42 years since we landed on the Moon!

[stephenb (Stephen)]

The top comment from You Tube user "tristancalin" commencing "If I hear a single idiot who mentioning..." is a gem I know how he feels... Thanks for posting the link.

[M54 (Molly)]

I was 14.
We were watching it in the science room at school, while my maths teacher flitted excitedly around with her camera, taking pic's of the event.
'Twas a great day.

[Brundah1 (David)]

Thanks Gary for posting this excellent record of the huge challenges facing the American Space Program as they worked to achieve JFK's 1960 comittment.

There is a wealth of information on the NASA website.

I have just completed a scan read of the work. Anyone interested in the science and engineering of rocketry will enjoy this.

Big question now is does America have the money, industrial power and national will to achieve great things again?

DG

[gary]

Originally Posted by Brundah1

Thanks Gary for posting this excellent record of the huge challenges facing the American Space Program as they worked to achieve JFK's 1960 comittment.

There is a wealth of information on the NASA website.

Hi David,

Great to hear the anecdote about your friend Jim and his family being lucky enough
to witness the Apollo 17 launch!

And Asquith is just down the road here.

Also great to hear you can bury yourself in the NASA online resource.

The companion volume to "Stages for Saturn" is "Chariots for Apollo: A History
of Manned Lunar Spacecraft" and it is available online here -
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4205/cover.html

For example, It details many of the decisions made including the final decision to go for
lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR), which seemed outlandish to many NASA planners
in the late 50's and early 60's, compared to other methods in getting there,
including direct ascent and its major competitor, Earth orbit rendezvous (EOR).

Originally Posted by Chariots for Apollo. Chapter 3-2

At a meeting in Washington in mid-1960, the first NASA Administrator, Keith Glennan, had asked how a spacecraft might be landed on the moon. Max Faget of the Space Task Group had described a mission in which the spacecraft would first orbit the moon and then land, either in an upright position on deployable legs or horizontally using skids on the descent stage . Wernher von Braun of Marshall and William Pickering of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL thought it would be unnecessary to orbit the moon first. As Faget recalled, "Dr. Pickering [said] you don't have to go into orbit; . . . you just aim at the moon and, when you get close enough, turn on the landing rockets and come straight in. . . . I thought that would be a pretty unhappy day if, when you lit up the rockets, they didn't light."

[Brundah1 (David)]

Gary,
You are a gold mine of interesting information of the factual kind.

I just found this from a bit of surfing. I vaguely remember a report of this Obamah visit to KSC. The references probably need checking, but the bits I looked up check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_...launch_vehicle

Seems when Obamah cancelled the Constellation Program, he promised to increase NASA budget to achieve a similar objective but with new designs.
A wall of the same Apollo astronauts have put their name to very critical comments that the extra money will fail to achieve anything near to that already well advanced in the Constellation Program that Obamah cancelled.

Its worth a read - certainly does not sound like the bold determined approach of JFK!

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Brundah1

Big question now is does America have the money, industrial power and national will to achieve great things again?

It's got the first 2, but it's the 3rd one (or to be more precise, the political will) that's sadly lacking.

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

Originally Posted by iceman

Or if you were too young/not born, what are your favourite stories or footage about the Moon landing?

I'm too young to have witnessed it, but have always been fascinated with the Moon landings and the whole Apollo program in general.
As far as favourites goes then of course the original footage is excellent, but in particular I found the documentary "In the Shadow of the Moon" to be extremely interesting, because they interviewed the Moon walkers after all these years and they really had some great stories to tell. John Young is so cool, and it's amazing to think that he did Gemini first then went to the Moon twice (!!) with Apollo and finally also did two Shuttle flights as well, including STS-1. What a long and distinguished career.
I think the STS-1 flight might actually have been the scariest and riskiest of them all and that's why they chose cool John for it.