Fly me to the Moon and let me play...........

at being an astronaut.

It's our Open Day at work next Tuesday and I've just been told I'm getting an extra display board. It's not being fitted until the weekend and I have to fill it on Monday!

In a flash of inspiration I've decided to do a display on what I think is our greatest scientific achievement....Space flight. I know there are many candidates for "greatest".... vaccines, the eradication of smallpox, transplants, splitting the atom, the wheel, the telephone and on and on and on......but being born in the 50's for me it's always been space, especially the Apollo missions.

I was 11 when Armstrong walked on the Moon and I've always been a bit of a space geek. I can name all 12 men who've set foot on the Moon, and the 6 Command module pilots that flew them there, I know all the names of the command and lunar modules, all the Gemini astronauts, the first dog, man and woman into space, the first space walker, the first, non- tethered space walker etc etc etc........ I could bore for England on it.

So I decided to down load some mission patches and I discovered something I didn't know....although Apollo 17 was the last mission to the Moon there are patches for 18, 19 & 20! Obviously planned and then cancelled....can you imagine how pee'd off those 9 guys must have been? Trained for years to go there then the plug was pulled.

I'll blip the display when it's finished but for now here's a couple of space stories for you'

20 odd years ago I took some pupils to Jodrell Bank, in the gift shop was a basket of about 50 Apollo 13 mission patches, the real thing, for 10p each. They weren't selling because 13 had failed to get to the Moon. I didn't buy any either, but I wish I had. When the film Apollo 13 came out every one wanted memorabilia, I could have made a killing!

2 years ago we took some pupil's to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry to meet some Shuttle astronauts and listen to a lecture. We arrived,
walked into the theatre and there on the stage stood these "Gods of Space", real live astronauts, guys who'd been in Space, one had over 8 missions to his credit going back to the days of Sky Lab etc, in their flight suits, with all the mission patches and stars and stripes....and what did our Deputy Head do?............marched up and gripping one astronaut firmly by the hand announced, "Hi, my name's Ch*** Ow**" Supreme confidence or what? I would never have been able to do that. Too much in awe.