Perhaps it’s because it’s the memories of a little boy who was too young to remember the other Apollo flights, but Apollo 17 has always been my favourite, mainly because by 1972 my home country of New Zealand finally had satellite TV and we could see the moonwalks live, plus its TV coverage being the best of all the missions. They are days that seemed magical.

Richard M: I don’t know why your comment went to moderation, but I have now approved it. No need however to double post. I had deleted the duplicate.

It is easy to objectively appreciate Apollo, in toto, as a Cold War PR stunt in purpose; and its programmatic nature as unwittingly leaving a deeply counterproductive legacy of what Rand Simberg calls a “cargo cult,” which has distorted and retarded human progress into space for five decades and counting.

And yet, for all that, this video is another helpful reminder of a larger truth: That Apollo was, in so many ways, the greatest single technological and exploration achievement in human history, and that its final mission was (thanks to building on the achivement previous missions, and the presence of the first professional scientist on the crew), the most ambitious and scientifically successful of its nine forays to the Moon. None of it should have been possible; the technology of the day was leveraged to its absolute limits by a cadre of brilliant and tireless engineers, scientists, astronauts, and technicians who sacrificed the best years of their lives and even, in some cases, their marriages, to make this stupendous achievement possible, generations ahead of any realistic expectation. A thousand years from now, when we are all long since reduced to dust, and the passions of our age reduced to historical curiosity, it will deserve to be remembered and honored as such. And I think it will be.