57 years ago this morning at 9:27 EDT, Buzz Aldrin crawled into the Lunar Module Eagle and began the lengthy process of powering things up for the short mission life of the module. An hour later, Neil Armstrong joined Buzz in the LM.
A little over three hours after that, 1:47 PM, they released the latches and separated from the Command Module. At 2:12, Michael Collins fired thrusters on the CM moving it two miles away from the LM. Except for that small altitude difference, both vehicles remained in their initial orbit from yesterday's lunar orbit insertion until 3:08 PM when Armstrong fired the descent engine to lower the Eagle's orbit.
What follows is a 20 minute video depicting the landing which is easily the best modern reconstruction of the landing that I've seen. It combines video from the window as Armstrong would have seen it with the audio traffic from Mission Control. The first three minutes gives a modern simulation and animation of how it all worked; after that, it goes to the view recorded on the LM with spacecraft communication on the left speaker and mission control intercom on the right. Yes, I think it's worth the time.
The LM touches down at 4:18PM EDT.
At 6:00 PM, Armstrong radios down to mission control that he recommends they start the EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) sooner than planned; at 9 PM. Although they don't make the 9PM goal, the 10:39 beginning of the EVA is still five hours earlier than the mission plans.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, this was the last vacation I would ever take with my parents. July of 1969 was the summer between my 9th and 10th grade years of school, and I was 15 years old. Like millions of people around the world, I hung by the front of the black and white TV; this one in my uncle's house in New York City. We watched intently but I don't recall exactly how much we saw or if we watched until 1:11 tomorrow morning when the EVA officially concluded. It's a sobering thought how many of the family members there on that historic day and night have passed away. Both of my parents, my uncle and aunt, and I'm simply not sure how many else.
Over the years, this meme from Aesop at Raconteur Report has become my default way of thinking of the Apollo program itself. While he clearly means the landing of Apollo 11, I can see the entire Apollo program as a strong contender for the Peak of Western Civilization.
Amen brother! I wish I could share with my 43 YO son but the argument isn't worth the loss of contact. Peak western civ indeed.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say, "...the argument isn't worth the loss of contact" do you mean he doesn't think we went to the moon?
DeleteJust curious. Not that I think there's necessarily any argument that works for that.
Still a stunning accomplishment.
ReplyDeletePeak Apollo was also the largest single unit space station, Skylab, which was vastly underutilized due to not being able to get to it after Skylab 3. And so much potential, lost forever due to switching to the Shuttle. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteThe 70s and 80s were a hectic time of my life and I'm sure I missed a lot of space news from that period. I wasn't aware of what you said about us not being able to get to Skylab after the third mission.
DeleteThe only launch vehicle and capsule we had left were used in Apollo-Soyuz. After that, no money for anything except the Shuttle. And Skylab fell in 1979. First shuttle was 1981.
DeleteThere was no way to get to Skylab before 1981. By then, Skylab was gone.
Only 3 Skylab missions, and the first wasted a lot of time fixing broken things. Then the mission planners crammed so many things from S1 into S2 and S3 that one whole Skylab team mutinied.
Totally missed opportunity.
I remember, vividly, listening to the announcer and at 16 I had a fairly good understanding of the physics. I didn't understand the control systems at that time, I have 20/20 hindsight to appreciate all the cutting-edge engineering that took place.
ReplyDeleteI get goosebumps now listening to those steely-eyed rocketmen, cool calm and collected voices who had full knowledge of what could go wrong and what was actually going wrong. The 1201 and 1202 error messages at the time were serious but as we saw, they were workable. That stuff will not be allowed to happen again, we have soooooo much technology now to utilize!
(Please remember to flip that switch before flight, boyz!!)
We stand on the shoulders of giants.