This is definitely a Saturday morning blog entry. Purely personal as I am in a reflective mood.
I am a long time fan of Space exploration as, along with the Cold War and a stream of WWII movies, TV coverage of the Apollo Space program made a huge impression on me as a child growing up in the '60s.
Given this background I just had to share a story from the BBC that popped up on Twitter a couple of days ago. I follow BBC Breaking News and on Wednesday I was delighted to read about Armstrong's 'poetic' slip on Moon (where else!).
Basically the gist of this story was that after 40 years Dr Christopher Riley (author of Apollo 11 - Owner's Workshop Manual) and forensic linguist John Olsson have conclusively proved that Neil Armstrong really did say "One small step for man, one giant step for mankind" as he stepped onto the surface of the moon on July 21st, 1969.
For someone who didn't have a TV until I was six years old (hard to believe there was a time before YouTube) and then only a B&W one those grainy images fired my imagination. I'd have been gutted if after all this time it turned out that Neil Armstrong had merely said "One small step for a man..."
It is fair to say that I was over the moon!
Note: For those of you in the neighborhood Chris Riley and John Olsson will be presenting
their findings at the Cheltenham Science Festival tonight where they
will be giving a talk Apollo Mysteries. Unfortunately I will be 400 miles away at a Charity Highland Games and I don't have a matter transmitter beam.
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