Live TV From the Moon Author: Dwight Steven-Boniecki Publisher: Apogee Books ISBN: 9781-926592-16-9 Price: $25.95 (Pb) 248pp plus DVD
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Television has always been associated with hysteria, no doubt because if only you can get yourself on it, you are assured of instant personal celebrity. Dwight Steven-Boniecki was born in Sydney, Australia, only months before Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon in July 1969, but has neatly captured the spontaneous marriage between space exploration and television. They started life together and grew up by feeding upon one another.

He has spent his life working in TV, and in this book he tells reporters like me who were at Cape Canaveral and Houston watching it all happen before he could talk, things we did not know at the time. Why was it that Honeysuckle Creek in Australia got a much clearer picture of Armstrong’s descent to the lunar surface than we did? I have vivid memories of my personal panic trying to understand and describe the fuzzy, black-and-white, upside-down picture we were receiving as that historic event was taking place.

What had happened was that the controller at NASA’s Goldstone antenna panicked as the upside-down picture began to build on his screen, and made things worse by trying to compensate by changing the brightness and contrast settings. With a much bigger antenna than Australia’s, our picture would have been much better if he had left things alone.

For the technically-minded, Boniecki describes in detail the battle between RCA and Westinghouse to provide a TV camera able to withstand the low pressurisation on the moon - finally won by Westinghouse. For the layman it is more interesting to read how Frank Borman, the Apollo 8 commander who made history with his Christmas TV broadcast as he and his crew made the first circuit of the Moon, strongly resisted having to take the 12-pound TV camera when it necessitated leaving behind some of their meals to save weight.

That camera not only made TV stars of the crew but also convinced millions that they must rush out and buy a TV set. “I was very short-sighted,” Borman confessed.

Reginald Turnill