By November 1959 my newspaper strip ‘Jeff Hawke” had been appearing in the Daily Express for five years and had settled into a realistic adventure series which was taking its main theme from the rapidly expanding space race developments, picturing what the future might be like in terms of flight systems and exotic missions. The strip which appeared on November 15th 1959 depicted a moonscape at a point in the story ‘Time out of mind’ where the hero and his crew are threatened by an alien entity that can alter time(!) We see the dust-ball that surrounds it drifting before a shard of rock on which a plaque bears the somewhat grandiose inscription.
ON AUGUST FOURTH, EARTH YEAR
NINETEEN HUNDRED SIXTY NINE
THE FIRST BEING SET FOOT ON
THE MOON AT THIS POINT…
HIS NAME WAS HOMO SAPIENS
This was before President Kennedy made his bold promise to see an American on the moon by 1969 and by the time the landing became reality and I was illustrating some of the images that the cameras had missed, I had forgotten my prediction from ten years earlier.But a young fellow Scot, Duncan Lunan a budding astronomer and writer contacted the Express to see if their editorial stalwarts had also forgotten.The paper picked up the ball in style and I was given my ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ as Warhol put it, in the company of Patrick Moore and James Burke on television. Burke’s masterly and enthusiastic handling of the occasion put me at my ease and Patrick Moore’s courteous, unshowy eccentricity demonstrated how not to get big headed about it all!
Duncan went on to a notable career in writing and broadcasting on astronomy and historical subjects,space exploration, science fiction (including stories for Jeff Hawke and Lance MacLane as well as erudite and thought provoking articles for Cosmos magazine which William Rudling has published from 2003 until now. Duncan was also instrumental in building an astronomically aligned stone circle in the Glasgow environs-a Scottish Stonehenge!
When I am asked to explain how I was able to get within fifteen days of the actual date of the landing, I tend to fall back on the fact that July the 4th, American independence day, would have been something to aim for in terms of maximum kudos in the battle for supremacy in the space race, showing how, despite their remarkable ‘firsts’, the Russian could’nt make it to the moon with a live crew. So allowing for last minute delays, a fifteen day hold-up would seem acceptable in any guesswork from ten years before. My two years at Miles Aircraft’s Technical School just after the war gave me a fair understanding of aviation engineering and I could see that NASA was building some very convincing hardware by 1959 so ten years ahead seemed ample time to design and construct a lunar lander. But my prophecy of the year 1969? Well I was invoking the old adage that work tends to stretch all the way to the final deadline-and John F Kennedy had set THAT!
When asked at the time to foretell when man would land on Mars, I had already put Jeff Hawke there in ‘Pass the parcel’ and so guessed at sometime in the eighties…Not an auspicious follow up to my minor success! But I have since asked Elon Musk to let me know first if he gets there and I’ll work round that. If only…!!
Sydney Jordan
My letter to the Daily Express pointing out Sydney Jordan’s close prediction of the Moon landing date was edited by the paper to introduce his explanation of how it came about. Although it wasn’t credited or paid for, it was in fact my first professional publication, and led on to my friendship and collaboration with Sydney to this day.
I’ve told the story in my new book “From the Moon to the Stars”, a collection of my space travel stories old and new, published by Other Side Books for the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing. Sydney has kindly allowed me to select 15 images from his vast canon of work, each relevant to one of the stories, to appear with them in the book.
“From the Moon to the Stars” will be launched at the meeting on Thursday July 25th of the Astronomers of the Future Club, at the RSAS Barassie Works Club, 4 Shore Road, Troon, Ayrshire KA10 6AG, from 7.15 to 9 p.m. – all welcome. The book will be available at a special pre-publication price of £10 on the night, and thereafter can be obtained from the publishers at £12.99 through https://othersidebooks.wordpress.com, as well as on Amazon or through booksellers; details of that and other books illustrated by Sydney are on my website, http://www.duncanlunan.com.