Moon landing turns 45 on 20 July 2014

Forty-five years ago, on 20 July 1969, three American astronauts orbited the moon in Apollo 11. Two of them landed on the moon while Mike Collins remained in orbit. Neil Armstrong landed first, while Edwin Aldrin, better known as Buzz Aldrin, descended the steps of the shuttle, named Eagle, soon afterwards.

Buzz Aldrin has his own Twitter account (@therealbuzz) with 800,000 followers, but he has opened another hashtag dedicated to the anniversary of the moon landing (#Apollo45) to upload tributes on YouTube.

The YouTube video shows celebrities talking about the importance of the moon landing and the space program. These include Tim Allen, John Travolta, Pharrell Williams, and even Stephen Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time.

Below is an extract from my book Bardot’s Comet which highlights the lunar landing:

     I remember well the eight days, three hours, eighteen minutes and thirty-five seconds of Apollo 11’s journey to the moon and back…ly 24, in American time, I watched, listened, and read everything about the first manned space mission to the moon.
Prudence made a special effort to be with me at this historic time, embracing me like a schoolgirl given permission to attend a class excursion. She said we’d always remember where we were, and whom we were with, on this auspicious occasion. She was right.
She was sitting on the carpet in front of my legs as I sat in my brown leather armchair. Her arms were locked around the raised knees of her green paisley patterned straight-legged trousers. Her feet were comfortable in white socks and black cowhide loafers. I combed my fingers through her copper-red, silky-smooth hair, identical in color to her long-sleeved shirt. I layered her curls across the thighs of my black cotton trousers, stroking and caressing the ends. Together we watched the television screen’s flickering black and white images of the descent of the lunar module onto the surface of the moon. It was 5.47a.m., Adelaide time, on Wednesday July 21, 1969.
“Five hundred and forty feet, down at thirty—down at fifteen—four hundred feet down—forward—three hundred and fifty feet, down at four—three hundred feet, down three and a half—forty-seven forward—down.” A fine mist of lunar dust spread across the base of the shuttle, called the Eagle, as a white horizontal line inched down the television screen, slowly and repeatedly. It irritated me. Prudence said we shouldn’t complain about the quality of the image, but thank our lucky stars we were watching it on our very own television in our very own house. She was right; I stopped complaining.
“Thirteen forward—eleven forward—coming down nicely—two hundred feet, four and a half down—five and a half down—five percent—seventy-five feet—six forward—lights on—down two and a half—forty feet—down two and a half—kicking up some dust—thirty feet, two and a half down—faint shadow—four forward—four forward—drifting to the right a little—okay.”
“Thirty seconds,” a voice from Houston called out, indicating the amount of fuel remaining.
“They’ve got problems, Prudence. They can’t guide it down with only thirty seconds of fuel. You can’t park a car with thirty seconds of fuel, let alone a spaceship! No, no, they won’t make it. Oh, no!” The chilling prospect of failure began to take hold, strangling me by the throat.
“Hush, papa! They may have miscalculated a bit because we don’t know enough about the moon’s gravity yet,” Prudence explained. “There might be irregularities in the lunar gravitational field that’s influencing the speed of the shuttle. It’s called the perilune wiggle. They look okay though. Keep still!”
“Contact light. Okay. Engine stop—descent engine command override on,” continued the announcement from Tranquility Base.
“We copy you down, Eagle.”
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
“Roger, Tranquility,” said a Houston control officer. “We copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
“Thank you,” said someone aboard Eagle. “That may have seemed like a very long final phase. The auto targeting was taking us right into a football-field-sized crater with a large number of big boulders and rocks for about one or two crater diameters around it. It required flying manually over the rock field to find a reasonably good area.”
“Roger, we copy. It was beautiful from here, Tranquility. Over.”
The time from the shuttle landing to the time men actually walked on the moon seemed an eternity to me. In reality the moonwalk occurred a little less than seven hours after the lunar touchdown. Prudence anxiously flitted about the house until Neil Armstrong climbed down the shuttle ladder backwards. She watched him push himself off the last step down to the moon’s surface, where he uttered the words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The incredibility of the momentous event never ceased to amaze us. We experienced every second through the eyes of three men, pioneering a masterminded scheme of ingenuity and fortitude, determination and fate. For me, it was a calculation of chance and inspiration so extreme as to defy derivation. The minds of brilliant men produced a seminal seed of fundamental desire and germinated it with a fervid energy until it matured into inevitability and eventuality. For me, it was, indeed, a supreme miracle.
It was the ultimate achievement of the ultimate dream. But, sadly, I could never view the moon in the same way ever again. I wondered how long it would be before people would colonize the moon, just as we had colonized our own planet. Ten years, twenty years, certainly by the turn of the century, I thought. The space race between the Americans and the Russians had not ended. This was not the finishing line, but merely the inspiration to dream another dream. Surely, the space race would advance in earnest. The Russians would be the next to land on the moon, and the intense competition between countries would inevitably lead to mass settlement. In a way, this held both excitement and loathing to me because the moon was no longer a virginal paradise. Man had violated the pristine lady, the moon goddess. She had been sullied and stained with the flag and footsteps of development, of advancement, and of progress. She was an unblossomed female open to further desecration and brutality. The moon was no longer a romantic light in the sky, but another world, another frontier ripe for exploration. But what if the moon was just a stepping stone to the Universe? Would humans exploit her, changing her irrevocably, or will they leave her to bleed in silence, of no further interest, and, instead, set their sights on Mars? From the launch of the rocket on July 16, to the landing on the moon on July 20, and to the splashdown on July 24, in American time, I watched, listened, and read everything about the first manned space mission to the moon.

     Prudence was sitting on the carpet in front of my legs as I sat in my brown leather armchair. Together we watched the television screen’s flickering black and white images of the descent of the lunar module onto the surface of the moon.  It was 5.47a.m., Adelaide time, on Wednesday July 21, 1969.

     “Five hundred and forty feet, down at thirty—down at fifteen—four hundred feet down—forward—three hundred and fifty feet, down at four—three hundred feet, down three and a half—forty-seven forward—down.” A fine mist of lunar dust spread across the base of the shuttle, called the Eagle, as a white horizontal line inched down the television screen, slowly and repeatedly. It irritated me. Prudence said we shouldn’t complain about the quality of the image, but thank our lucky stars we were watching it on our very own television in our very own house. She was right; I stopped complaining.

     “Thirteen forward—eleven forward—coming down nicely—two hundred feet, four and a half down—five and a half down—five percent—seventy-five feet—six forward—lights on—down two and a half—forty feet—down two and a half—kicking up some dust—thirty feet, two and a half down—faint shadow—four forward—four forward—drifting to the right a little—okay.”

     “Thirty seconds,” a voice from Houston called out, indicating the amount of fuel remaining.

     “They’ve got problems, Prudence. They can’t guide it down with only thirty seconds of fuel. You can’t park a car with thirty seconds of fuel, let alone a spaceship! No, no, they won’t make it. Oh, no!” The chilling prospect of failure began to take hold, strangling me by the throat.

     “Hush, papa! They may have miscalculated a bit because we don’t know enough about the moon’s gravity yet,” Prudence explained. “There might be irregularities in the lunar gravitational field that’s influencing the speed of the shuttle. It’s called the perilune wiggle. They look okay though. Keep still!”

     “Contact light. Okay. Engine stop—descent engine command override on,” continued the announcement from Tranquility Base.

     “We copy you down, Eagle.”

     “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

     “Roger, Tranquility,” said a Houston control officer. “We copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

     “Thank you,” said someone aboard Eagle. “That may have seemed like a very long final phase. The auto targeting was taking us right into a football-field-sized crater with a large number of big boulders and rocks for about one or two crater diameters around it. It required flying manually over the rock field to find a reasonably good area.”

     “Roger, we copy. It was beautiful from here, Tranquility. Over.”

     The time from the shuttle landing to the time men actually walked on the moon seemed an eternity to me. In reality the moonwalk occurred a little less than seven hours after the lunar touchdown.  Prudence anxiously flitted about the house until Neil Armstrong climbed down the shuttle ladder backwards. She watched him push himself off the last step down to the moon’s surface, where he uttered the words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”