From: UFO UpDates - Toronto
Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 12:38:07 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 12:38:07 -0500
Subject: What Did Apollo 11 Crew See? - I



Source: The Toronto Star

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_=2ad3feb94
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Dec. 27, 2001. 09:15 AM

Armchair astronaut maps final frontier
Burlington man turns passion for space into books

Bill Taylor
Staff Reporter


OK, so space is the final frontier. But who knew one of the
border crossings would be in the back of a nondescript building
in a little industrial complex just off the QEW? The sort of
place you drive by three times before you find it.

Inside, Robert Godwin is on the moon...

"Cool, isn't it?" he says, turning away for a moment from his
computer screen.

The CD-ROM he's running shows a map of the route of the lunar
rover driven by astronauts David Scott and James Irwin on the
Apollo 15 mission in 1971. Click on a point and suddenly you're
there in the Hadley Rille region. You can turn 360 degrees, zoom
in on the stark hills and valleys, the craters and threatening
shadows of an alien world. And, if the loneliness starts to get
to you, turn back to the rover parked reassuringly nearby.

"This is what they saw," says Godwin. "And look, see? Just over
there. You can barely make it out. The landing module. Did you
know, by the way, that it was designed by a Canadian? Owen
Maynard."

Back on earth, Godwin's company, Apogee Books, has published 18
dauntingly detailed books on American space exploration, with
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's full
co-operation and reprints of the agency's mission reports. The
latest venture delves into the Russian space program. Each comes
with a CD-ROM with hours of video and information.

It all started with rock 'n roll. Godwin, 43, came to Canada in
1978 from northern England. A music enthusiast, he once had "the
largest collection - it was documented - of Led Zeppelin stuff
in the world" and wrote a book about the band.

Godwin's brother Richard works with the Space Frontier
Foundation running 'Watch', an asteroid impact research project.
"There are a lot of these rocks out there with the potential to
hit the Earth and wipe us out."

Through his brother, Godwin found himself at the dinner marking
the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 7 mission, sitting with Buzz
Aldrin, second man on the moon. "My jaw was on the floor. I
didn't say a word."

Not until Aldrin asked if he'd put out a "special book" for some
friends who also had an anniversary coming up.

"I said, 'Apollo 8, right?'" Godwin recalls.

He published 500 copies. When the book was reprinted, "we sold
4,000 in less than a month," he says. "Then I saw an Apollo 11
press kit being sold on eBay for $300. I thought that was
outrageous. This is public domain information."

Then business blasted off. Godwin's office walls are covered
with photos of him with astronauts - "This is me and Wally,"
Walter Schirra, one of the original Mercury 7 crew - and he's
one of the few to get an interview out of Neil Armstrong, first
man on the moon.

The book on the Apollo 11 moon mission was at the printers when
a "junior clerk in Houston" turned up the astronauts'
debriefing. "The whole moon-landing mission, blow by blow, in
their own words. I called the printer and yelled, 'Stop the
presses! Put Volume One on the cover!'"

The debriefing included Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins
talking about the UFO sighting that NASA later denied had
happened. "They each describe it differently," says Godwin.
"They agree that it was big. Then they basically say, 'We don't
know what it was' and move on."

Godwin says he'd go into space himself "like a shot, though I
don't know if I'll live to see it become affordable."

He lives in hope. Billionaire American Robert Bigelow has vowed
to set up an orbiting hotel and casino. "He's already crossed
the biggest barrier... money," says Godwin.

What was that about final frontiers?