Forty-one years ago today, the door of a spider-like tinfoil contraption swung open, an average-looking man with an average-sounding name stepped out, paused, and then descended a short ladder to the fine grey dust below.
It was July 20, 1969, and NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon.
Contact between this dust and this man’s boot changed everything: mankind had visited another planetary body; NASA met the goal Kennedy had set them, and with only five months to spare; the US won the space race and, unbeknownst to them at the time, plotted a course for co-operation with their Soviet rivals. As one of my favorite Kennedy Space Center attractions points out, ‘for the first time we were one people, with one history.’
It also ensured that I would become truly, madly and deeply obsessed with all things Apollo.
Last year Taschen Books contributed to the fortieth anniversary celebrations of Apollo 11′s lunar landing by publishing a limited edition book called Moonfire, a stunning weighty volume filled with amazing LIFE magazine photos and Norman Mailer’s writings on the subject, originally published as Of a Fire On the Moon in 1971.
And when I say limited, I mean limited: only 1,969 copies were printed (1969 – geddit?) in two editions. The ‘Collector’s Edition’ was in a special case with a signed print of the cover boy, Buzz Aldrin, and retailed for about $1,500 or so. However if you wanted to do some serious splurging, you could get the really limited edition, complete with a piece of lunar rock, for around €75,000. Both price tags, unfortunately, were beyond the means of my meagre budget and so when I found out that Taschen had produced a non-special edition for us plebs, I let out a little squeal.
And then bought it immediately, of course. (more…)
