Film Review: "The Wildest Dream"

A month ago I wrote a blog about Wade Davis’s Into The Silence - his recent book describing the British expeditions of 1921, 1922 and 1924, which developed into a sustained campaign to conquer Mt. Everest for the first time. It was the last major prize of a long period of exploration and adventure in the early decades of the twentieth century. Davis focused especially on the talented and charismatic George Mallory – considered the best British mountain climber of his generation. He was the only mountaineer of the group who participated in all three trips west across Tibet from northern India - attempting to reach the top of Everest via the immense mountain's daunting north face.

Interested in learning more about Mallory and those expeditions of the early 1920s, I did a search of the resources available at the Hamilton Public Library. To my surprise, I discovered a blu-ray DVD titled The Wildest Dream. It turns out to be a perfect companion-piece to the Davis book – or an alternative version of the story, for those reluctant to plough their way through the detailed history found in his 573-page book.

The Wildest Dream was directed by Anthony Geffen for Altitude Films; it was released in 2009 by National Geographic Entertainment. Its focus is on George Mallory’s attempts to climb Everest - and how his life-story intersects with, and parallels, that of contemporary American climber Conrad Anker, who found Mallory’s frozen remains on the upper slopes of the mountain in 1999, 75 years after he died in a last desperate attempt to reach the summit.

The film opens with a re-enactment of Anker’s discovery of Mallory’s body. It wasn’t an accidental discovery – Anker was part of an expedition team who were looking specifically for Mallory’s and Irvine’s bodies (Irvine was Mallory’s climbing partner on that day of June 8, 1924, when they went missing, trying one last time to get to the top of Everest). Footage from 1994 shows their search of the dead climber’s clothing. Mallory’s identity is confirmed by a name tag sewn into a piece of his clothing. Artifacts and papers are removed from the scene and provide some clues about their owner’s final hours alive on the mountain. Mallory had promised his wife Ruth that he would leave a photograph of her at the summit. That photograph was not found in any of his pockets. Also, a pair of snow goggles were found – suggesting that the sun had gone down when the accident occurred that killed the two climbers. If it was that late in the day, perhaps they had been delayed getting to the summit, and were on their way back. Furthermore, Mallory’s body was found in a position well below the Second Step, the last difficult bit of climbing they would have faced.

Modern climbers in vintage climbing gear of the 1920s

The first half-hour of the film gives a good summary of Mallory’s  life, up to the time he made a lecture tour of the United States between January and March of 1923. It was during that visit that Mallory was asked, at the end of one of his talks, why he was driven to climb Everest. He responded famously: “Because it’s there.” This part of the film goes into the background of his life, including his education at Cambridge University and his experiences in the trenches during World War I. Twenty of the twenty-six climbers who took part in the 1920s expeditions were veterans of the Great War.

The next section of the film concentrates on Conrad Anker and his decision to return to Mt. Everest in order to attempt a free-climb of the Second Step, a tricky cliff face at 28,300 feet that Mallory and Irvine would have had to get up and over in order to reach the summit. Just as Mallory needed a partner during his climb – he and Irvine would be attached to each other in the “brotherhood of the rope” – Anker recruits young British mountaineer Leo Houlding to join him on his adventure. Houlding was a talented young climber, but like Mallory, Irvine and the rest of the climbers on those 1920s expeditions, he had no experience of high-altitude climbing. But he's a good rock-climber - demonstrated by an amazing sequence that shows him climbing a rock-face without any ropes. He clambers over a couple of overhangs - suspended just by his fingertips.

During Anker’s and Houlding’s climb of Everest they also test out modern reproductions of the gear that Mallory and Irvine were using – clothing made from gabardine and climbing shoes which were nothing more, really, than hob-nailed boots.  They wore seven layers of clothing – just managing to cope with conditions on the upper reaches of the mountain. The boots, however, were completely inadequate. When Anker and Houlding don the vintage clothing for the second time - above Camp 4 - they narrowly escape suffering frostbite.

Conrad Anker (left) and Leo Houlding (right)

The last section of the film shows the struggle to get over the Second Step. It takes about 45 minutes, but Anker - taking the lead - eventually finds a route. The way is clear, and he and Houlding quickly make their way to the summit. Did Mallory and Irvine get over the Second Step themselves and reach the top? Or were they forced to abandon their goal after a long struggle with the extreme weather conditions? It seems no definitive answer is possible – unless Irvine’s body is eventually found and reveals more conclusive clues.

The Wildest Dream is a fascinating film for those who are interested in mountaineering in general, or the climbing of Everest in particular. The mix of historical detail and contemporary adventure is compelling; and the production is top-notch. There are two narrative voices driving the documentary forward: Liam Neeson is used predominantly to give the history of the 1920s expeditions; in the second half of the film, Anker’s voice takes over - recounting his ascent up the mountain, following in Mallory’s footsteps.

Ruth & George Mallory

One of the most effective techniques in the film is to use actors Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson to give voice to George and Ruth Mallory. And Hugh Dancy speaks for Sandy Irvine. No captions or identifiers are needed; their distinctive voices are immediately recognizable. Whenever they speak, we know who it is being portrayed. And the excerpts we hear - especially those from the regular letters back-and-forth between Mallory and his wife - recreate the drama of those times brilliantly, and, as Mallory’s fate moves inexorably closer, they become very moving.

The Wildest Dream is a blu-ray production. The modern footage of Everest and the land seen on the long approach to the mountain is stunning. Some computer-generated sequences are amazing – such as the footage showing the long ascent up the main Rongbuk Glacier, the parallel East Rongbuk Glacier, and the steep cliff of snow and ice leading up to the North Col. The views looking north, down and away from the Second Step, are breath-taking.

The film is also full of excellent black-and-white photographs taken during the expeditions of the 1920s. More importantly, there are many sequences showing film shot during 1922 and 1924 by British cinematographer John Noel (taken from the National Archives of the British Film Institute), who would use his footage later to produce a couple of documentaries about the British exploration of Tibet and the attempts to climb Mt. Everest. So we see lots of images – still photographs and very old film footage – that help us to imagine the type of person George Mallory was.

The director adds several dramatic reconstructions of Mallory and Irvine’s final climb – including an impressive sequence that shows the probable course of the accident that led to their demise. Seeing the actors on the slopes of the mountain in their period clothing makes you marvel at the ability of those early climbers to deal with the incredibly harsh conditions faced at those high altitudes – not just the extreme weather, but also the debilitating lack of oxygen.

Conrad Anker and Leo Houlding wearing vintage gabardine climbing clothes and hob-nailed boots

Eight years after finding the body of George Mallory 800 feet from the summit of Everest, the circle is complete. Anker and Houlding have retraced the intended path of Mallory and Irvine to the top of the world. “I know you can achieve your wildest dream,” Ruth wrote to Mallory about his obsessive drive to be the first man to conquer Everest. This fascinating film gives a riveting account of the struggle, and goes a long way to showing what kind of special people they are who are willing to risk their lives doing the same.

Saints promoted to Premier League!

With today’s 4-0 win against Coventry at home in St. Mary’s Stadium, Southampton Football Club (the “Saints”) have been promoted back to the Premier League, after seven years in the English footballing “wilderness”. Southampton were relegated from the Premier League in May 2005, ending twenty-seven successive seasons of top-division football (the “First Division”, and then the “Premier League”).


The financial and administrative mess that led to the collapse of the club’s fortunes continued, as Saints were relegated to League One (the third division) at the end of the 2008-2009 season. On 23 April 2009, Southampton received a ten-point deduction, following their parent company going into administration. This deduction led to the second relegation – into League One. 


Through May and June of 2009 Southampton were in danger of going bankrupt and folding as a football club, but they were bought by Swiss industrial magnate Markus Liebherr. Liebherr eliminated all the club’s debts and hired Swiss businessman, Nicola Cortese, as the new CEO of the club.

Rickie Lambert - 27 league goals this season

 In July 2009, Cortese brought in Alan Pardew as manager. He proved to be an astute signer of players – bringing in Rickie Lambert, Dean Hamond, Radhi Jaïdi, Graeme Murty, Dan Harding, David Connolly, Michail Antonio, Papa Waigo, Lee Barnard, José Fonte, Danny Seaborne, Jon Otsemobor, and Jason Puncheon. 


In August 2010, Pardew was fired and Cortese signed Nigel Adkins as manager – joining Saints from Scunthorpe United. Adkins proved to be an excellent man-manager and he quickly built a tremendous team-spirit at the club – emphasizing the fact that successful clubs are built on a strong squad working towards a common goal, rather than relying on a few individuals. He consolidated the team around the squad that Pardew had assembled and brought in some key players of his own. 

Adam Lallana - local boy and talented midfielder

Behind the scenes, Cortese completely re-built the club’s business ethos. His no-nonsense, principled approach worked quickly. The chaos and dissension of the Rupert Lowe era was gone. Cortese announced a five-year plan to get the club back to the Premier League. And they’ve done it in three seasons – back-to-back promotions in the last two seasons. 


So, time to celebrate. Well done Saints! 


“Oh, when the Saints go marching in …”

CD Review: Ry Cooder's "Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down"

In my review of Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball back in March, I mentioned that during our family’s March break holiday down in Florida I took a couple of CDs along to listen to in our rented car. The other CD was Ry Cooder’s latest, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down. It’s been out for a while – released back in August, 2011 - so I’ve been listening to it for quite a time; and, unlike Springsteen’s effort, this one sounds more impressive every time you hear it. 

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, Ry Cooder’s fourteenth studio album, is the latest in a long line of excellent recordings dating back to the early ‘70s. And this is one of his very best. Cooder emerged first in the 60s as an accomplished guitarist - he worked as a session musician with the likes of Van Morrison, Randy Newman and The Rolling Stones. He taught Keith Richards a thing or two about guitar-playing, and you can hear the influence on “Honky Tonk Women”. Cooder also plays on Let It Bleed. His own recordings revealed an interest in American roots music; over the years, he has shown a continuing interest in traditional folk, blues, rock, gospel, soul and Tex-Mex. And, of course, he introduced us to traditional Cuban music on the marvellous Buena Vista Social Club (1997).  The first of a series of a collaborations he's done in what they now call "world music".

For the bulk of his career, Ry Cooder has worked like a musicologist – using his solo albums as a platform to introduce unfamiliar genres and figures to a primarily rock-listening audience - expanding the horizons and tastes of a constituency that can often be narrow-minded and surprisingly conservative. He did this not in a proselytizing way, but by exposing his fans to the musical delights of interesting songs and intriguing music.

Ry Cooder beside his '53 Chevy lowrider

In more recent years, Cooder has come into his own as a successful song-writer. On his earlier albums he might offer an occasional song or two of his own; but, starting with Chavez Ravine in 2005, he has put his own songwriting at the heart of his artistic vision. This continued with the other albums of his “California trilogy” – My Name is Buddy and I, Flathead.


Some themes from that trilogy recur in the new album, but Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down is a more wide-ranging look at the temper of the times in contemporary America. Cooder doesn’t like what he sees. His response is a collection of scathing songs about the corrupt politics and the troubling social conditions he sees around him. In this sense, the album is similar to Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball. But Cooder’s work is more radical than Springsteen’s. It doesn’t have the didactic and anthemic pretentions of The Boss; it gives the themes a human face. Cooder prefers “to show, rather than tell”. His songs don’t preach; themes are contextualised in the specific situations of individual lives.


Cooder’s songs here zero in on a corrupt political and economic order – how Wall Street bankers are aided and abetted by the political elite; how desperate Mexican immigrants risk their lives getting into the country illegally, and are then exploited as cheap farm-labourers; how fundamentalist Republicans use a twisted sense of religion to pursue immoral ends; and how poor Americans join the army to escape dead-end lives and are put in harm’s way by a criminal administration.

The back cover

The title of the album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down makes reference to the depression-era careers of Woody Guthrie and friends. Guthrie put out an album called Dust Bowl Ballads (1940), full of social-activist songs about the poor and down-trodden. His song “Pretty Boy Floyd”, for example, is about an outlaw – a bank-robber eventually gunned-down by the police. Guthrie makes him a tragic figure – suggesting his criminality is partly explained by the hardships of the time. He may have been an outlaw, Guthrie sings, who robbed banks at gun-point, but he didn’t steal people’s houses with the flourish of a fountain-pen:

“… as through your life you travel, yes, as through your life you roam;

You won't never see an outlaw drive a family from their home.”

This is the world Cooder evokes with the second song on the album, “El Corrido de Jesse James”. He puts the lyric in the mouth of another outlaw, the notorious Jesse James - who declares that he may have been branded a bandit, but he “never turned a family from their home”. Who is the real outlaw, anyway, Cooder seems to ask. And do we need the likes of Jesse James to exact vigilante justice?

“I’ll cut you down to size my banking brothers,

Put that bonus money back where it belongs.”

The first song that Ry Cooder recorded for this album was “Christmas Time This Year”. It is a scathing anti-war lyric focused on the fate of those poor grunts sent over unwittingly to Iraq to face the horrors of modern warfare. The sarcasm in the lyric is emphasised by the music – a jaunty polka featuring Flaco Jimenez (a long-standing collaborator of Cooder’s) on accordion. He provides a few Christmas-themed flourishes as Cooder sings a song of both pathos and suppressed rage:

“Now Johnny ain’t got no legs and Billy ain’t got no face;

Do they know it’s Christmas time this year?

Tommy looks about the same, but his mind is gone,

Does he know it’s Christmas time this year?”

The themes of these songs are presented with lyrics that are forthright and compelling. And the music is equally effective. The arrangements are sparse and simple - open and spacious - none of the over-produced washes of the Springsteen disc. Cooder often overdubs himself on three or four instruments. His son Joachim plays drums on most tracks. There are tasteful background vocals – a trio of voices – on several tracks. And, unlike the ineffective brass parts on a few of Springsteen’s tracks, Cooder puts some gorgeous horns on a couple of the tracks – the Mariachi choruses on “El Corrido de Jesse James” sounds particularly good.

Two of the best tracks feature just Cooder on guitar and vocals. “Baby Joined the Army” is really a companion piece to “Christmas Time This Year”. It’s a heart-rending song put in the mouth of a father (or husband – it’s ambiguous), whose daughter (or wife) has enlisted in the army to escape her everyday problems. The man had no say, he sings. The deed is done:

“… wasn’t nothing I could do but cry … so I cried.”

Cooder's guitar playing is a slow, hypnotic blues.

The other solo piece is a real tour de force. Cooder channels the great John Lee Hooker in a song called “John Lee Hooker for President”. Not only is his impersonation brilliant, but the song is very funny. Cooder uses Hooker’s persona to make some pointed comments on American politics. On campaign financing, for example, he sings:

“I don’t need yo money, cause I finance my own campaign.

I ain’t for sale; I keep a fat bankroll in my pocket, baby, big as a hay bale.”

There are lots of musical styles here – each done with impeccable taste. Every song’s a gem. Cooder is not the best of vocalists, but he has learned how to overcome his limitations, as many singer-songwriters do, who have been at it for so many years. What’s impressive here is his ability to adopt very different personas in order to deliver a particular lyric. The hard-rock track “I Want My Crown”, for example, has a truly malevolent voice – singing with glee about usurping power and casting down the working man. In “Dreamer”, he sings in the voice of Julio Ruelas, the brother of Fernando Ruelas, the president of Duke’s So Cal, a lowrider car club. The Ruelas brothers worked on a high-profile project with Cooder, turning a 1953 Chevy truck into a lowrider ice-cream truck. The song is a wistful ballad, featuring more distinctive accompaniment from accordion-playing Flaco Jimenez.

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down is an excellent album. If you’re a Ry Cooder fan, this is essential. If you’re not that familiar, check it out. I think it’s a real work of art – great music and compelling song-writing. Not to mention some typically tasty guitar work from a master musician.


[Thanks to Michael H.]

Photo Essay: Kennedy Space Center in Florida

Front page of The Guardian on July 21st., 1969

1969 was a watershed year in my life. In February I left the De La Mennais Brothers’ juniorate at Woolton College in Liverpool and returned to St. Mary’s College in Southampton to finish Fifth Form and complete my ‘O’ Levels. And in August, I emigrated to Canada and joined my family in Burlington, Ontario.


During the few weeks between the end of school and the day I left England, I took a job as a paper-boy. Now, unlike the North American set-up - where a newspaper deliverer works for one newspaper company, and only delivers their particular paper - in England you worked out of a newsagent’s shop, and delivered about a dozen different papers to the houses on your route. I was working for a shop on Hollybank Estate in Hythe - the village I grew up in - so the route was familiar to me. And I had my bicycle to carry me faster between certain spread-out sections of the route.


It became an educational experience to see how the different types of newspapers (broadsheets, tabloids, etc.) targeted the same news at their particular audience. As I pulled out each paper from the diverse collection in my shoulder-bag, and walked up to shove it through the letter-box of each house, I had time to give it a quick perusal – to scan the pictures, headlines, and, perhaps, an article's opening paragraph. And during those few weeks, the continuing news story of most interest to me was the impending flight of Apollo 11, which was going to attempt to put two men (Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin) on the surface of the moon. Some papers covered the mission in a rather cursory manner (other things, strangely, seemed of more importance to their editorial concerns); others provided in-depth coverage, with feature articles, photo essays, and special supplements. During the intense, week-long duration of the Apollo 11 flight itself, in late-July, I followed the newspaper coverage with deep interest – buying one or two of that day’s newspapers, when I got back to the shop at the end of my run.

Front-page of Toronto Daily Star in a KSC display

And the climax of the Apollo 11 mission could not have been more dramatic for me. The TV coverage, of course, was geared to put the important events on prime-time broadcasts in the United States (EST) – but that meant five hours later in the UK (GMT). The Lunar Module landed on the Moon at 8:17 p.m. GMT. The two astronauts aboard (Armstrong and Aldrin) were given about five hours to sleep before the intense and exhausting exploration of the moon’s surface. That meant the TV coverage of those first steps on the Moon would not happen until about 2:30 the next morning (GMT). Not to be missed, of course. But I had to go up by train the next day to visit Canada House in Trafalgar Square, in order to sign a couple of immigration documents. So, I set the alarm and got about four hours sleep – getting up to watch the BBC-TV coverage of the momentous event. Neil Armstrong, after careful preparation, stepped onto the Moon’s surface at 2:56 a.m., on the morning of Monday, July 21st, 1969. I watched for another hour or so, and then got back to bed for a few hours sleep, before getting up again to make my train journey to London. By the end of that momentous day, I was thrilled by the sense of its historical import, but tired after the long hours of travel.

The Rocket Garden at the Kennedy Space Center

So, the Apollo programme was of intense interest to me. During our recent March Break holiday in Florida, therefore, whilst Barb and Gillian went off to Harry Potter World, on our first day there, Colin and I went east to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at Cape Canaveral. As we got close to the visitors’ complex, we knew we were in the right place – half a dozen rockets were poking above the facility's outer fencing. After showing our tickets at the gate, we made our way over to the rockets – collected in an area referred to as “the Rocket Garden”. Here were housed some of the key rocketry of the three programmes of the 1960s American space effort  – Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. 

Project Mercury rockets - Atlas D (left) and Redstone (right)

 Here are the two rockets of the early-sixties' (1961-1963) Project Mercury. The rocket on the right is called the Redstone-Mercury. It is a one-stage rocket, eighty-three feet long, used for sub-orbital flights. It was used in May and July of 1961 in the first American manned flights - putting first Alan Shepard and, then, Gus Grissom into fifteen-minute sub-orbital flights. The rocket on the left is the Atlas D. It's a two-stage rocket, and was used to put the other Mercury astronauts into earth orbit: John Glenn in February, 1962 (three orbits); Scott Carpenter in May, 1962 (three orbits); Walter Schirra in October 1962 (six orbits); and Gordon Cooper, who did twenty-two orbits of the Earth, and was the first American astronaut to stay in space for more than a day. The 1983 film The Right Stuff, based on a book by Tom Wolfe (1979), was focused primarily on the history of the Mercury program.

Titan II rocket (in the left-foreground) used throughout the Gemini program

The manned flights of the Gemini program ran from March 1965 to November 1966. The launch vehicle used for all those flight was the Titan II - pictured above (left-foreground). This rocket was built by the U.S. Air Force and, like the Mercury-Atlas rocket, was originally designed for use as a missile to deliver nuclear weapons. The Titan II was 109 feet long. It was a two-stage, liquid-propelled rocket.

Colin in front of the Saturn 1B rocket in the KSC Rocket garden

The Saturn 1B rocket is the largest rocket displayed in the Rocket Garden. It's so big they cannot safely display it upright. It is 141 feet long and composed of two stages. It was used in several unmanned Apollo flights designed to test systems and equipment being developed for the program: the Apollo 5 unmanned mission tested the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) for the first time (in Earth orbit); and the Apollo 7 mission took the first three-man crew into Earth orbit for 11 days.

Gantry used for all the Apollo Moon missions moved to the Rocket Garden

This is the actual gantry that was used by all the Apollo missions, including Apollo 11 in July, 1969. It sat atop Launch Pad 39A. The three astronauts would walk across this gantry in order to get into the command module at the top of the huge Saturn V rocket. It must have been an intimidating and rather scary moment to realise what they were about to do.

Vehicular Assembly Building seen from Launch Complex 39

The large building at the back of this shot is the Vehicule Assembly Building (VAB). This is the view taken from an observation tower near Launch Pad 39A, from where all the Apollo missions were launched. The VAB is a huge one-storey building, within which the huge three-stage Saturn V rockets were assembled. It was built in 1965. The VAB is 526 feet (160.3 m) tall and covers eight acres. It was designed to hold four separate Saturn V rockets in various stages of construction. The building has 10,000 tons of air-conditioning equipment, including 125 ventilators on the roof, to keep moisture under control. The interior volume of the building is so vast that it has its own weather - small clouds form below the ceiling on very humid days. This building was also used to assemble the Space Shuttle prior to each flight - attaching the three fuel tanks used to put it in Earth orbit.

Launch Pad 39A - all the Apollo missions to the Moon left from this pad

This is Launch Pad 39A, photographed from the observation tower about 1.5 miles away. It was used as the launch site for all the Apollo Moon missions. The vehicles would be transported from the VAB to the Launch Pad on the gigantic transporters ("crawlers") on the specially-constructed "crawlerways". The crawlerway (seen in the foreground) is a 100 ft-wide (30m) double-pathway that leads to the Launch Pads 39A and 39B. A seven-foot deep (2 m) bed of stones lies beneath a layer of asphalt and a surface made of Alabama river rocks. It is 3.5 miles from the VAB to Launch Pad 39A. The maximum speed of the crawler was 1 mph (1.6 kmph); it would take it about five hours to get a Saturn V rocket to the launch pad. This lauch pad was adapted later for the launches of the Space Shuttle.

The "firing room" - launch control - for Launch Complex 39 at Cape Canaveral

After you leave the observation Tower near the launch pads, the KSC bus takes you to the most impressive element of the Kennedy Space Center - the Apollo/Saturn V Center. This building lies north-west of Launch Complex 39. It was completed in 1996, built primarily to house a restored Saturn V launch vehicle, but it also houses various exhibits related to the Apollo program. The structure was erected around the original Apollo "firing room" - the communications centre which controlled all the launches of the Saturn V rockets. It provides an impressive ten-minute simulation of the environment inside the firing room during the launch of Apollo 8. Eight seconds after the rocket left the launch pad, control for the mission would switch to the Johnson Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.

Colin stands near the base of a Saturn V rocket

Colin stands near the base of a Saturn V rocket - to give a sense of its enormous size. It stood 363 feet high - as tall as a 36-storey building. Its name comes from the five F-1 engines at the bottom of its first stage, and the five J-2 engines attached to the second stage. It is the largest, and most powerful, rocket ever built. The Saturn V was designed under the direction of Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph and built by Boeing Corporation - they constructed fifteen of the rockets. The Saturn V was propelled by a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Each rocket contained three million parts: fuel lines, pumps, sensors, gauges, circuits and switches. It had to lift 285,000 pounds into Earth orbit, and then 107,000 pounds to the moon.

The Saturn V's second stage, with five J-2 engines

The second stage of the Saturn V rocket was 81 feet long (25 m). It would burn for 6 minutes and 24 seconds, and accelerate the Saturn V through the upper atmosphere with 5.1 mega-newtons of thrust.

The Saturn V's Instrument Unit

The Saturn V's ring-shaped Instrument Unit sat between the rocket's third stage and the SLA panels, which housed the the Lunar Excursion Module. It was built by IBM. This computer controlled the operations of the rocket from just before lift off until the third stage was discarded. It included guidance and telemetry systems for the rocket. By measuring the acceleration and vehicle attitude, it could calculate the position and velocity of the rocket and correct for any deviations. You may be familiar with film shot from the top of the rocket looking back at the Earth, which shows the ring turning over as it tumbles back into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Here's my son Colin touching a small piece of Moon rock.

The Apollo 14 Command Module - Kitty Hawk - with its hatch open

The Apollo 14 crew were Alan Shepard (who was the first American astronaut to fly - a sub-orbital fifteen-minute flight in May, 1961; Shepard was also the only Mercury astronaut to fly to the Moon), Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell. Shepard and Mitchell were on the Moon on February 5th and 6th, 1971.

Hand casts of Apollo 11 astronauts - to make properly-fitted gloves

One of my favourite shots from the photos I took at the Saturn V/Apollo Center at the Kennedy Space Center. The astronauts had casts made of their hands, in order to ensure that the gloves of their space suits fitted properly. The casts done for the three Apollo 11 astronauts - Michael Collins (the Command Module pilot), Buzz Aldrin (Lunar Module pilot) and Neil Armstrong (Commander) - were mounted in a display. It makes for a very evocative sculpture, don't you think?


If you are at all interested in the American space program, and are ever in the Orlando region of Florida, I highly recommend a visit to the Kennedy Space Centre. It's about an hour's drive east of Orlando.