On this day, forty years ago, human beings began the great odyssey to the Moon. The enormous engines on one of the largest craft ever built ignited and a huge Saturn V ascended into the skies on a blistering column of fire. Take a moment to just think about that. Its too easy now for the Moon missions to be recalled simply as a dry, historical fact, but think about what was actually being dared that July day in 1969, the efforts of thousands of engineers and scientists, vast resources and three men strapped inside the top of an enormous rocket carrying hopes and dreams towards a rendevous with history. All of this less than a decade after Yuri Gagarin had so spectacularly become the first human being in space, itself less than two decades since the first jet planes took to the skies and they, in turn, only four decades after Orville and Wilbur Wright made that few-seconds flight that was an earlier type of giant leap. Allow yourself to marvel at the thought for a moment – human beings were on their way, travelling to the Moon and it was magnificent; embrace that magical sense of wonder.
(the emblem for Apollo 11, (c) NASA; among the many programmes the BBC has mounted for the 40th anniversary you can hear Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin himself recalling those days here)
Thu, Jul 16, 2009
General