Failure really wasn't an option

Space Lectures' Spring 2016 Event: General Tom Stafford.

Months and months ago the brilliant Space Lectures team in Pontefract announced that their guest in April 2016 would be a moon walker. In the autumn it was revealed that the guest was in fact Gene Cernan - the last man to have walked on the moon.  Mr Norfolkbookworm and I had booked seats long before the name was announced and were looking forward to our next trip up north.

On the Wednesday before the event I checked twitter on my lunch break to read that Captain Cernan was unwell and unable to travel.  One tweet later I saw that the team had managed the incredible...

With just 2 days before the first event they had secured another Gemini/Apollo era astronaut to travel from the USA to talk to us - General Tom Stafford.  These gentlemen are all in their eighties at least so this was incredible reading.

If I am brutally honest I was more excited to meet/hear General Stafford that I was Captain Cernan. There is a new film out all about the latter and after previous visits to the Kennedy Space Center where he was prominently featured on lots of the films I felt I knew more about him but General Stafford was more of an unknown.

When we got to Pontefract we heard that the woes with this event had continued as Stafford's plane had been delayed due to bad weather and he's made the Friday event with only an hour or so to spare. shades of Apollo 13 or what?

The compere (one day I will catch his name!) explained this, read a message from Capt. Cernan and then explained the format of the event.  We were going to see a film about Gen. Stafford's career, he'd talk for a little while, there would be a break, a raffle, an auction and then a q&a before the signing session.

Again it didn't quite go that way but this time very much in our favour. We watched the film and then Gen. Stafford talked about his four missions and subsequent career for an hour and forty spellbinding minutes!

Much to Mr Norfolkbookworm's delight much of the talk covered the often over looked Gemini program with much emphasis on how important these flights were. Having read a lot about the manned space program from this era I have come to appreciate this but it was nice to hear Gen. Stafford admit that without these flights (and all that was learnt on them) there is no way that the Apollo missions would have succeeded, especially within the time frame laid down by President Kennedy.

After the insights into Gemini 6A and 9A we then heard about Apollo 10 - the flight that did everything Apollo 11 did *except* land on the moon. Interestingly he didn't seem at all bothered that he wasn't a moon-walker, I wonder if the thrill of flying and testing new things was enough?

Gen. Stafford also flew on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, this was another overlooked mission that saw the Soviets and the Americans meet, dock and visit each others spaceships while on orbit.  Again this is a mission that fascinates me, not least because I have had the chance to meet Stafford's opposite Alexei Leonov.

Unlike many of the early astronauts Gen. Stafford continued his military and NASA career after leaving the astronaut corps and his subsequent postings remind you that the early space pioneers really were military men. I did find it interesting to hear about this side of Stafford and it reminded me that the space program only came about because of the Cold War.

It wasn't all serious stuff however, Stafford has a wicked sense of humour, and wasn't afraid to show it even when well behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s.  I'm not sure I'd have the courage even now to set off fireworks anywhere near the UK police let alone the Soviet ones, 4th of July or not!

You got the feeling that given half a chance General Stafford would have talked quite happily for another hour or two and to be honest I'd have sat there rapt. I think the thing I will remember the most from this talk is Stafford's humour, self-deprecation and his obvious deep friendship with Alexei Leonov - all delivered in Oklahomski!

After the talk over ran it was decided to skip the q&a in favour of starting the signing, I was a little disappointed as I had two questions I would have liked to ask but I'd not have cut his talk short just to ask them!

There was still a raffle and I won a new book - oral histories from all sorts of people involved in the space program - and General Stafford kindly signed both a copy of his autobiography for us and my rocket.

I say this every time we go to a Space Lectures event but this really was the best yet and I feel really lucky that the team managed the impossible and got a true legend to come at such short notice but as this event finished with this clip from the International Space Station
 https://twitter.com/Space_Lectures/status/719170286076211206 all I can do is look forward to the autumn with growing excitement!

Cosmonaut Antics

 An evening with Alexei Leonov, Science Museum, London. May 2015.

What should have been a simple 'pop to London, have supper, meet a cosmonaut and come home again' evening turned into a near disaster this week - although of course not on the same scale of disasters that Alexei Leonov spoke about!  Trains conspired against us and instead of a leisurely ride we had a fraught drive to London but despite everything it was worth it.

This time the event was organised by the Science Museum and Starmus and we had the opportunity to hear the first man to walk in space - Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov - talk about his missions.  The event wasn't as well organised as those we go to in Pontefract, the doors opened late, there was lots of unexplained queueing and then a scrum in the auditorium but all of that faded away when the talk proper started.

Leonov didn't use fancy technology for his talk, but rather sketched what he was describing onto a blackboard which was a lovely old school, interactive way to get across his message.  Like all of the best speakers on the space programme there was a perfect balance of science, anecdote, humour and tension in Leonov's talk.  Although it was clear that he had survived his missions the way he described the first ever space walk was heart in the mouth stuff and as nerve wracking fifty years later as it much have been at the time!

The human touches of the speech will always stick in my mind more than the technical aspects and I am left with the image of Alexei and his commander stuck in the wilds of Russia after landing stark naked in the middle of winter as they try to dry out their space suits a little!

The talk took a fine line between toeing the Soviet/Russian line of secrecy and positive spin and what seemed like Leonov's own desire to be open and honest but to be honest none of that mattered to me, I was just so pleased to have the chance to hear from another great from the early space programme.

Two things really struck me about the event - one was Leonov's wholehearted praise for British astronauts - Helen Sharman and Tim Peake, The other how hard the interpreters worked on the night.  Leonov spoke in Russian and this was turned into English by two very talented interpreters who kept up with his technical speech and humour wonderfully. I don't speak Russian but I could spot enough to be amused at their turning every 'Soviet' into 'Russian' regardless of what term would have been historically correct! I gather that there was also another team taking the English in to Russian for Leonov and the Russians in the audience.

After the hour long talk Leonov was created a Fellow of the Science Museum and then their was an opportunity to get an item signed by him.  This was by necessity short and sweet as Leonov, who is 81 next week, was obviously shattered after a long day of events, but I am very pleased to have been able to meet him and, in execrable Russian say Спасибо.

It turns out that some of the delay in the start of the event was because behind the scenes in the museum items on loan to London from Russia were being moved about ready for the Cosmonauts exhibition in the autumn - something else to look forward to!

Theatrical Interlude 21

Collaborators, National Theatre Live (encore), Cinema City, Norwich. December 2011

Tickets to see this in London appear to be like gold dust and to add insult to injury when I tried to book tickets to see this Live it had also sold out. Luckily my local Picture House cinema put on an 'encore' performance and so I did manage to get tickets.

It still feels quite odd to go to the cinema to see a play but once I managed to get my head around the concept I was sucked in.

This is a very odd play and not one I can sum up easily. Like many tales about Stalinist Russia it is not always a comfortable watch. Sticking to your principles and ideals under such circumstances must have been very hard and seeing how a passionate man became corrupted was shown very convincingly.

The actors were very good, although at the very start Simon Russell Beale did seem to be playing Ricky Gervais rather than Josef Stalin. Alex Jennings was very good as Bulgakov and the rest of the cast supported brilliantly.

Collaborators is currently being performed in the Cottesloe Theatre at the National, and this small, versatile space worked well for the staging. This was very much theatre in the round and a limited space for the stage really did mean the set was used in a truly innovative way - I do wonder how the transfer to the Olivier Theatre will work.

I think that at times the metaphors were over egged a little, and I felt very uncomfortable during much of the play as I was feeling sympathy for Stalin - happily the end did manage to recreate the more traditional view of the dictator.

On the whole this was a really enjoyable play, one that I am very glad that I have seen but not one that I will be sad that I only saw at the cinema and not actually at the theatre live.