“A spectacular evening had been organized. In the Rai studios in Rome. Conducted by Andrea Barbato, but the famous phrase of the landing was that of Tito Stagno. I remember that he was annoyed with the way in which Ruggero Orlando had intervened during the broadcast, but I said to Tito: “Look, this is your luck! It will be transmitted over the centuries. And you will become a character, known by everyone “».
This is how Piero Angela remembers the night of Apollo 11, when Tito Stagno pronounced the words that, as he had foreseen, would forever link him, in the imagination of us Italians, to the enterprise of Armstrong and Aldrin. “It has touched, has touched the lunar ground right now,” said Stagno, following the latest evolutions of the Lem, the landing module, and squabbling with Orlando. It will then be discovered that the double announcement had sounded out of phase: 56 seconds early for Stagno from Rome, 10 seconds late for Orlando from Houston. In between the fatal moments.
Piero Angela, what happened?
“Which probably Pond made the announcement when the sensors under the Lem’s legs, the ones that fed the altimeter data, touched the ground of the Moon.”
Where were you that evening of July 20?
“I wasn’t in the studio. In the previous year and a half I had been sent to the United States, where I had followed all the missions since Apollo 7 and there I had become an expert. I had made many commentaries, several reports for Tv7 and four documentaries. But for 20 July Rai decided to do everything from Rome and it was Tito who followed the moon landing with the participation of many experts and professors ».
The live broadcast became a piece of TV history: how different was Rai from over half a century ago?
“We must bear in mind that Italy at the time was different from that of today and that Rai was the reflection of the country”.
In what sense?
«I remember when I started in Rai, in ’52: the TV was not there yet, because it would have arrived in ’54. The spirit was that of the Italy of reconstruction and it looked to the future with confidence. The political debate was heated, but not so confrontational. Television had an educational mission and the famous maestro Manzi represented the relationship between TV and Italians: in a country with so many illiterate people, the mission was to make the country grow from an educational point of view. I recently browsed through a Radio courier of those years and I was amazed that so many cultural programs and dramas taken from literary works were reviewed ».
It is a universe that today even appears alien: what happened?
“TV was first undermined and then dominated by competition and advertising. And today there is less trust: in the future and in institutions. The TV, now, is looking for plays. I must say, however, that I continue to make the TV of that time: updated, of course, and with the technological means of the present, but with the same spirit of public service ».
Meanwhile, the spirit with which one looks at space has also changed: how, in your opinion?
«I experienced the Apollo up close and the conditions were different. There was competition with the Soviet Union and each mission had great prestige: political, technological and military. Supremacy was at stake. The second element was the typically American sporting spirit. The pressure was strong and the program underwent a continuous acceleration, so much so that Apollo 8, which was initially supposed to orbit the Earth, was reprogrammed to orbit the Moon. Then that spirit suddenly vanished, immediately after Apollo 11 ».
CAre we still going to get excited about the next lunar landing?
«Today robotics is so advanced that humans cannot do much more: in 1969, however, there were no robots».