Apollo 11

Why Apollo 10 Stopped Just 47,000 Feet From the Moon

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Paywall

 

I was able to read it and I'm not a subscriber

 

Apollo 10 was a test run. They had to make sure that everything was possible before they sent a fully fueled mission up there.

The last part:

The willingness of the Apollo 10 crew to serve as something like stand-ins instead of the stars of the show would in time be generously rewarded by NASA.

(John) Young descended those final few miles to the moon’s surface as commander of Apollo 16, and later commanded the first flight of the space shuttle. (Gene) Cernan, too, made it to the surface as the commander of Apollo 17 in 1972, and is still the last person to have walked on the moon.

Although (Thomas) Stafford never again returned to the moon, he was the American commander of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975, docking with Soviet counterparts in Earth orbit in a joint effort to redirect the space race toward an emerging détente between the world’s superpowers.

In the annals of history, the mission of Apollo 10 has been overshadowed by later journeys to the lunar surface. But the astronauts of Apollo 10 were trailblazers, and their story adds richness and humanity to the history of the race to the moon. Their achievements, and the risks that they took to help America to win that sprint, deserve to be remembered and celebrated.

 

The Moon has a paywall?

 

Yep, the astronauts forgot cash and credit cards and couldn't get in ...

 

I'm so glad they had money with them for 11.

I couldn't find it on YouTube, but I remember one of the Apollo astronauts did an American Express ad. Probably not Neil but maybe Buzz.

 

Disappointed that this never made it here to the local IMAX (too many superhero movies).

 

Just got my blu-ray copy in the mail.

 

Me too. I made it through most of it but had to cut it short. Really neat so far.

 

The UK won't see a blu release until November so I am holding off as I want to see this in the cinema first. I did see some early 66mm footage though and it looks incredible.

 

I'm glad people are seeing this on home video now, but you really should have seen it in IMAX. 70mm footage of the crawler on a huge screen is not an experience that you can duplicate at home.

 

that's correct, the scale is something i've not seen in person. Astonishingly big!

 

I agree with you - that scene set the stage. It played for one week only. What's with that, really?? I was very lucky to see it when I did. Maybe, if they're smart, they'll send it back to IMAX for the actual anniversary. That's a big "maybe."

 

Somebody's gotta go back and get a ****load of dimes

 

I just saw a billboard near Seattle’s Museum Of Flight that says the astronauts on Apollo 11 went through customs when they got back and claimed moon rocks and moon dust. Don’t ever remembering hearing that before.

 

Yeah I saw it twice in IMAX and once on regular widescreen...IMAX was incredibly more impressive, although the other was fine. Hope it gets another run in July.

 

I'm old enough to remember actually watching the entire mission, especially the moon landing and moonwalk. I was 10 at the time and had and still have a keen interest in manned spaceflight, especially the Apollo program to the point I was driven to seek a career in the Aerospace industry during the 80's and early 90's. I've seen countless documentaries and read hundreds of books on the subject.

I watched the Blu-ray last night. It's a very good documentary but it could have been even better, imo. I think there could have been a short, concise prologue about the initial competition between the US and Russia along with the challenges, tragedies and triumphs leading up to Apollo 11 to give the actual flight and the moon race with Russia a bit more historical context. The film made the goal to get men on the moon before the end of '69 seem mostly like a purely scientific, benign endeavor when it was far more a political contest to beat Russia.

Still, the overall linear presentation of the flight itself was excellent. I appreciated the film letting the images speak for itself with little narration except for period commentary from Cronkite and audio from the flight itself. The clips of the crawler hauling the Saturn V to the launch pad with people dwarfed by the vehicle fully punctuated how incredibly massive in every way the Apollo program was.

I do take exception to footage of certain aspects of the flight being used from other Apollo missions (notably the 1st stage separation which is from the unmanned Apollo 6). It should be clear the "previously unseen" footage or still photos in this film are not from the mission itself but from before and after the flight (the Saturn V roll-out, crowd footage near KSC witnessing the launch, inside mission control and post-splashdown).

All said, I think this is essential viewing for anyone with even a casual interest in what was unquestionably the greatest achievement of the 20th Century.

 

One critical thing that article omits is that the mission came very close to disaster as the Lunar Module was at it's closest point to the lunar surface during the "practice" landing sequence.

One of the things that NASA wanted to verify as feasible during the Apollo 10 mission was a so-called fire-in-the-hole abort where if during the landing sequence, something wrong occurred and the Lunar Module had to abort the landing during the descent phase before touching down which meant the top half with the crew (Ascent Stage) had to blast away from the bottom half (Descent Stage) to return to orbit. Due to the astronauts accidentally configuring the abort sequence incorrectly, as the Ascent Stage blasted away from the Descent Stage, the Ascent stage with the two astronauts began tumbling end over end with the main engine firing. Had they not immediately recovered from the wild gyrations, they were within seconds of unavoidably crashing onto the lunar surface. This is onboard film of the incident:

 

Thanks for sharing that, I've watched a couple of "Spacecraft Films" DVD releases a decade ago, not the Apollo 10 Mission or the footage you posted though.

 

Wow. That is something that I did not know. (And all this time I had thought that I knew quite a bit about Apollo.) Thanks!

 

Screw the UK November release. Imported this from the US.

It's true, there probably isn't a screen other than an Imax to really do this justice.

Bluray disc is really barebones, apart from (laughably) a 2 minute feature on how they scanned in the footage using a prototype scanner at 8K and 16K. Laughable because Universal aren't releasing this even in 4K

Universal really are a pair of clownshoes

 

The Imax presentation was truly astounding ...crystal clear footage at that scale looking back 50 years to Mission start to finish.

I sure hope that a 4k UHD Blu-Ray [Steelbook?] of this film is produced by Universal for Holidays!

 

Narrator misstates the date of the incident as March 22. The correct date was May 22, 1969.

 

It was Pete Conrad who did an America Express commercial.