In the Shadow of the Moon

In the Shadow of the Moon is an account of the moon landings, which took place in the dim and distant past, i.e. 1969-72. I went to see it last week with one of my sons, who is especially interested in space travel and has read quite a bit about it.
I found it entralling, and extremely moving. To start with, it brought back a flood of memories - I was at home, looking after my parents' house while they were on holiday. I can't remember if their TV was black and white or colour. I know that colour had been around for a couple of years, and my father liked to acquire new technology as soon as he could - they had ITV and BBC-2 as soon as possible.
Anyway, all I remember was some flickery pictures, and after the initial amazement, feeling fairly underwhelmed - space travel had become part of the landscape in the 60s - just another thing that happened. Also, teenagers then were far more exercised over the war in Vietnam - I remember marching through the streets of Oxford shouting 'Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' and attending a meeting of the Young Communist League, where it was all 'explained'. In the end I didn't join, as I had other more pressing things going on in my life, such as my appearance and my social life.
I can see now what an extraordinary, amazing event it was. Those men are the only people alive who have ever stood on another celestial body, and seen the earth from space. They experienced it differently, but all were profoundly moved, their lives and the ways in which they saw life, changed utterly. My son has the book A Man on the Moon which I read a while ago, so I knew a bit about it, but it was still good to see them in person. Michael Collins, who sat in the capsule while Aldrin and Armstrong landed on the moon, the first men to set foot on it, was a delightful character - he could have become bitter and twisted, eaten up by the knowledge that he missed out, but he didn't - quite the opposite. He proved a great interviewee, amusing, optimistic and intelligent.
Armstrong. the first man to stand on the moon, was absent, and having read the book, it wasn't a surprise, he's always been a bit of a recluse, and who can blame him? And to be the first does confer a special status that must sometimes be difficult.
There will come a time when these men are no longer with us, and there doesn't seem to be much of an appetite to go to the moon again. What struck me, looking at the footage now, is how home-made it all was, the spacecraft looked like the sort of thing a child might cobble up, perhaps with the help of an ingenious parent. Now it would have to be impossibly high-tech. Another thing that struck me was how muted and constrained was the reaction at Mission Control by today's standards. Yes, there were cheers, but only the most modest air punching and no high-fiving. That simply would not happen now, everone would be going berserk. And the reaction in the newsrooms, TV newsreaders were suitably awestruck, but again, there was little in the way of triumphalism. How different that would be today! The hysteria would be almost unbearable.
So, a fascinating glimpse into history, great stuff.