Nearly 54 years ago, Apollo 17 blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for the moon. Standing alongside legendary astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Dick Gordon, a schoolboy from Lancashire was there to see the final manned lunar landing mission. Ahead of the screening of a documentary about his experience, Preston astronomer Dermot Gethings recalled how, at 16 years old, he was hand picked by the United States embassy and Nasa to witness the launch.
"As it launched there was this incredible adrenaline and a shockwave that rattled every bone in your body," said the now 70-year-old of the events of 7 December 1972. "It is the stuff that you dream about." While Gethings grew up in Frenchwood in Preston, he was shaped by the ongoing Cold War Space Race and the quest to put a man on the moon. A childhood of sci-fi, The Thunderbirds and televised Nasa missions meant space was always a keen interest of his.
He said the "trigger moment" for his lifelong interest in astronomy was seeing the Milky Way in the night sky when he was 10. "It hit me straight away - that was where I wanted to be," he said. From then on Gethings started an astronomy club at the former St John Fisher's School in Preston - putting on talks both at his school and others and running public exhibitions.
After Gethings' exhibitions were photographed by the Lancashire Evening Post, his life changed forever. "A few months after the photographs were published I received a letter out of the blue from the United States Embassy in London," he recalled. "It said 'We have a very special project to discuss with you regarding the forthcoming Apollo 17 mission'." Gethings was then told he was one of 16 UK students being invited for an interview at the embassy.
One of the students was to be selected by Nasa for an all-expenses paid,19-day trip to watch Apollo 17's launch. "I didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks," he said. "When I got the letter of congratulations inviting me on the trip I couldn't believe it - it was amazing!" And after boarding his first aeroplane flight at Manchester Airport, he began a tour which would see him chatting to the first man on the moon Neil Armstrong, dining with senators in The White House, and getting behind-the-scenes looks at Nasa bases across a dozen states.
A memorable moment for Gethings came when he accidentally met Armstrong - the first man to have ever walked on the moon. "On the day of the launch I stepped out of my motel room and clumsily walked into a tall gentleman," Gethings recalled. "I stood on his foot by accident and I was really embarrassed.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
