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Business travel

40 years since 1st moon landing

As I drove in to work this morning I heard a BBC Radio 4 interview with 2nd man on the moon Buzz Aldrin. Part of it included playback of the telephone conversation the astronauts had with President Richard Nixon who emphasised that he was using the telephone in the Oval Office to make the call. Of course this was a technological marvel at the time.

I actually met Buzz Aldrin 15 years ago on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the moon landings. What struck me was the high calibre of everyone involved with the Apollo missions.

The technology they used was so basic that the astronauts had to pilot the spacecraft manually. None of this onboard guidance computer stuff. In fact my Nokia phone now  has much more computing power than did the whole mission to the moon.

Buzz described to me the way that they flew the lunar landing craft by hand across the moon’s surface until they spotted somewhere suitable to land.  The whole mission was balanced on a knife edge as the lander only had 40 seconds of fuel left before they had to abort the landing.  Fortunately, as we now all know, they spotted a landing spot and took it down.

The missions to the moon were the catalyst that set in train the whole semiconductor industry and brought about the technological revolution that is still going on today. One small step for man, one massive leap for technology.

I had my photo taken with Buzz at that event 15 years ago.  If I can find it I’ll scan it in and post it here. I wonder if he remembers me ?:-)

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

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