“HOUSTON, we do NOT have a problem.”
The first astronauts to travel as far as the Moon in more than half a century landed safely back on Earth a few weeks ago after a record-setting mission aboard Artemis II.
The NASA mission splashed down off the coast of California after travelling more than 250,000 miles. And there’s me thinking Wetherby is a bit of a hike!
You might have followed the story. I tried to whip up excitement in my house but sadly, everyone else was watching something like ‘Breaking Bad’ and reacted to my ‘lift off’ updates with the kind of excitement they display when I tell them who won the snooker.
Mind you, plenty of online sceptics weren’t convinced either, suggesting it was ‘Fake News’ implying the astronauts were on “a huge acting payday”.
Scepticism around NASA and the Moon landings is hardly new. Even in my own family, my sister’s other half – affectionately known as ‘HenDog’ – has long questioned whether humans ever walked on the Moon in 1969. ‘How come Richard Nixon got a clear line to Neil Armstrong when a normal landline used to crackle if you called anyone further than Wheatley Hill?’ grumbles HenDog whenever the subject comes up.
Of course we love to tease him like he is a crackpot flat-Earther. (Wheatley Hill, by the way is the village next to Thornley, to save those who don’t know from looking on Google Maps).
My own argument against the conspiracy theories is not remotely scientific. It’s simply this: have you ever tried organising a surprise birthday party in the North East without somebody leaking the details on somewhere like, Facebook?
It is as unlikely as The Likely Lads not finding out the football scores. The idea that hundreds of thousands of engineers, technicians, astronauts and support staff could maintain the world’s biggest, most complicated secret for decades seems, to me, to be as impossible as it is pointless.
The brilliant 1977 film Capricorn One ignited some of those fears and fumbled arguments. In it, a Mars mission is faked by the government when the real launch fails, leaving journalists scrambling to uncover the truth. It gave conspiracy theorists gallons of rocket fuel long before social media arrived. (It also had two of Barbara Striesand’s husbands in the cast; Elliot Gould and James Brolin. Nothing conspiratorial there, just good pub trivia.)
My own, official, lunar credentials are limited. In March 2015 I presented a BBC radio, live, eclipse special from Kielder Observatory in Northumberland so I did swat up the usual homework required for an outside broadcast.
Unfortunately, it was too misty to see anything dramatic, but we still had suspense. My superb producer Laura had the best contacts book at the station, and she had lined up a secret, special guest to be revealed at the end of the show. So I was thinking BIG! Laura was so well connected, it HAD to be someone on the level of Buzz Aldrin, or perhaps Tom Hanks who played Jim Lovell in Apollo 13. My mind was running riot. With the last minutes of the breakfast show ticking by they put the special guest on to speak to me. ‘Hi Alfie’, said a gravel voiced lady.
It was… Bonnie Tyler, who sang ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. Still impressive, as I was a fan, though not the name I expected. Bonnie has been ill of late and I wish her a speedy recovery!
So it seems fascination with a rebooted space programme is growing again, and not just further afield. Durham University Business School is hosting a Space Leadership Programme next month, while the North East Space Conference 2026 at the Radisson Blu Hotel Durham has already sold out but there is a waiting list should people drop out!!
That really is one small step for North East space fans!
FACTS & FOOTNOTES :
l Buzz Aldrin played a cassette of “Fly Me to the Moon”, by Frank Sinatra, the first music ever heard on the moon.
l The Half Moon pub in Easington can be traced back to the early 19th century when it was an inn owned by the church until 1866.
l The Marcels had a hit with Blue Moon, in 1961. The song was written by Rodgers and Hart in 1934.
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