From the archive: To the moon and back

In 1973, the Observer tracked down the 12 men who had once stood on the moon

What is there to do after you've walked on the moon? Other than confirm once and for all that it is not made of cheese, not a lot. In 1973 the Observer Magazine tracked down the 12 space heroes who had gained international acclaim for being the only mortals to walk on the moon and, it seems, it wasn't just their spacecrafts that had come crashing back down to earth.

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon and a notorious recluse, was living on a remote farm 30 miles from the space station when our reporter Daniel Greene tracked him down. Armstrong was both monotone and prickly, and insisted that 'the feat' had changed him in no way. He was too busy doing his job - including landing the lunar module manually, with 30 seconds of fuel left, after an overloaded computer nearly caused disaster - to ponder cosmic meanings of what it was all about.