#Apollo program

[adastra-sf]

Happy Moon Landing Day!

On July 20, 1969 - 55 years ago today! - humans first stepped foot on another world.

[coupleofdays]

Margaret Hamilton, Director of the Apollo project Software Engineering Division, with a stack of papers containing the code to the Apollo Guidance Computer navigation software. The software that on this day, in 1969, guided Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when they landed on the Moon.

[nemfrog]

Proposed moon lander separates from rocket. Beckman Bits, a magazine published by Beckman Instruments Inc., an aerospace company in Fullerton, California. 1964.

Science History Institute

[gemini-enthusiast]

View of heavy cloud cover over ocean, Apollo 9

[todays-xkcd]

If you pick a low enough orbit, it gives you a lot of freedom to use a lightweight launch vehicle such as a stepladder.

Moon Landing Mission Profiles [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Four diagrams of potential ways to achieve a moon landing shown.]

Lunar orbit rendezvous Spacecraft orbits Moon, drops lander Chosen by the Apollo program

Earth orbit rendezvous Large lander assembled in Earth orbit via several launches, travels to Moon Rejected for requiring multiple Saturn Vs per landing and potentially taking longer

Direct ascent Lander launched from Earth directly to Moon Rejected for requiring an unreasonably large rocket

Lunar Earth rendezvous Moon transits to rendezvous with spacecraft in low Earth orbit Rejected because I guess no one thought of it?!

[lonestarflight]

"Overall view of the Mission Operations Control Room in the Mission Control Center, Building 30, during the Apollo 9 Earth-orbital mission. When this photograph was taken a live television transmission was being received from Apollo 9 as it orbited Earth."

Date: March 4-12, 1969

NASA ID: S69-26301

[humanoidhistory]

From Into Space, Macdonald and Company, 1970.

[vieformidable]

The picture of earth from space that we will rarely be shown

[spacemonkiesmafia]

Found this gem from a CBS Sunday Morning broadcast.

Neil Armstrong's spacesuit ID card

https://youtu.be/qpIbUvagOMU?si=Q2KcT7BfKo_We3r-

[yodaprod]

Okay, Houston, I believe we've had a problem here...

Parisians looking for information on the Apollo 13 incident (april 14, 1970)

[astronotmovie]

The view ain’t all that bad. Apollo 9 astronaut David Scott takes it all in in this epic photograph by crewmate Rusty Schweickart, March 1969. The 10-day mission commanded by James McDivitt saw the first crewed flight of the Lunar Module.

[adastra-sf]

Happy Moon Landing Day!

Today is the 55th anniversary!

[amisonist]

So considering that it’s the 54 anniversary of the moon landing I thought I’d share one of my favorite bits of trivia about the mission (along with a bit of a shitpost). So the first every liquid to be poured on the moon was actually whine as Buzz Aldrin took communion in the lunar module (the bread and whine were blessed a few days beforehand by a priest). Buzz wanted to broadcast the ceremony back to earth but decided not to at the request of Deke Slayton because of the controversy surrounding the reading of the book of genesis on Apollo 8.

Here’s where the shitposting comes in: According to Catholics (and other religions sects that believe in transubstantiation) believe that during communion the bread and whine literally becomes the body and blood of Christ. Which is why imho (despite not being religious in any way) it is perfectly accurate to say that Jesus Christ has landed on the moon

[blondebrainpowered]

Margaret Hamilton is shown standing beside listings of the software developed by her and the team she was in charge of, the LM [lunar module] and CM [command module] on-board flight software team.

According to Hamilton, this now-iconic image (at left, above) was taken at MIT in 1969 by a staff photographer for the Instrumentation Laboratory — later named the Draper Laboratory and today an independent organization — for use in promotion of the lab’s work on the Apollo project.

[gemini-enthusiast]

On Tuesday, as part of the @nasa social experience, we got up close and personal with the crawler transporters and got to speak to some of the folks who work on the crawler. According to them, it takes two years to get your license to drive it - even astronauts, who are qualified to fly spaceships, aren't allowed to drive the crawler without a license. Makes sense, given that they're the largest self-propelled land vehicles in the world!

CT-2, shown here, will be used to carry NASA's SLS rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launchpad in support of the Artemis program. Both CT-2 and its partner crawler CT-1 have long carried rockets from the VAB to the pad, first constructed for the Apollo program before then being used throughout the Shuttle program. CT-1 has seen better days, and is now being used primarily for parts for CT-2.

While much of the hardware is original, several things have been updated over time, mainly the internal computer system. When you're carrying something weighing millions of pounds that has catastrophic consequences if you tip over, stability is paramount. The computer within the crawler controls a massive hydraulic system that keeps the top deck, which is the size of a baseball infield, so flat that if you placed a golf ball atop it, it wouldn't roll around. Just as much of a marvel of engineering as the rockets are!

If you're curious, while the drivers have seen it reach speeds of over one mile per hour, it really doesn't like doing that. They say it averages about 0.8mph.

[todaysdocument]

Rising Earth Greets Apollo VIII Astronauts

Record Group 306: Records of the U.S. Information AgencySeries: Master File Photographs of U.S. and Foreign Personalities, World Events, and American Economic, Social, and Cultural Life

This image is a color photograph of earth from lunar orbit.  The surface of the moon appears on the right edge of the image.  To the left, the earth appears to be floating in the blackness of space.  Just over half of the earth is visible, the rest is in shadow.