Apollo: July 2009 Archives

It was a simple question, given rhetorically by then president John Fitzgerald Kennedy on 12 September 1962 in the baking heat of Rice University in Houston, Texas and its simplicity understated its significance

The answer, no doubt, is that they play because it is a challenge

And it is the challenge of the unknown, of being ready to seek what is over the next hill, to overcome the difficult environment that maybe there, and to persist; that is the simple explanation for why the technical achievement that was Project Apollo was undertaken and accomplished

Humanity had wanted to go for millenia and that manifested itself in myth and legend, books and film, and in the earliest days of the moving picture too. It just took a race between super powers to realise it

The challenge is still there, to go and stay and not just at the Moon. Mars looms large in peoples' imaginations and space agencies see it as the greater goal. Humanity will go back to the Moon and do the other thing

The simple question that remains is, will the nation that leads that great endeavour speak of Rice playing Texas or Shanghai playing Beijing or Delhi playing Mumbai?

Last week Paul Coffman and Bob Biggs, former Rocketdyne engineers and members of the development teams for the J-2 and F-1 engines, respectively,spoke to Flightglobal through a teleconference organised by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne

Both are now consultants on NASA's Ares rocket J-2X engine programme. Due to the quality of the telephone line the audio is best listened to through headphones with the volume up

Paul Coffman's MP3 file is here and Bob Biggs' MP3 file is here

credit Flight / captin: Christoper Riley was interviewed at the Royal Aeronautical Society

Christopher Riley, co-producer of the In the Shadow of the Moon documentary, spoke at the Royal Aeronautical Society's Apollo 11 Forty years on lecture on 16 July 2009 and Hyperbola was there to interview him

His latest collaboration is the restoration of Moonwalk One. This NASA funded documentary was made about the historic 1969 mission and is being shown by the British Film Institute at its National Film Theatre as part of its One Giant Leap season. The BFI describes the season as a series of "landmark films and live events celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing"

Go here for Flightglobal.com's 40th anniversary webpage and here for NASA's restored "first step" film and here for other anniversary related material from the US space agency