Jul 25, 2010
I was doing my usual browsing through digg.com and I came across this rather interesting story about the Apollo 11 moon landing back in the 60′s. This is a rather off-beat topic for me to discuss as I tend to leave the space oriented stories to serious space website like astroengine.com and Discovery Space both of which are run by my good buddy Dr Ian O’Neill 
However, this story is a little different. Normally people rant and rave about the moon landings being hoaxed, and then the crack-pots will go around trying to “prove” why – but this story is even more un-believeable, but better than that – it’s TRUE.
So here are Ten things about the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20th 1969:
- The astronauts pulled an “all nighter”. The mission schedule called for the astronauts to have a five hour power-nap after the landing, but they chose to rather begin preparations for their lunar excursion – probably thinking that they were too excited to sleep.
- The broadcast TV footage of the landing was actually recorded from another TV. The landing was recorded using slow-scan television which was incompatible with the commercial broadcast single, so the footage was displayed on a special monitor at NASA HQ and the broadcast footage filmed using this display. This meant that the resolution (and hence the quality) of the footage was significantly degradated.
- The original tapes of the moon landing were lost. Although even a quick youtube search can yield the broadcast video footage, the original recordings of the slow-scan source were accidentally destroyed during routine NASA re-use of the magnetic tape – ooops Not a problem you might think as there were copies existing at the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station in Australia. However, those good Ausies were also following NASA procedures and re-used their magnetic tape, successfully erasing all original footage of the landing – double ooops!!!
- The astronauts had to squeeze through the hatch. Armstrong’s Portable Life Support System (PLSS) made it extremely hard for him to exit the lander. The hatch on the lander was slightly smaller that that on the training vehicle used by the crew (to fix this issue the backpack was later re-designed). Some of the highest heart rates recorded during the mission were of the astronauts entering and exiting the lander through this smaller hatch.
- The Russians “landed” on the moon a few days before the Americans. The unmanned Luna 15 vehicle, which was a Soviet Spacecraft, began its own descent to the lunar surface just a few hours before the Apollow 11 liftoff – and crashed. So you could claim that the Russians were there first This crashing and subsequent landing of Apollo 11 was widely seen as the end to the space race.
- Armstrong was “moving fast”. As time was running out, mission control used a code phrase to warn Armstrong that his metabolic rates were extremely high and that he should slow down and try to relax. However, since metabolic rates remained lower than expected for all astronauts, mission control granted the astronauts a 15-minute extension.
- Buzz Aldrin broke the engine circuit breaker. Our favorite astronaut come boxer, Buzz Aldrin, accidently broke the circuit breaker that would arm the main engine for lift off from the moon, as he was moving within the cabin of the lunar module. This mishap could have potentially left them stranded on the moon. Fortunately for the astronauts a felt tip pen was enough to activate the switch and allow ignition of the main engine. If this had not worked the lunar circuitry would have to have been reconfigured to allow the firing of the engine.
- The astronauts left behind a congreeman – ooops I mean list of congressmen Along with a plaque and memorial bag containing a gold replica of an olive branch, the astronauts left behing a silicon message disk. On the disk were goodwill messages by Einenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon and from 73 other countries around the worked. There was also a listing of the leadership of the US Congress, the four committees of the House and Senate responsible for the NASA funding, and the names of NASA’s past and (at the time) present top management. Just before climbing back into the lunar module, Armstrong reminded Aldrin of a bag of memorial items in his suit pocket sleeve, and Aldrin tossed the bag down.
- A ten year old kept Apollo in touch. During the return to Earth, the Guam tracking station failed which made communications on the last segment of the Earth return difficult. A staff member had his ten year old son, Greg Force do repairs on the equipment because his hands were small enough to fit in the tight gaps where the problem occurred.
- The USA flag actually fell over. As the lunar module lifted off the lunar surface, film footage shows the the flag whipping violently in the exhaust of the ascent stage engine. Buzz Aldrin recalls that he saw the flag actually topple over. Subsequent Apollo missions were thus required to plant the American flag at least 100 feet from the lunar module to prevent it being blown over.
[Source: Motherboard.tv]