James Burke on the Moon

Today on Far Future Horizons we continue to commemorate the forty-eighth anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing with two retrospective documentaries presented by BBC veteran science journalist and science historian James Burke ten years after the event.

“Apollo 11: Remastered” - An Orbiter Film

The versatility of the Orbiter Space Simulator is truly amazing. I first wrote about this free space simulator program in my recent article "For All You Armchair Astronauts". Here is awe inspiring film made by TexFilms using Orbiter.

In “Apollo 11: Remastered” we can all vicariously embark on the epic voyage of Apollo 11 from launch to splashdown and relive this grand adventure. This film is a remake of TexFilms original Apollo 11 release featuring Orbiter Space Flight Simulator and AMSO Apollo addon.

Modern Marvels - Apollo 11

Today on Far Future Horizons we highlight the greatest scientific and technological achievement in living memory – Apollo 11 and the first manned Moon landing.

Modern Marvels - Apollo 11 chronicles the trials and tribulations of the Apollo program and its ascent to glory as the Apollo 11 crew touched down on the Moon's surface.

With insightful narration, interviews with Astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Flight Director Gene Kranz, NASA experts, scientists and engineers, the program winds through the evolution of the space program from President Kennedy’s famous congressional address to the stories of personal sacrifice necessary for Apollo’s success.

From Olduvai Gorge to the Sea of Tranquility

 

This is an essay I wrote eight years ago to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and was originally posted on the National Space Society's blog site on  August 10, 2009.

By far the two most remarkable photographs of the twentieth century are the ones shown above. For they encapsulate the whole evolutionary and cultural history of humanity and its possible destiny.

In 1978, paleoanthropologist Mary Leaky and her team discovered the earliest hominid footprints (dated to be three and a half million years old) preserved in the volcanic ash at Laetoli, forty-five kilometres south of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. They belong to one of our proto-human ancestors - Australopithecus afarensis. The picture above shows one of these fossil footprints next to the boot print left by Neil Armstrong in the volcanic soil of Mare Tranquilitatis (the Sea of Tranquillity).

It is very symbolic of the giant evolutionary leap forward we have taken as a species. From Olduvai Gorge to the Sea of Tranquillity, we humans have travelled very far.

In the Shadow of the Moon

Today on Far Future Horizons we commemorate the forty-eighth anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing by presenting a retrospective of the entire Apollo program as seen through the memories of the Astronauts, scientists and engineers who made it happen.

Between 1968 and 1972, nine American spacecraft voyaged to the Moon, and 12 men walked upon its surface. They remain the only human beings to have stood on another world. IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON brings together for the first, and possibly the last time, surviving crew members from every single Apollo mission that flew to the Moon, and allows them to tell their story in their own words.