Yes, I blubbed like a baby, tears streaming, nose snotty. “What’s up with dad?” my kids asked, whispering to my wife at a distance. “Don’t worry, you know how weird he is about this stuff,” she reassured them. For 20 minutes, through the introductory film explaining the Shuttle programme, right through to the reveal of that glorious piece of technology born out of a lack of faith and competing interests, Atlantis herself. Looking back I’m glad that we saw Atlantis first. I’m glad that I had my little moment then, rather than later. Atlantis was incredible. Shuttle was my space programme. I bunked off school to watch the first launch of Columbia in 1981, I vividly remember watching Challenger explode on Newsround whilst my mum Hoovered in 1986. But Apollo was what I was here for, and with my emotions back on an even-keel, I was able to drink in every bit of it. The transfer to the Apollo exhibit was on a shiny, classically American-style bus. There was a commentary as we travelled, but I don’t recall much about it. I was transfixed by the growing mountain of the VAB, topped with the Stars and Stripes a huge NASA ‘meatball’ logo. It loomed above the flat landscape, the white reflecting the hot Florida sunshine, one of the massive grey doors partially retracted. To think they had assembled the moonships in there; that they had rolled out on the gantries to make the slow journey to Launch Complex 39A to unleash their pent- up furies of liquid fuel to fling themselves at that remote, dusty orb. Awesome. Once past the VAB, you arrive at the Apollo exhibit. In one place has been assembled artefacts of the First Space Age. You make your way through the actual re-located control room accompanied by the sounds of launching one of these behemoths, now absorbed into the popular unconscious. You see the suits and gadgets and day-to-day things from the lives of an Apollo astronaut. You see the suit worn by an astronaut on the surface of the moon. In this case, that worn by Alan Shepard, first American in space (not John Glenn – he was first to orbit). And with the suit is Kittyhawk, the Command Module for Shepard’s moon-mission, Apollo 14. This was a particular thrill for me. My affinity with Apollo goes right back to my own first arrival on planet Earth – I was born whilst Shepard and his compatriot Edgar Mitchell gambolled around the Fra Mauro Highlands. But the true highlight is the complete Saturn V stack that lays upon its side within the building. From the base of the F1 engine bells, to the tip of the escape tower, it is a triumph of technology and cooperation. I wandered up and down the length of this incredible object, drinking in every sight. That something so huge, so powerful, could be imagined, let alone successfully launched to achieve a goal that will ring down through the ages, is incredible. The strangest thing I remember thinking, though, is how the Saturn (and Atlantis, too), embody the concept of the oxymoron. They are both huge, complex creations that dwarf the individual, but they are also uniquely human in there scale. You see every rivet, pipe, and warning decal. You marvel at how “Three men lived in that for a week?” It is how the ordinary connects with the sublime. We lingered in the building for ages. I read every panel, looked at every exhibit. Until the kids started to get bored, their indulgence for dad at an end. But I didn’t resent it. Apollo means less for younger generations. More often than not when it comes up in lessons, it’s couched in, “But the moon landings were faked, sir?!” I get it, it seems like ancient history and we have more immediate concerns like the environment, or war, or Snapchat. But Apollo meant something. It showed what humans can achieve when we work together with a clear goal. I know the motivation was political, but we learned so much. It offered us a future, a new perspective. For me, it offered hope. But now we live in an age where going to the Moon is either something that was ‘faked’, or in the hands of capitalist hobbyists who have made their fortunes off the backs of poorly- paid worker or exploiting the gullibility of their fellow super-wealthy. Or the chest-thumping of a fake-tanned bankrupt to distract his country from its gradual fragmentation and social collapse. This isn’t the way I thought we would return to the Moon. This isn’t what Apollo was supposed to bequeath humanity. But I’m still dreaming. Mr Duck 7