More interesting writing soon, but I wanted to remind you about tonight’s BBC 4 EXTENDED Sky at Night interview with Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan. The BBC 2 repeat is next Saturday at midday.
Sky at Night team and important person in Apollo Mission Control. From left to right Rob (camera), Me (Waffle), Jane (Producer, Director and coffee maker), Captain Cernan (LMotM*) and Martin (sound). The certificates in the background are proclamations ‘retiring’ colours of flight controllers. Gene Kranz, for example, the controller who led the rescue of Apollo 13, was white flight and since his retirement no-one has used that call sign. After more than 40 years, though, they’re running out of colours. Sadly, rather than chose wonders as ‘beige flight’ (or ‘puce flight’) they’ve moved on to metals instead.
NASA’s worst nightmare; having me in the flight director’s seat is an obvious mistake. Can you spot the other glaring error in the picture?.
* LMotM = Last Man on the Moon
Will on December 3, 2007
Chris, Is it the Apollo 11 mission patch with a picture of the rover from Apollo 15,16 or 17 can’t remember which one?
chrislintott on December 3, 2007
It’s true that’s the Apollo 11 patch, but that wasn’t what I was thinking of. The picture is from Apollo 17.
Alice Sheppard on December 4, 2007
I’m still squinting at it and trying to work it out. Can I borrow a telescope? Would that help?
Alice Sheppard on December 4, 2007
Or is it that the picture in the middle is captioned “Welcome to the control room”, implying that the Moon is the control room?
Come on Chris, break the suspense.
Paul on December 5, 2007
Were the original screens in mono?
peteshmm on December 5, 2007
Don’t think they launched before the previous mission was finished!
chrislintott on December 5, 2007
By Apollo 17 they had colour…I’ll give you a clue. It was something Eugene Cernan spotted instantly that the rest of us hadn’t, and involves one of the pictures on the screen.
peteshmm on December 5, 2007
Ah yes! The camera was on the rover. Be fair, thats three glaring errors so far!
Josephine on June 5, 2008
This is horribly overdue, but better late than never, right?
I spotted one thing and I wished to see if I were right – there is an American eagle (with a snake in its mouth?) standing on the surface of the moon on the screen to the far right.
It may just be me, but it is indeed strange… It seems like as if all the overly-euthusiastic astronomers of the 17th-18th centuries were correct when they claimed that the moon’s surface was home to many a strange creature.