They also serve who orbit round and wait
I enjoyed the feature on Michael Collins in The Observer yesterday: not the Irish politician, but the third astronaut on Apollo 11. His fear of returning to Earth without his comrades; his exultation as he travelled alone around the far side of the Moon; his successful adaptation to ordinary life. He doesn't want to be called a hero, but he sounds like a very fine man.
There's an amusing letter in today's Guardian, reminding us of the limitations of technology in 1969:
Anyone reading the souvenir front-page of the moon landing may have wondered why there was no mention of Armstrong's famous first words. I was splash stone-sub on that night, back in hot metal days, which meant I was responsible for updating the front page with new copy as the story developed. Touchdown on the moon was well after our normal last edition time, so we were already into special editions, and working with the night editor Peter Large (watching a TV in a distant office). I had to say when to send the page to be cast for the final edition, balancing printing as much information as possible against the fact that, with the presses already rolling and most of the print run complete, the number of copies that would result was dwindling with each minute.
But Armstrong stood on the bottom step of the ladder for an interminable time, and with the head printer fretting and swearing that there would be no copies left to print, we reluctantly had to let the page go to the foundry. Two minutes later we heard the immortal words, but by then the page forme was far too hot for anyone to work on it for another 20 minutes. Hence the missing words. To our chagrin other newspapers with a bigger print run managed an edition with the famous phrase. It still rankles.
Geoff Andrews
Bath
My father retired from The Guardian in 1969 - I've forgotten which month - though it was probably a bit later that he read me H. G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon, which Tim Pigott-Smith is reading on Radio Four this week. It's disconcerting me that TPS pronounces one of the two main characters as Ca-VOR, when I can hear my father saying CAV-or.
There's an amusing letter in today's Guardian, reminding us of the limitations of technology in 1969:
Anyone reading the souvenir front-page of the moon landing may have wondered why there was no mention of Armstrong's famous first words. I was splash stone-sub on that night, back in hot metal days, which meant I was responsible for updating the front page with new copy as the story developed. Touchdown on the moon was well after our normal last edition time, so we were already into special editions, and working with the night editor Peter Large (watching a TV in a distant office). I had to say when to send the page to be cast for the final edition, balancing printing as much information as possible against the fact that, with the presses already rolling and most of the print run complete, the number of copies that would result was dwindling with each minute.
But Armstrong stood on the bottom step of the ladder for an interminable time, and with the head printer fretting and swearing that there would be no copies left to print, we reluctantly had to let the page go to the foundry. Two minutes later we heard the immortal words, but by then the page forme was far too hot for anyone to work on it for another 20 minutes. Hence the missing words. To our chagrin other newspapers with a bigger print run managed an edition with the famous phrase. It still rankles.
Geoff Andrews
Bath
My father retired from The Guardian in 1969 - I've forgotten which month - though it was probably a bit later that he read me H. G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon, which Tim Pigott-Smith is reading on Radio Four this week. It's disconcerting me that TPS pronounces one of the two main characters as Ca-VOR, when I can hear my father saying CAV-or.