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Neil Armstrong has died


GordonD

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This is the photo on the NASA website - taken in the Lunar Module after the Moonwalk. Neil looks tired but extremely pleased by a job well done.

neil_bg_800.jpg

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I recall watching the moon landing vividly. I was 10 at the time and I crept down the stairs to 'nick' a chocolate digestive, which I quickly slipped into the top pocket of my pajamas as my father emerged from the living room, fearing a telling off. But, no he said I think you should watch this - I sat watching the moon landing with a chocolate digestive melting in the top pocket of my pajamas - unforgettable! The whole period was a fantastic period to grow up in, the previous Christmas Apollo 8 undertook the first manned moon orbit which made it an unforgettable Christmas. I remember saving baked bean wrappers to send off for a set of wonderful colour posters of images taken from and of Apollo 8 (they are probably worth a fortune now!) space exploration was constantly in news back then, now?

I would thoroughly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.co...h/dp/1846071712 a very British perspective of the moon landing and any one growing up in rural England (as I did) will identify with it. He also makes the point that it will not be long before any of those that walked on the Moon will not be here. Also the film 'The Dish' http://www.play.com/...urlrefer=search comes highly recommended and puts a unique slant on the Moon Landing as well as this with it's stunning Eno soundtrack http://www.amazon.co.uk/For-Mankind-Masters-Cinema-Blu-ray/dp/B002HD44UU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1345983476&sr=8-3

A sad day, but Neil Armstrong's name is writ large in the history of this planet.

Marty...

Edited by marty_hopkirk
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Hi,yes very sad he,s died,another part of childhood gone,i actually witnessed history watching on tv at school.another sad point of the day as well,a more important part of my childhood died as well only in her sixties,another member of pans people gone,they used to take me to another planet........ah well...cheers Don

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to boldly go.......

I was 5 and can remember going outside and waving at my namesake on the moon on the day of the moon landing. He was such a personal Hero

Strange to think that the last moon landing was on Dec 11th 1972 and that this year we will see the first 40 year olds who have never witnessed a man on the moon in their entire lifetime....

i think that with Armstongs passing the planet has lost the last survivor of that very special group , those who were the very first to tread where no one had gone before. for while we still have people who climb Everest, work in the Antarctic, or who have gone to the Moon ,we now no longer have the first people to have done so......

as many have said Godspeed Neil

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A real hero of mine and will be sadly missed. And he was definitely not the recluse the media tend to make him out to be. He was just very selective who he spoke to and where he appeared.

Peter Fairley was ITN's science correspondent during this era so was very prominent in their Apollo TV coverage. The studio anchor was the great Alistair Burnet - another who sadly passed on earlier this year. Peter Fairley himself died quite a few years ago.

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I came across this on a tribute page and had to share it:

And I wonder… will there someday be a holiday in his honor? In my mind’s eye I can see people lining the streets, watching parades, talking about that day, smiling and laughing… and all the while, through a quartz window in the dome, the crescent Earth will be hanging in the black sky above them.

(by astronomer Phil Plait. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/25/neil-armstrong-1930-2012/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BadAstronomyBlog+%28Bad+Astronomy%29 )

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A real hero of mine and will be sadly missed. And he was definitely not the recluse the media tend to make him out to be. He was just very selective who he spoke to and where he appeared.

Peter Fairley was ITN's science correspondent during this era so was very prominent in their Apollo TV coverage. The studio anchor was the great Alistair Burnet - another who sadly passed on earlier this year. Peter Fairley himself died quite a few years ago.

Yes, Andrew Smith's book underlines that Armstrong was not the recluse he was oft made out to be.

ITV's coverage of the moon landing was widely criticised as being flippant, author Ray Bradbury refused to be interviewed because of this. Therefore it's ironic that nearly all the BBC archive footage was wiped and a lot of ITV's survived including a live performance By Thunderclap Newman of 'Something in the Air'. Urban legend has it that that two of Aunties technicians charged with tidying up the VT library, returned to work after a liquid lunch inadvertently wiped their moon landing footage instead of a gardening programme. No idea if it is true or not given that the BBC during this period routinely wiped VT for re-use on cost grounds it must be questioned.

It's good to see the BBC have put up on their Archive site what little exists of their moon landing footage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/moonlandings/index.shtml

Marty...

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Therefore it's ironic that nearly all the BBC archive footage was wiped and a lot of ITV's survived including a live performance By Thunderclap Newman of 'Something in the Air'. Urban legend has it that that two of Aunties technicians charged with tidying up the VT library, returned to work after a liquid lunch inadvertently wiped their moon landing footage instead of a gardening programme. No idea if it is true or not given that the BBC during this period routinely wiped VT for re-use on cost grounds it must be questioned.

It's good to see the BBC have put up on their Archive site what little exists of their moon landing footage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...ngs/index.shtml

Marty...

For obvious reasons the studio footage gives a far clearer picture of how people felt at the time, rather than an interview years after the fact. The perfect example is the coverage of the Apollo 13 re-entry, which was included in an old Horizon documentary that I have somewhere on VHS tape. As everyone waited for the radio blackout to end, the camera focused on James Burke, who was sitting with his fingers tightly crossed. At that moment he wasn't the usual unflappable presenter - he was as anxious as the rest of us, waiting to hear if the crew had survived. And then when contact was established, the look of sheer relief on his face...

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