’ get to the red planet by 2030. And that really is just a bit sad.