I was reading an excellent article in a January 2019 edition of New Statesman about the moonshot in 1969. This was contextualised in a wider discussion about current efforts to go back to the lunar surface, an effort promoted by both national governments and private citizens.

That was not what caught my attention though. Some way into the piece ("The new race for space", P.Ball, pp.31-35) was a statement by the author that I really couldn't believe. Concerning the aftermath of the moon landing on 20th July, 1969, he wrote,

"Although around 120 million viewers in the US watched the landings, by 1970 polls showed that perhaps as few as one in 15 remembered Armstrong's name." (My italics)

Even if we more generously say that this figure was one in 10, this is still extraordinary. I do not know of a single person in my acquaintance who lived through this period who does know the name Neil Armstrong backwards and forwards and upside-down. I have never heard the question, "Who was the first man to step foot on the Moon?" ever answered incorrectly at a trivia night or on a game show. I had assumed that it was deeply embedded in shared cultural knowledge.

In response to this underwhelming poll, Armstrong, with some understatement, said, "I had hoped that the impact(of the Moon landing) would be more far-reaching than it had been."

Does this augur well for any manned trips to Mars? I am not so sure.