14 April 1970, the crew of Apollo 13 – Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise – are two days into their mission and well on their way to the Moon. Earlier in the day at mission control in Houston, capsule communicator (Capcom) Joe Kerwin had reported that the spacecraft was “in real good shape”, and joked to the crew “we’re bored to tears down here.”

In fact, Nasa’s third Moon landing had completely failed to capture the public imagination. “People were getting bored,” Lovell (now 89 but sounding 20 years younger) tells BBC Future. “The publicity for Apollo 13 you could find on the weather page of the newspaper, that was it.”

At 55 hours and 46 minutes into the flight, the crew finished their live TV message to Earth. They had taken viewers on a tour of their command module and lunar lander. None of the major TV networks carried the broadcast.