Misc Mud Lake Projects

Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on 20 July, 1969, fulfilling the goal set by President Kennedy in 1961.

This was one of the most momentous events in my lifetime, and I remember the coverage by the BBC being superb — even though I was only 5 years old. There were many hours of coverage, led by James Burke, Cliff Michelmore and Patrick Moore, announced by Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra. But I didn't get to see the key events, because they happened after my bedtime, and I wasn't allowed to stay up.

I always thought that a great way to mark the anniversary of the moon landings would be for the TV channels to re-broadcast their coverage, time synchronised to the original events; so people like me, and people who weren't around at the time, could re-live the whole experience. Sadly, this is never going to happen, because the tapes of those original broadcasts have all been erased.

So I decided to do it myself. The idea was to make a movie that could be played in an Apollo anniversary party, in the background, to try to capture something of the atmosphere of what it was like. So I pieced this together — it's not intended to be a narrative film, but a mood piece made from excerpts from the NASA archival footage. Sadly, this means no James Burke or Patrick Moore, or Walter Cronkite, but hopefully it captures something of what this great event was like.

So enjoy; and when the 20th of July rolls around, maybe take some time to think about the folks who sat on top of a three thousand tonne bomb and launched themselves at the Moon.