Posted July 21, 2009 12:06 PM
By David Todd
A British Union Jack is Already on the Moon!
While the Government of the United Kingdom would like to have a British astronaut land on the Moon as part of NASA’s Project Constellation, they now find themselves too cash strapped to invest. But do not fret. In a world exclusive, Ascend can reveal that there is already a Union Jack (more correctly known as the Union Flag) on the Moon. This is not because, like the plot of the 1964 film treatment of H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, some Victorian British astronauts got there first. Actually, it is due to a British engineer cheekily sneaking a bit of ‘Union Jack’ graffiti onto Apollo 11’s experimental equipment.
At an Apollo 11 40th anniversary evening of lectures at the British Interplanetary Society in July, it was noted that there were some accomplished British and Canadian engineers that had been working on the programme including the guidance systems, lunar experiments, and especially on the essential fuel cell technology that was devised by the British engineer Francis ‘Tom’ Bacon. Apart from their obvious engineering talents, some British engineers had a certain cheeky patriotic opportunism.
One such was Keith Wright who was working for Bendix at the time. He described how he had inscribed a Union Jack on the EASEP (Early Apollo Scientific Experiments package) of scientific experiments that he was put in charge of loading onto the Lunar Module while hundreds of feet up inside the Saturn V rocket actually on the pad. He joked that he had got this loading job because it also involved loading some plutonium. The EASEP instruments consisted of a seismometer which measured moon quakes and even movements inside the Apollo module until it failed due to overheating about a day after the landing. Other parts of the package lasted longer. A laser reflecting device (for earthbound laser range finders to fire at) is still being used to measure not only the position of both the Moon (it is drifting away slowly) but also continental drift on Earth.
The EASEP package was deployed after the U.S. flag had been put up, with moon walking Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin little knowing that he had also deployed a British ‘Union Jack’ emblem when he threw away the EASEP’s protective cover onto the surface of the Moon.
This ‘Union Jack’ had been scratched on this protective cover by Wright along with his signature and those of some of his U.S. co-workers. NASA knew about this ‘harmless’ graffiti but it was too late to do anything about it. However, aware of such hijinks, they made all engineers working on future missions promise via a signed undertaking that no one would try this again. Of course, some Americans will note that at least their flag is flying (via a top-mounted wire rod) and is not lying in the lunar dirt. Except that it isn’t. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin reportedly saw the U.S. flag being blown over as the Lunar Module’s ascent stage launched itself and the astronauts it was carrying off the Moon’s surface.
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