July 20 1969 - Man lands on the Moon

Pix credit: NASA.
Space travel was a backdrop of childhood for me although my own recollections of 50 years ago this Saturday are a bit dim but I do know Dad wasn't home cos he was involved with the work maintaining the connection from getting the American pictures send by cable to the BBC as he did a lot of O.B. (outside broadcast) line work setting and monitoring it.
He also had a lot to do with the lines that were put in for the World Famous Jodrell Bank radio telescope heading up the team as that place was in our district's jurisdiction working directly with the late Sir Bernard Lovell and having to fight a lot of G.P.O bureaucracy to get what he wanted so often he was over there in the thick of the British arm of space exploration at odd hours.
It was some measure of how he was regarded that as kids we were treated pretty much as Royalty there getting to things most couldn't, dropping in whenever we passed as it was just a very short distance away, talking with leading scientists like Patrick Moore.
There was little getting away from the fact what the Americans had achieved was ground breaking - the Soviets had gotten a man into space (and Dad was involved with the broadcast work for that) - but in a world where few had colour tv, computers existed only in big corporations and government this was almost beyond comprehension, inspiring many of us.
It was the first time we learned that the surface of the moon had lunar dust to the point one of the astronauts space boots left a impression upon it.
The technical challenges involved in documenting it itself were immense with the Hasselblad medium format camera being treated for use in space used take the official pictures of the moon's cratered surface, the hand-held movie camera was also modified apart from the early satellite transmissions for live footage of walking on the moon.
This event is being marked on Blue Peter this week where amongst other things  the team will be experiencing weightlessness at the National Space Centre in Leicester, showing prime exhibits such as spacesuits and rocks plus a 'make' where a mouse from thin card was made as that was the first species to be sent into space as well as in other dedicated programs.
 As well there will be a premiering of a classical piece dedicated to the Apollo 11 teams awesome achievement in the BBC Proms.
What was achieved was one of the most important events in the whole of human history.