Funky Friday - Giant Steps Are What You Take

ILC made the original moon boots as used on Apollo 11

Well that's Andrew Smith's Moon Dust done and dusted (ouch!)From the book's giddy list of brain-frying facts, fresh perspectives and character analysis, a couple observations still orbiting about my noggin are:

That for the all acid-headed, hippy, other-wordliness of the counter culture running parallel to Apollo Project, it was only the handful of level-headed astronauts flying in and around the lunar orbit between 69 -72, that had a truly trippy, out-of-this-world experience.

That Neil Armstrong is the coolest of cucumbers.

That with even with NASA's 99% safety rate, on a Saturn rocket made from six million components - that 1% still translates as six thousand parts which may fail.

One criticism though, for a book using the Apollo story as it's launchpad, there could have been less of what the author wore to the interviews, the condition of the motel carpet or yet another quote from J G Ballard, and more moon matters - perhaps structured by the sequence of Apollo mission's too?

Anyways I'm two chapters into Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, which hits home, heartbreaks and humanizes the earliest steps of the space racers - right from the opening sentence.

And on the subject of space books this is a must read for the scale, technical detail and timeline of events


But enough of my ol' guff, get your moon boots on and let's start stomping.

All tunes removed by DMCA takedown

Owen Gray - Apollo 12

Derrik Morgan - Moon Hop

The Crystalites - Splash Down

And as a bonus - Rico's reggae remake of the Star Wars theme.

Rico - Ska Wars

Haven't seen this yet - but it's meant to be a corker. And any ideas on the song spun during the trailer?