The most famous photograph from the Apollo 11 Moonwalk. Ironically it's of Buzz Aldrin not first man on the Moon Neil Armstrong. Armstrong took the picture and can just be seen reflected in Aldrin's helmet visor.Agent Triple P divides people into two sorts. Those who remember the Apollo 11 Moon landing and those that don't.
We remember, as a small boy, being woken up in the early hours of July 21st (July 20th US time) to see Neil Armstrong step out onto the Moon in blurry black and white. Agent Triple P wanted to be an astronaut but apart from the fact that he was useless at maths at that point there was a height limit of 5'10" and we were predicted (rightly) to grow to be taller than that.
Burke, Michelmore, Moore- what a team! Burke stands next to the Revell model Saturn V which was somewhat larger than the Airfix kit.
Both ITV and BBC covered the Moon landings overnight in the UK's first all night TV broadcast. We watched the BBC of course (as our parents considered ITV working class. For the same reason we watched the children's TV programme Blue Peter and were not allowed to watch the commercial equivalent Magpie) anchored by Patrick Moore and James Burke (who was Agent Triple P's first hero!).
James Burke: the cleverest man in the world!
Later on we had all the Airfix kits relating to the Apollo programme and a wonderful check list document wallet thing with enabled us to go through all the system checks required to launch the Saturn V rocket bringing great veracity to our games as we reproduced every mission on our bedroom carpet.
The very first music cassette we bought for our Philips cassette player was the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey as it featured Richard Strauss; Also Sprach Zarathustra which the BBC used as the theme tune to their spaceflight broadcasts.
We cannot believe the Moon landing was 40 years ago today. Whilst not our earliest memory it is certainly one of our most vivid.
We came in peace for all mankind.
