The death was announced today of American astronaut Jim Lovell.
For those of us alive in the 1960s who were even vaguely interested in space exploration, there were two types of astronaut: famous and a part of history, eg John Glenn and Neil Armstrong and those not so well-known and slightly forgotten eg Gus Grissom and John Young.
Lovell was in the first category. He was a famous face and immediately recognisable.
Lovell was on the first Apollo craft to visit the Moon. It was during the apparently rather tentative steps NASA was taking to prepare for a landing. Apollo 8 flew at Xmas 1968. They left the Earth, covered the quarter of a million miles, went into orbit around the satellite, then came back to Earth.
They didn’t get eaten by the demons of the dark side of the Moon (ha ha) or get kidnapped by aliens. They did everything bar landing.
Lovell was eventually put onto Apollo 13 for a full landing. We know what happened to that. Many of us have seen the semi-fictional film of the same name, or we know actually what happened, but suffice to say, Lovell never set foot there. After this, he was always happy to talk about space and astronautics and his experiences.
In the film, he has a rather jarring cameo as the captain of the ship that rescues the crew.
Of the first 16 astronauts, all are now gone. A couple of the other oldsters are still alive, Charlie Duke and Buzz Aldrin, for example.