The closest that it came, my living room.
I probably don’t need to explain this
one, but what the hell, I’m going to. Exactly 49 years ago today, a Lunar
Excursion Module, named Eagle, landed on the Moon, and shortly after the
landing, Neil Armstrong, swiftly followed by Buzz Aldrin, became the first men
to step out on the surface of the Moon. As I said, I have sketched and painted
Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon during this one sketch challenge, and that
means I’ve written about it before. So you already know about how it captured
the imagination of the 5 year old me, and I’ll always be grateful to my parents
for getting us out of bed in the middle of the night to watch the landing live
on telly.
The sketch shows an Airfix model of
the Lunar Module. Airfix were – are – a company that made moulded plastic scale
models in self assembly kit form of a wide range of things. Most popular were
probably military aircraft from World War II onwards. But during the early
1970s, they also made models of various spacecraft. My older brother had the
massive Saturn V rocket. This contained a small lunar module which fitted into
one of the top stages. I had the smaller Saturn 1B, which I think was used for
the Apollo 9 mission which tested the Lunar Module in Earth orbit. This model
also had a tiny lunar module in it. I also had the Soviet Union rocket which
was particularly good value since it came with both small Vostock and Soyuz
capsules. My favourite, though, was the 1/72 scale model of the Lunar module,
sitting on its own small circular Lunar surface, together with two astronaut
figures – Neil and Buzz, obviously.
I could get quite nostalgic about
Airfix. I doubt that every boy in the 60s and 70s was into Airfix, but I’d
imagine that the majority were given a kit at one time or another. The airplane
kits themselves could be very tricky, especially if you were trying to produce
a model of, let’s say, a world war II fighter plane, with moving propeller and
retractable moving wheels. There were other companies who also produced kits.
Revell are an American company who produced a similar range of models. I didn’t
mind Revell, but I think that we always had this snobbish attitude that Airfix
kits were better because Airfix were a British company. I also recall a
Japanese company, Tamiya. The interesting thing about Tamiya, if I recall this
correctly, is that they were producing models that neither Airfix nor Revell
were. A slightly later entrant to the market during the mid 70s was Matchbox.
This was a British company at the time, although it has since been bought by
Mattel, I believe. They were primarily known for their die cast replica cars
and motor vehicles. In the 70s they produced a range of kist, which were
notable for being made from more than one colour of plastic. For example, their
first model which I believe was the Alpha Jet had parts in red plastic and
parts in white plastic, which meant that it still looked quite striking even if
you didn’t paint it. However, I digress.
Going back to the landing itself, it’s
funny to reflect on what we thought was going to happen next. I remember
reading a book about NASA’s manned space programme at the time, and that it
said that following the Moon landings, the next step would be a manned landing
on Mars, however, being as this involved travelling a far greater distance it
was likely that this would not happen for at least 10 years! I confidently
poo-poohed this as defeatist nonsense at the time. Shows how much I know.
It’s tempting to ask whether we might
ever have gone to the Moon had it not been for JFK’s assassination. Originally
the Apollo programme was supposed to consist of at least another 3 landings,
all with heavy scientific programmes. But when push came to shove, although
each of the 6 successful Apollo landings did carry out important scientific
experiments, the real main purpose of the programme was achieved when Armstrong
stepped onto the Moon’s surface, that purpose being beating the Soviet Union to
land a man on the Moon. This certainly seemed to be the prevailing view of the
public, as viewing figures dipped for each subsequent moonshot, apart from the
drama of Apollo 13’s near disaster.
Will we ever go back to the Moon, or
finally make the trip to Mars? In the very long term, I think it’s extremely
likely. I think it’s likely that we’ll go back to the Moon eventually because
in relative terms it’s so close. We already have the technology to get there –
we had the technology 50 years ago, and if we just take the field of computers,
you could install a computer many times more powerful yet many times smaller
and lighter than those used by the Apollo craft now. As for Mars, I tend to
think that if we could do it more cheaply than we could do it now, then we
would do it now. Will it happen in my lifetime, though? Well, I have my doubts.
If we take the Moon programme, it took pretty much a decade from the start of
the Mercury programme to the Eagle’s landing. If we started a serious Mars
landing programme today. It could easily be well over a decade before the
vehicles and procedures were fully developed , tested and ready. And we aren’t
starting a serious Mars landing programme today, we won’t be starting one
tomorrow, and nobody really knows when or if we ever will.
