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This film of the Apollo 11 rocket launch that put a man on the moon, was recorded at 500 frames per second. This slowed down video shows the first 30 seconds of the lift off where we get to see in great detail the fire power of these rockets. The narration provides some interesting additional facts as well.
NPR’s Robert Krulwich posted last week about comparing sizes. He was surprised to find out how small an area the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wandered when they made the first moon landing in 1969.
Armstrong’s longest, boldest walk took him about as far as Joe DiMaggio used to jog every inning — from home plate to about mid-center field. That’s like walking about a block from your hotel’s front door. Who knew?
Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong doesn’t do many interviews, so it was a surprise when he wrote to Krulwich to respond.
It is true that we were cautious in our planning. There were many uncertainties about how well our Lunar module systems and our Pressure suit and backpack would match the engineering predictions in the hostile lunar environment. We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth. That combination cannot be duplicated here on Earth, but we tried as best we could to test our equipment for those conditions.
There’s a lot more you can read at NPR. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
The Apollo 11 astronauts left a variety of items on the moon. In addition to the flag, the plaque, and the silicon disk with goodwill statements, they left the item shown above. It is a small replica of an olive branch, described as “less than half a foot in length,” a traditional symbol of peace. The gesture was intended to serve as “a wish for peace for all mankind.”
Photo: Great Images in NASA, via Fresh Photons.
NASA managed to put a man on the moon and broadcast the event live to half a billion people on earth. The footage wasn’t great, but we were glad to see it anyway. It turns out that the images from the moon to the earth were pretty good, but when they were relayed to NASA and then to broadcast TV, the quality degraded. However, the earth receiving station in Australia recorded the signal in rather good quality. But where is that tape? Stan Lebar, who was in charge of the original broadcast in 1969, and Apollo video engineer Dick Nafzger went searching.
After schmoozing his way into the stacks and sifting through boxes for months, Lebar found evidence that more than 140,000 tapes from the Apollo era had been checked out of the Records Center between 1979 and 1985 and sent back to the Goddard Space Flight Center. But from there, Lebar fell straight into a black hole. At Goddard, there was no record of where the footage had gone. So the tape hunters hit the phones and the Net, scouring the globe for Goddard retirees who might recall the boxes. It didn’t go well. “We’re dealing with memories here,” Nafzger says, “and those are pretty frail.”
Personally, I think they should look in the big warehouse next to crate that holds the Ark of the Covenant. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
(image credit: Flickr user evalin)
Update: We may see those original tapes yet. -Thanks, Ivan!
Craig Nelson offers ten lesser-known facts about the first human moon landing:
6. The “one small step for man” wasn’t actually that small. Armstrong set the ship down so gently that its shock absorbers didn’t compress. He had to hop 3.5 feet from the Eagle’s ladder to the surface.
7. When Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface, he had to make sure not to lock the Eagle’s door because there was no outer handle.
8. The toughest moonwalk task? Planting the flag. NASA’s studies suggested that the lunar soil was soft, but Armstrong and Aldrin found the surface to be a thin wisp of dust over hard rock. They managed to drive the flagpole a few inches into the ground and film it for broadcast, and then took care not to accidentally knock it over.
A newly released recording from a British control room monitoring lunar activity in the late 1960s revealed that the Russian actually tried to beat the Americans in the race to the Moon: just hours before the Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, a Russian spacecraft Luna-15 crash-landed there:
Sir Bernard Lovell, the astronomer, was among the team listening to transmissions coming from the area of space and began tracking the unmanned Soviet spacecraft Luna 15, which was trying to collect samples of lunar soil and rock and then return to Earth before the US mission.
The recordings from Jodrell’s Lovell radio telescope, which were hidden in archives until researchers found them, show the Russian craft orbited the Moon and crash-landed onto its surface at 15:50 on July 21 – just a few hours before the Americans lifted off. [...]
People in Jodrell’s control room can then be heard shouting "it’s landing" and "it’s going down much too fast" as they track Luna 15′s final moments before it crashes.
A voice is later heard saying: "I say, this has really been drama of the highest order."
A speech prepared in the event of the unimaginable happening during the Apollo 11 moon landing mission has recently surfaced. The document was prepared by President Nixon’s speech writer for the President to read should The Eagle be unable to leave the surface of the moon.
It is a hauntingly somber speech. One I am glad we are only learning about today.
Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.
Link – via regalbeagles
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by no not that alex.
