“To get used to the surface and what you see, adapt to the one-sixth gravity and the manoeuvring around, probably we just included a little more in the early phase that we were actually able to do.”.

Their activities would see the pair consequently spend longer on the Moon than NASA had planned, and with a surface temperature well above boiling point, their chances of something breaking were greatly increased.

He added: “I think the simulations that we have, at present time, enable a pilot to understand the problems of a lunar landing.

“I believe that from the early spaceflights we demonstrated a potential to carry out this type of mission and again it was a question of time until this would be accomplished

“I think the relative ease with which we were able to carry out our mission, which, of course, came after a very efficient and logical sequence of flights, I think that just demonstrated that we were certainly on the right track when we took this commitment to go to the Moon

“I think that what this means is that many other problems can be solved in the same way, by making a commitment over a long time, we were timely in accepting this mission and it may now be timely to think in many other areas.”