July 2025 - FYI, I have decided to close this blog and migrate content back to my main website. I'll be updating the location of blog posts as I go along. You can read more about this here.

Moondust: : In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth. Andrew Smith. ISBN: 0007155425. Three things have stayed with me from this book. The first is how ordinary the men were who participated in the most inspiring (and stupifyingly dangerous) of all journeys. The second is how inaccessible Neil Armstrong is. Although he haunts almost every page of the book, he never emerges. This is no fault of the author's - Armstrong is simply incapable of fulfilling the role that has been foisted on him. As such, he ignores it. The third is how sick every astronaunt must be of listening to 'Also Sprach Zarathursa' (the famous musical sequence from '2001: A Space Odyssey'). It is played at almost every event they attend, like a demented theme tune.