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Apollo liftoff

Forty years ago I was seven years old and this sight, dear reader, was the most thrilling thing in the whole world. Even now, seeing again the classic fisheye moment of Apollo 11’s launch sparks a buried flare of childhood excitement, resurrecting a deep obsession with astronauts, Saturn V rockets, command modules and lunar landing craft. In 1969 all I could do was gape in awe at our tiny black-and-white TV screen as it showed men going to the Moon right this minute!

Now I’m the same age as the astronauts of the Apollo missions I look at these photographs and feel at different kind of awe, at the courage required to sit at the top of a metal tower as tall as St Paul’s Cathedral filled with highly-combustible rocket fuel. And that’s before you get to the liftoff itself with its punishing g-forces, followed by navigating a vacuum for several days in a tin can controlled by less computer power than you’d find now in the average mobile phone. None of this occurred to me when I was seven, all that mattered was the fact that men were going to the Moon right this minute!

I’ll return to those childhood obsessions later (no, you don’t escape that easily). Meanwhile the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission is naturally generating a fair amount of web attention. NASA has a new site, We Choose the Moon, which augments their older archives. And New Scientist tells us Why the moon still matters. On the same site there’s also Brian Eno discussing the Moon missions and his 1983 soundtrack album, Apollo, which I’m listening to right this minute!

• Apollo 11 at the Big Picture
• Weaving the way to the Moon | The beatnik and the little old ladies

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Earthrise
• East of Paracelsus

Ballard and the painters

Jours de Lenteur (1937) by Yves Tanguy.

Behind it, the ark of his covenant, stood two photographs in a hinged blackwood frame. On the left was a snapshot of himself at the age of four, sitting on a lawn between his parents before their divorce. On the right, exorcizing this memory, was a faded reproduction of a small painting he had clipped from a magazine, ‘Jours de Lenteur’ by Yves Tanguy. With its smooth, pebble-like objects, drained of all associations, suspended on a washed tidal floor, this painting had helped to free him from the tiresome repetitions of everyday life. The rounded milky forms were isolated on their ocean bed like the houseboat on the exposed bank of the river.

The Drought (1965).

Following my observations yesterday about Ballard’s Surrealist influences, this post seems inevitable. By no means a comprehensive listing, these are merely some of Ballard’s many art references retrieved after a quick browse through the bookshelves earlier. I’d forgotten about the Böcklin reference in The Crystal World. The Surrealist influence in Ballard’s fiction is obvious to even a casual reader, less obvious is the subtle influence of the Surrealist’s precursors, the Symbolists. André Breton frequently enthused over Gustave Moreau‘s airless impasto visions and many of Ballard’s remote femmes fatales owe as much to Moreau’s paintings as they do to Paul Delvaux. The Symbolist connection was finally confirmed for me when RE/Search published their landmark JG Ballard in 1984; there among the list of books on his library shelves was that cult volume of mine, Dreamers of Decadence by Philippe Jullian.

Continue reading “Ballard and the painters”

Earthrise

It was forty years ago this week that Apollo 8 astronaut William A Anders took this famous photograph of the Earth appearing over the Moon’s horizon. I was six years old at the time but remember the considerable interest caused by the mission, the first to leave the Earth and orbit the Moon, and I was old enough to appreciate that the flight path of the capsule formed a figure eight. This was the beginning of a four-year obsession with the Apollo missions, taking in model kits, jacket patches of spacecraft insignia and an eager viewing of every TV transmission. (Although I missed the first Moon landing a year later as it was after my bedtime.) I was convinced that by 2008 many of us would be living in space; a part of me remains disappointed that we’re not.

The above graphic comes from the quaintly primitive Apollo 8 press kit which can be downloaded from one of NASA’s pages. On another page there’s the crew’s Christmas message to the world which controversially included readings from the Bible. And as usual with NASA you can see William Anders’ photo in a variety of sizes including luscious high-res. The impact of his picture may have diminished over the the past four decades but its import as an ecological symbol remains as pertinent as it was in 1968.

Things will be quiet here over the next few days while I visit family but I’ll be leaving the archive plug-in running for anyone who wants a random dip into the past. If you need some more retro space thrills there’s always this.

Have a good one.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• East of Paracelsus

The Central Molecular Zone

Our Galaxy’s Central Molecular Zone by A. Ginsburg (U. Colorado – Boulder) et al., BGPS Team, GLIMPSE II Team.

NASA explains:

The central region of our Milky Way Galaxy is a mysterious and complex place. Pictured here in radio and infrared light, the galaxy’s central square degree is highlighted in fine detail. The region is known as the Central Molecular Zone. While much of the extended emission is due to dense gas laced with molecules, also seen are emission nebulas lit up by massive young stars, glowing supernova remnants, and the curving Galactic Center Radio Arc in purple. The identity and root cause for many other features remains unknown. Besides a massive black hole named Sgr A*, the Galactic Center houses the galaxy’s most active star forming region. This image is not just interesting scientifically. It’s esthetic beauty won first prize this year in the AUI/NRAO Image Contest.

The Lagoon Nebula

Gas and Dust of the Lagoon Nebula by Fred Vanderhaven.

The Pink Lagoon, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

This beautiful cosmic cloud is a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius. Eighteenth century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged the bright nebula as M8, while modern day astronomers recognize the Lagoon Nebula as an active stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years distant, in the direction of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Striking details can be traced through this remarkable picture, processed to remove stars and hence better reveal the Lagoon’s range of filaments of glowing hydrogen gas, dark dust clouds, and the bright, turbulent hourglass region near the image center. This color composite view was recorded under dark skies near Sydney, Australia. At the Lagoon’s estimated distance, the picture spans about 50 light-years.