DAN MACKAY: Countdown to moon mission is a blow to dad's own efforts
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The Real Mackay by Dan Mackay
The Artemis space rocket programme to the moon could sure have used my dad’s help. Has it taken off yet?
One thing about dad, his timing was impeccable. You had to give him that.
Nowhere was this more ably demonstrated than the first time we sent man to conquer the night sky’s ‘golden bannock’, as the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown once referred to the moon!
Who could forget that momentous day on July 16, 1969 when Apollo 11 was launched from Kennedy Space Centre on Merritt Island, Florida at 13:32 UTC, to be precise?
We had gathered round the family telly – actually we had two, one sat on top of the other. The top telly had the grainy images whilst the lower one had the volume controls the top one lacked (and vice versa). Of course, this was long before remote controls had been invented and we had pressing concerns as both TV Bakelite knobs had broken off and we had to use a pair of pliers to synch both channels together!
Our levels of excitement and expectation were through the roof that day as we watched, transfixed to countdown. I will never forget. But, perhaps, for altogether different reasons…
As the global announcer took us through the countdown: “T minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal …Ten, Nine, Ignition sequence starts…..(the deafening roar of rocket engines)…we have lift off”!
It was at this very precise moment, you can call it synchronicity if you want, that we heard an almighty explosion from on high. Almost as if we had been tele-transported to the launch pad itself… I can still see the look of stunned silence on the faces of the Mackay household.
Suddenly we were all rushing out of the room to see what happened, only to discover that the airing cupboard door had been almost totally blown off its hinges.
Turns out dad had had a technical glitch with the latest batch of home-made beer he was brewing above the immersion heater.
He had one of those huge plastic cuboid containers that he would daily shake to stir up the fermentation process. But this latest batch had maybe too much yeast… that and the fact that the pouring tap had not been threaded on properly.
Anyway, suffice to say we had two take-offs in our house that day. One downstairs in front of the telly, the other on the upstairs landing where gallons of gushing stout had not just half blown the door off its hinges but also soaked all the bed linen. To say mum was not best pleased…
Things had settled down when, just a few days later, we once more assembled to watch as astronaut Neil Armstrong successfully steered the lunar module onto its safe landing somewhere in the Sea of Tranquillity. Apparently, he had just a few seconds of fuel left. It was either abort or go for glory.
An incredible 650 million people watched worldwide as the Eagle landed and we heard those immortal words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. And we in the Mackay household were relieved in every way as there was no repeat of dad’s catastrophic mishap.
And now, once more, we look to the moon to return astronauts to the lunar surface – and beyond...
Artemis, are we there yet?
