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.

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.

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...

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.