Apollo 50 years later

So 50 years ago, Apollo 11 launched just over an hour ago.

Here's a live feed of what happened back then- https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/  click on "NOW" for the live stream.

Pretty cool.

Thanks for making me feel old.

I shall go home and launch the Lego Saturn V tonight. On Saturday, we shall land the Lego lander and fight off the Classic Space people that have been living on the moon all this time. That was edited out of the original broadcasts.

I love the Apollo project. So audacious. The rate at which they progressed in difficulty through Gemini and Apollo is mind-boggling, there really wasn't any room for error.

Now let's marvel at all that's involved in making that real time stream work.

There is a LOT to the real time- you can listen to any of the people in flight control.  Everyone was recorded.  

It's hard to wade through it all, but if you wanted to listen to RETRO, you can.  Or any of the other channels.  Mind boggling.

And the main channel has the ship in one ear, and some of mission control in the other.

And synchronized pictures, when they take it, it shows up on the screen. Same with video. 

I fear I will lose much of the next few evenings and weekend. I didn't get to watch it 50 years ago.

If I can't listen to FIDO, I don't want to listen at all. 

really hard to know what to listen to- they are right in the middle of the TLI burn.    

Amazing, thanks Eric!

"American Experience" on PBS just did a 3 part series on the space race last week, I just finished the first episode last night. It should be available on their streaming app.

I was 4-1/2 when they went, and I vaguely remember sitting at home with my parents watching it live. 

I didn’t realize until much later that they actually only spent about 2 hours outside on the lunar surface.  I’m still kind of flabbergasted by that. 

That was 11, the goal was to get there and get home. They spent a lot more time outside later.

GRM content: There are three cars on the moon. How have we not had the Lunar Cup yet?

Here's a great website about the Apollo missions including interviews with a bunch of people that worked on them. My uncle was one of the software engineers working on Apollo 11 and ran the calculations for the emergency burn on Apollo 13.

https://wehackthemoon.com/

Adam Savage is collaborating with a bunch of YouTube machinists and makers to build a copy of the hatch from the Apollo 11 spacecraft.  https://airandspace.si.edu/events/project-egress-build

CBS will have a 1 hour program on tonite.

In reply to Tom_Spangler :

I finished the series last night. This was the best thing I’ve watched in a long time. Even the wife put her book down and was asking questions. 

I'm going to have to go back and watch HBO's From the Earth to the Moon.

It's one reason we decided to go to the Cosmosphere, which everyone needs to go to at least once IMO

PBS is geo-blocked - $^$$@#%^^%$#!!!

Wonderful article in the Atlantic about the Apollo Guidance Computers (there were two, one in the command capsule, the other in the landing module).

It makes the point that while the AGCs didn't have a lot of computational power, they were highly capable. 

Of course, any contemporary device has vastly more raw computational ability than the early machine, but the Apollo computer was remarkably capable, reliable, and up to the task it was given. You could not actually guide a spaceship to the moon with a smart doorbell.

Take note of the fact that in 1969, the team leader for software development was a woman. At that time, there was only one woman engineer in all of mission control.

Margaret Hamilton led a team of 350 people to design the software behind the Apollo 11 mission.AP

This was a time when people bragged about how big their computers were, and programming was done with punch cards. The guidance systems were drive by wire, all inputs were routed through the AGC.

This article has been one of the best things I've read about the Apollo mission this week.

Link

In reply to Floating Doc :

Technicaly, Hamilton was not part of mission control, so she would not have been counted as the only women engineer in mission control.  That would be Poppy Northcutt, who was a guidance specialist.  She was very key in the calculation in getting Apollo 13 safely back home.

And the third woman, Joanne Morgan, I suppose was not an engineer, either.  But she was there, at one of the consols, during liftoff.  

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apollo-11-launch-meet-women-behind-historic-nasa-mission-to-the-moon-2019-07-16/

And that does not count the many women who were computers for NASA Langley.  

Or the many who worked to manufacture the various space suits.

Still, the total lack of diversity in NASA at the time was rather stark.

My dad was a young NASA engineer at the time and did quite a bit of work on the Apollo program.  His roomate back in the day designed the lunar rover.  

In reply to alfadriver :

Thank you for your comments. You made an important point.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Hamilton was at mission control. One of the photos I found of her was taken at MIT during the mission.

I heard an interview yesterday with the woman who was (they said) the only woman engineer in mission control. I missed some of it, including her name, since I was driving. She must have been Poppy Northcutt.

Edit: I followed your link. It had to have been Joann Morgan, since one of the things she talked about was monitoring the Soviet radio transmissions. They were trying to scramble or communications to make the mission fail.

alfadriver said:

 

Or the many who worked to manufacture the various space suits.

 

My Great Aunt Grace stitched Apollo suits. By hand. She was that exact. 

I need to find out more about what she did. If it turns out one of her pieces went to the moon, I will be barley contain myself. 

Appleseed said:

alfadriver said:

 

Or the many who worked to manufacture the various space suits.

 

My Great Aunt Grace stitched Apollo suits. By hand. She was that exact. 

I need to find out more about what she did. If it turns out one of her pieces went to the moon, I will be barley contain myself. 

That would rock to have a close relative be so intertwined in the mission to the moon.  

alfadriver said:

Appleseed said:

alfadriver said:

 

Or the many who worked to manufacture the various space suits.

 

My Great Aunt Grace stitched Apollo suits. By hand. She was that exact. 

I need to find out more about what she did. If it turns out one of her pieces went to the moon, I will be barley contain myself. 

That would rock to have a close relative be so intertwined in the mission to the moon.  

I see what you did there.

In reply to Indy-Guy :

I wish  I was so clever that it was intentional.  But that was very accidental....