Apollo 11

What is mankind’s greatest achievement? Democracy? The Declaration of Human rights? The ascent of Everest? The Steam Engine? Powered Flight? Prog Rock? Ok, it’s a subjective question that is impossible to answer but if we are talking about stretching the limits of human ability there is, as far as I’m concerned, one event that ranks above all others: putting a man on the moon. A year ago I wrote a blog about the first of the twelve men who have walked on the surface of our closest celestial neighbour. Neil Armstrong was a hero of my seven year old self and has remained so ever since, partially due to the enormity of what he did but mainly due to the fact we shared a first name. Come on, I was only seven at the time. This summer saw the fiftieth anniversary of that first mission to the surface of the moon. It certainly received some publicity and a few television programmes were aired in the run up to the actual day but not nearly as much as an event as huge as that deserved. There was, however, a movie released called Apollo 11, the mission name of that first moon landing. I didn’t get a chance to see it at the time. I put it right the other day thanks to the Silver Cinema screening at Kilmarnock Odeon.

The film was a documentary of that first moonshot. It consisted of archive material recorded throughout the mission, some of it familiar but much of it less so. There was no narration added – the voices you heard were those transmitted at the time. A minimal amount of graphics were added for clarity but the story was allowed to tell itself through the words and actions of those who were there. Even the score was composed using the musical instruments available at the time in a deliberate attempt to transport the viewer back to 1969. The result was excellent. There was no need to put a 21st century slant on a 20th century achievement. The story commenced with the Saturn V rocket being transported to the launch pad and ended with Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins waving to the crowds during ticker-tape parades. There is plenty of archive material available to see on the internet of course but it was so much more impressive on the big screen. The docking of the Command Module with the LEM (Lunar Module) was shown in split screen with footage from each vehicle. Aldrin’s descent down the ladder to the lunar surface as filmed by Armstrong was one of my favourite bits – I don’t think I’ve seen that before. The moon is a desolate place; the bigger the picture the more desolate it seems. It was ninety minutes well spent.

The fiftieth anniversary inevitably leads to a few questions. If it was such a monumental achievement why has no one gone back since the final Apollo mission in 1972? It is quite an easy question to answer. Money. It cost an eye wateringly huge amount of cash to get those astronauts to the moon. So much in fact that three further missions were cancelled to save the USA some cash. To go back now would cost even more. Technology is more advanced now but it all costs and the physical effort in getting a useful payload out of Earth’s gravitational sphere of influence is no less expensive no matter how much the tech has advanced. The moon itself offers little in the way of return on that huge investment, at least at the moment. If it had been found to be full of useful minerals with actual value such as uranium or cream cheese we may well have had moon bases by now. With that in mind, should we have gone in the first place? Hell, yes. I know it was a country’s vanity project whose president, John F Kennedy, was desperate to get there before those pesky commies, but pushing the boundaries of exploration has been a human trait since humans evolved. That they managed it within a few short years is astonishing, no matter how much money they threw at it. Yes, the lives of White, Chaffey and Grissom were sacrificed on the way but no one said it would be without risk. “We choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard” said Kennedy back in 1963. I’ve often wondered what the other things were.

Of course there are those who think it was all a hoax. We couldn’t possibly put a man on the moon in such a short amount of time with in an era when the calculations were done by slide rule. This despite the huge amount of evidence to the contrary and the claims of the conspiracy theorists debunked with the greatest of ease. Wankers.

It matters not that there’s nothing much there. It matters not that it was a vanity project. Neither does it matter that it was at huge expense and outrageous risk. As for the fact some people doubt it happened, that matters least of all. Fifty years ago we went to the moon. It remains mankind’s greatest achievement.