AMAZINGLY, it’s 50 years this week since the moon landing and astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on that alien surface taking that “giant leap for mankind.”

At the time, it seemed incredible – it still does. I remember seeing the grainy black and white pictures on our telly (the envy of friends who came round to watch it) then going outside and gazing up at that bright object in the night sky.

Men were walking on the moon as I watched. It was such an emotional moment.

Now, it may be hard for those not around then to relate to that wonder. There are some individuals who even insist it never happened and was all a giant con.

It would be many years before anyone realised the true significance of the moon landing. No, not just the giant step forward in every sense in what was then prosaically called “the space race” but the real influence of what NASA created to make that mission possible.

It’s surprising to learn that 6,300 inventions came out of those researches and some of these technologies have had serious ramifications for modern life.

We can’t imagine hospitals now without a CAT scanner but this cancer-detecting technology was first used to find imperfections in space components.

Modern computer microchips descend from integrated circuits used in the Apollo Guidance Computer. And cordless tools, like power drills and even vacuum cleaners, employ technology originally designed to drill for moon samples.

Freeze-dried food came out of NASA’s researches for astronauts to survive on space journeys and home insulation uses reflective material that protected spacecraft from radiation.

Computer gaming device the joystick was first used on the Apollo Lunar Rover and the technology used to fix errors in spacecraft signals helped reduce scrambled pictures and sound in satellite TV signals.

If you enjoyed a good night’s sleep last night on a Memory Foam mattress, thank NASA. They created this substance for spacecraft seats to soften landings.

They are even responsible for beautiful smiles: ultimately making teeth-straightening less embarrassing thanks to invisible braces which came out of the transparent ceramic brace brackets made from spacecraft materials.

Scratch resistant lenses, shoe insoles, domestic water filters and smoke detectors were all inventions sparked by NASA’s researches.

When you put on that figure-hugging Speedo swimsuit that so enhances top sports’ performances, just remember that NASA used the same principles to reduce drag in space.

Some would argue that if you throw enough money at a project like this, you’re bound to get useful inventions created as a result and that’s probably true.

However, the greatest result of all from the moon landing may be what it meant to us as humans, then and since. For the first time, we saw the genuine possibilities of what science could achieve.

Thanks to TV footage of the time, we saw it in action and realised that man was capable of doing incredible things. Going to places we really had only dreamt of before. And we were captured forever.