Nostalgia: The Space Age

Watching live TV coverage of the Apollo spacecraft splashing down in the Pacific ocean, 12-year-old Duncan Carling was quick to spot the astronauts were wearing baseball caps when they boarded the rescue ship in 1972.

Duncan loved the cool looking headgear and decided he wanted one for himself - not any old baseball cap, but one worn by a real astronaut.

His mum Joan wrote to Mission Control in Houston, Texas asking if she could buy one. 

Duncan didn’t get a cap but was delighted when a surprise package arrived at their home in Wordsworth Road, Haughton Green  - a set of 17 large colour photographs, a fact sheet about NASA and a leaflet explaining the many benefits of the American space programme in everything from agriculture to weather forecasting.

Duncan, in his second year at Audenshaw Grammar School, had been fascinated by space exploration for as long as he could remember and had avidly followed the Apollo moon landings.

When he was nine at Haughton Green St Mary’s Primary School, he gave a lecture on space to an audience of 80 fellow pupils. 

His bedroom was festooned with models of rockets and modules and he also had a treasured collection of press cuttings on the subject dating back to 1961.

Duncan hoped to follow a career in space exploration.

“They’ll probably have men on Mars by then,” he told the Reporter. In the meantime he hoped that one day he might have his own chunk of moon rock. 

“I’d go and get it myself if they’d let me!” he said.

• Apollo 16 - the last but one mission to the Moon was ready to blast off on Sunday, April 16. The Reporter’s weekend TV listings revealed the BBC and ITV would be providing live reports from the Cape Kennedy Space Centre and regular updates.

Main image:

LOOKING TO THE STARS: Duncan’s NASA surprise. 

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