Apollo 11

Launch is pretty hard on the hardware too, with lots of shaking and vibrations. Everything needs to be pretty robust to survive launch, including the very fragile LEM which has a wall thickness not much greater than a couple sheets of aluminum foil. They would ausually see a few loose nuts and bolts floating around in the spacecraft once they became weightless.

The Apollo missions were pretty risky by today's standards. Had they kept launching Apollo spacecraft, it wouldn't have been long before one was lost. A lot of things had to go right to make the mission succeed (or to even make it back home). Apollo 13 only got the astronauts home because the timing of the tank explosion was fortuitous. Had it happened earlier in the mission, they wouldn't have had enough oxygen to make it home. Had it happened later in the mission, they wouldn't have had the LEM (and it's supplies) to use as a "lifeboat."

 

The Gemini missions were some of the most pioneering flights where many "firsts" were accomplished, but they are relatively forgotten in the wake of Apollo. The first long duration missions, the first (American) spacewalk, the first rendezvous with another spacecraft, the first docking with another spacecraft, and the development of technologies to conduct EVA repairs all took place on Gemini flights.

It was also one of the wildest rides in space. Apollo missions took 11 minutes to reach orbit. The Space Shuttle took 8.5 minutes. Gemini did it in 5 minutes! That's because they were basically riding atop an ICBM not originally designed for humans. Wally Schirra rode Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft. He often said that Gemini was his favorite ride.

 

I didn't know this was shot to video, I always thought it was shot to film. Was the video equipment custom made or just some already available equipment modified for the mission? What brand provided the video equipment?

 

Custom made by Westinghouse. It operated at a lower rate 10 frames a second (standard television is 30 frames per second) mostly because they didn't have a whole lot of radio bandwidth available from the LEM to the Command Module. It also had to be able to survive the temperature extremes of the surface of the Moon.



The image we saw on TV looked worse than the actual signal because the TV networks used a standard TV camera aimed at a screen showing the feed from the Moon. The real image was recorded on data tapes, but those tapes were sadly lost, or erased and recorded over due to budget cuts.

 

Thanks for your reply. I didn't know that Westinghouse did video equipment. A pitty it wasn't shot to film, standard video from that time looks dreadful to say the least.

 

Every ounce on the LEM was debated, and I'm sure film was considered and rejected.

To be clear, they always planned for the camera to be there, but they decided to mount it on the leg to capture the first footstep at a late stage of the planning. The way the camera was mounted, the image was upside-down, and they had a way to flip it back on Earth.

 

There is 16mm film of surface activities that was shot from the LEM, but the initial/live stuff was the slow scan video Chris DeVoe mentions.
For the full dope on how we got TV from Apollo 11, check out this link Apollo 11 TV
There are many interesting bits and lots of images/media taken directly from the slow scan monitors that displayed the video directly from the Westinghouse camera before conversion and microwave transmission, like this shot of Neil Armstrong - significantly better than the video we've all seen.

 

Saw this last night at the Seattle Center IMAX. Awesome. Loved the launch sequence.

 

Thank you for that link on Apollo TV, great stuff to read through!

 

The most interesting thing to me was the mechanics tightening the bolts on a hydrogen valve during the countdown like it was no big deal. The countdown just kept on going. In the end they did a work around. Found this document describing the issue: https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap11fj/pdf/stephen-coester-apollo11-lh2-leak.pdf

 

One of the interesting things in the credits is it the data recovery was done by singer-songwriter Leslie Feist's brother.

 

My brother is a Master Plumber, and was happy to see that the whole mission was saved by some quick-thinking plumbers. Sure, they were called "technicians" but they were fixing a problem with a leaky valve with a wrench - that's "plumbing" in my book.

When I was in my 20s I was working at a company making electronic prototypes. One of my co-workers was this little old lady who had previously worked at a place making wiring harnesses for the Apollo program. She was justifiably very proud of having done her part in getting us to the Moon.

 

I worked at Boeing as a Flight Test Engineer for over 30 years. When I first started the guys who actually worked on the planes were called electricians, mechanics, plumbers and avionics technicians all with a different skill code and pay grade. About ten years ago, they all had to become FAA certified and they now have the same grade and are called aircraft technicians. Most of the guys ended up doing the same tasks they did before. To me the original space program was one giant experimental flight test program with a lot of tasks we did at Boeing on airplanes. I worked in instrumentation and one my favorite moments in a movie was in Apollo 13 after the initial explosion and Clint Howard's character says it's got to be an instrumentation problem. Everybody in our group always got a chuckle on that one. We heard that line quite a bit in flight test. Sometimes it was other times the data was correct.

 

I saw this today and was blown away. I got choked up a few times, particularly during the launch. What a fantastic way to make a documentary, without narration, without interviews, you’re just THERE. I remember watching all of this on TV when it happened. I was only 8 years old, but I remember it vividly, especially the moonwalk, that fuzzy picture, “LIVE FROM MOON” at the bottom. The physics of getting to the moon and back is so elegantly simple, but the technology needed to accomplish it is so incredibly exacting, it’s astonishing they were able to pull it off with the equipment and computers available at the time.

 

They had some computers but most of the engineers were just equipped with slide rules. The computers aboard the command module and the LEM were about the same power as a four function calculator.

 

I wish I could see it on the big screen but not likely.
I can't find any info about a theatrical run in Scandinavia

 

I hope it does. This really needs to be seen on a gigantic screen. They did a really amazing job of establishing just how huge the Saturn V rocket was.

 

Yes. And I like to take my grandpa. He is 88 years old and stills rides his Harley Davidson. He likes this stuff

 

I was at the cape for a night launch and the Saturn V rocket IS big!

 

I envy you that experience. I was in Kansas City, with my big plastic models of the Saturn V, Command Module & Service Module and the LEM. Eating Space Food Sticks and drinking Tang, watching everything on a 12 inch black and white TV.

Not quite the same.

 

HA! So do I. I collect all the astronaut's books too.

 

I had a relative that was a secretary for a U.S. Senator, who got us a couple of ticket's back when I was a senior in H.S.

There are different viewing locations on the cape. You get there, show your ticket's, they take you to different holding area's. Finally, they load you on a bus and take you out to a big field.

There were some bleacher's set up. We thought this was where we were going to be sitting. We found out otherwise. The bleacher's were for the big dignitaries.

We got to sit on the ground. This was excellent, because our ground seats were about 200' in front of where the important invited guests sat.

Turns out that this was the primary viewing area. They had these posts stuck in the ground that the tops were waist high and had a circle where a rope went through, connecting the posts together in a line. Sitting on the ground, the rope was above out heads. There was nothing between were we sat and the Saturn V rocket, except a concrete bunker with some technician's in it.

We were the closest that any civilian's were to the rocket!

They would hold the countdown a few times and it was after midnight, by the time the rocket finally lifted off.

I have seen daytime launches from farther away and all you can see is smoke, which is believe is mostly steam from the water that they spray on the launch pad.

But, at night with the intense brightness of the Saturn V engines, the "fire" from the engines goes right through the smoke and you could see everything perfectly.

Compared to the I.C.B.M.'s that they used for the Mercury and Gemini program, the Saturn V is gigantic and even you are a few miles away, it looks like you are a lot closer because of it's sheer size. Plus, its pitch black and there are bright lights illuminating the rocket before it launches.

When the engines ignite, the fire is super bright, as the rocket lifts off into the air.

Once it gets high enough and yet is reasonable still close to earth, the brightness of the burning engines produces a bright orange light. At a certain distance in the sky this light is bright enough to illuminate the entire sky in a bright orange color. It is like daylight in the middle of the night, except that everything is orange.



Then as the rocket continues to climb, the sky begins to get dark and you just see the fire exiting the rocket engines itself.

It's one thing to see a rocket lift off at night. It is another thing all together to see a Saturn V lift off, because of the size of the rocket and the size and burn of the engines.

It's like no other experience.

"Apollo 17 was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program and the last mission in which humans traveled to and walked on the Moon. Launched at 12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on December 7, 1972, with a crew made up of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, it was the last use of Apollo hardware for its original purpose; after Apollo 17, extra Apollo spacecraft were used in the Skylab and Apollo–Soyuz programs.

Apollo 17 was the first night launch of a U.S. human spaceflight and the final manned launch of a Saturn V rocket. It was a "J-type mission" which included three days on the lunar surface, extended scientific capability, and the third Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). While Evans remained in lunar orbit in the command and service module (CSM), Cernan and Schmitt spent just over three days on the Moon in the Taurus–Littrow valley and completed three moonwalks, taking lunar samples and deploying scientific instruments. Evans took scientific measurements and photographs from orbit using a scientific instruments module mounted in the service module."

Space Food Sticks are pretty bad, I tried them before. Tang is OK.

 

I worked with his nephew back in the early 80's and asked him to send my Denver Post from 69 to Neil to sign. He got it framed and signed. ,

 

The most enjoyable astronaut autobiography I've read was Mike Mullane's Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut

He describes his encounter with a NASA shrink:

His next question was an obvious attempt to have me judge myself. "Tell me, Mike, if you died right now, what epitaph would your family put on your headstone?" Boy, was this going to be easy, I thought. After faking some serious deliberation I replied, "I think it would read, 'A loving husband and devoted father.'" I was sure I had scored some points. Could there have been a better answer to convey the message that my family came first, that I had my priorities right? In reality I would have sold my wife and children into slavery for a ride into space. I thought it best not to mention that fact.

 

wow...my Wife is a Space fan and I'm sure we'll be owning this!