Apollo 11's 35th Anniversary

colonist writes "35 years ago, on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 began to achieve the goal set by the late President Kennedy: '...before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth'. On July 20, Michael Collins orbited the moon in the command module Columbia while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface in the lunar module Eagle. The descent engine was halfway through its final 12-minute burn when a yellow caution light lit up on the display of the lunar module computer. [ARMSTRONG: Program Alarm... It's a 1202. ALDRIN: 1202. (Pause) ARMSTRONG: (To Buzz) What is it? Let's incorporate (the landing radar data). (To Houston) Give us a reading on the 1202 Program Alarm.] Buzz Aldrin's recollection: 'Back in Houston, not to mention on board the Eagle, hearts shot up into throats while we waited to learn what would happen. We had received two of the caution lights when Steve Bales the flight controller responsible for LM computer activity, told us to proceed... We received three or four more warnings but kept on going. When Mike, Neil, and I were presented with Medals of Freedom by President Nixon, Steve also received one. He certainly deserved it, because without him we might not have landed.' Fred Martin describes the incidents, and Peter Adler looks at the design of the system."

Comments

From Earth to the Moon

[Neil Blender]

For anyone who has HBO and hasn't seen it, there is a twelve part 'docudrama' on HBO called "From Earth to the Moon". It covers the all the Apollo missions and is absolutely fascinating. It is available now if you have On Demand.

Re:From Earth to the Moon

[cratermoon]

From Earth to the Moon series is great, largely based on Andrew Chaikin's book, "A Man on the Moon", a great read. Tom Hanks did it, after doing Apollo 13. The book that movie is based on was written by Jim Lovell, the commander, and was originally called "Lost Moon". Also worth a read.

Regarding Steve Bales getting a medal, score a big one for the geeks.

for an excelent account of NASA's early years

[kippy]

Written by the mission controller throughout the whole thing.

Apollo 11: proudly brought to you by...

[mattjb0010]

The Dish.

Re:HP 65

[HeghmoH]

According to http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp65.htm, the HP 65 was introduced in 1974, far too late to participate in any of the moon missions, but it did fly on Apollo-Soyuz and got some use doing course corrections there.

No mention of the mistake?

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Wheres the mention of the most infamous mistake ever?

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"

should of been

"One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind"

Re:a matter of focus

[EugeneK]

Kennedy was involved in helping start one of the major stompings of a smaller nation of the 20th century, known as the Vietnam War...

Re:Slack In Space!

[0123456]

As I understand it, it was more of a watchdog timer interrupt than a reboot: the 'operating system' would run through the tasks allocated to it in order of priority and if it hadn't finished those tasks in one 'tick', an interrupt would raise the program error and jump back to the start. Low priority tasks like updating the displays would get dropped, but the important stuff like navigation and controlling the engine would be run properly.

Lunar Surface Journal

[Mean_Nishka]

Although the article above links to a portion of this site, the full Lunar Surface Journal offers an incredibly detailed look at the Apollo program, including audio, video, and high resolution images from the missions. Be warned, you will spend hours there :).

More info on the Alarm that sounded

[cOdEgUru]

Can be found here

It was sounded because the computer was receiving more instructions than it could handle and it was getting to the point where it would have just stopped executing them, leading to an abort.

The Apollo mission transcripts with sound

[Jugalator]

Journal home page

... and particularly interesting, all regarding Apollo 11, in chronological order:

- Landing
- Post Landing Activities
- EVA Preparations
- One Small Step
- Mobility and Photography
- EASEP Deployment and Close-out
- Trying to Rest
- The Return to Orbit

These transcripts also have RealAudio (blergh, but better than nothing I guess :-P) clips if you really want to get into mood. :-)

Re:35 years...

[Rei]

No, the "goal" of zero-G human physiology experiments has always been long-term space travel. NASA has just stepped up the percentage of those that we're doing. The vast majority of the other types of experiments have direct, explicit goals, though. Some test material synthesis in space. Some try and get more accurate measures of fundamental physics constants (which are useful all over the place). Some experiments are to monitor the earth for changes. Etc. What sort of "undefined goal" projects are you thinking of?

Even most of the construction has been applicable elsewhere. For example, stationkeeping is needed on pretty much every satellite, and this is the largest-scale stationkeeping project we've ever done. There's been a lot of input on it, and we've found a number of problems. Due to the ISS, there's been more research on electromagnetic tethers for stationkeeping