Letter: The Moon and what might have been

Sir: I found Tom Wilkie's article ('The view that shook the world', 18 July) on the first Moon landing thought-provoking. However, the photograph that illustrates it was taken during Apollo 8's mission, at Christmas 1968, when the first views of Earth from the Moon were seen.

By the time of the first landing, most people had seen these beautiful colour pictures. The few, fuzzy, black-and-white images of the Earth shown live from Apollo 11 were of little interest compared with the first live pictures from the surface. Indeed, the seeds of future indifference were there because the only new element was the actual movement of the men on the surface. All the rest had been seen before.

The beginnings of the cynicism that has had such a disastrous effect on us all in the past decade can be traced back to the final fling of the fleeting vision of what might have been in the Sixties.

Yours faithfully,

CHRIS BENYON

Seaford, East Sussex

18 July