Jumpsuits and shoulder flags..
The 2nd poster that hung on my childhood bedroom wall was of the Apollo 11 Command Module floating in the Pacific ocean after returning to Earth from the Moon (below left). The 3 astronauts standing outside awaiting rescue in their jumpsuits and shoulder flags looking out at me in permanent out of focus bewilderment. (The Earthrise hung in our bathroom). This poster was pinned up high on the wall at the end of my bed and it was one of the first things I saw in the morning when I was waking up. Writing about this now has just sent me on a Google search looking for it, being curious to compare it to my recollections before I continue. In doing so I realize my memory of this image has been spliced with the memory of another image from that time. Namely the splashdown of the starship Icarus at the beginning of the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, when the 3 surviving astronauts paddle for shore in an inflatable dinghy (below right). I suppose it does not take a giant leap of the imagination to connect these two and the movie does use imagery reminiscent of those earlier space missions. I was an avid fan of Planet of the Apes as a kid and it was hard to avoid with 5 movies followed by a TV show and an excellent comic book all released in as many years (and equal to my entire life then). With all this mixed in with NASA's ongoing real life space program, my imagination was on a fertile ground to launch me on my own fantastic internal voyages. It was a place where science fiction and science fact fused and I understand why my memory did the same thing by splicing them together this way. Both this movie and the moon landing occurred within a year of my birth and were imprinted upon my awakening consciousness as recent cultural events in what was then, a pre Star Wars universe.
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