Kranz was slightly anxious about his team — not that their youth or inexperience would be a detriment, but that they might feel inadequate. Just because they had been selected last didn’t mean they were the leftovers. To boost morale, Kranz as their leader wanted some insignia for his team to rally around. His wife, Marta, suggested a vest: Kranz loved the three-piece suits that were in style at the time, and she loved to sew. In 1962, she suggested she make him a white vest to wear at his console…

Kranz wore his first white vest on Gemini 4, and it was an immediate hit with his team. He also became lead flight controller during that mission. During the first shift, Kraft turned to Kranz, said “you’re in charge,” and walked out.

But that’s only the beginning. Mrs. Kranz made many vests, in different colors, patterns, and fabrics, each for a different mission occasion. Link -via a comment at Metafilter

Apollo 8 wasn’t just a NASA mission; it was the biggest, coolest, most mind-blowing Christmas special of all time.

The men of Apollo 8 -Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders- had their work cut out for them. They were slated to become the first humans ever to leave the Earth’s orbit, enter lunar orbit, and see the far side of the Moon. But as their launch date approached in December 1968, NASA added an even more terrifying task to the crew’s to-do list: public speaking. The agency wanted the astronauts to host a live broadcast from the spacecraft on Christmas Eve. Worse still, the men were given only one cryptic instruction: “Say something appropriate.”

The astronauts were in a tough spot. When millions of people of different faiths and backgrounds are listening, what exactly constitutes appropriate? To make matters trickier, 1968 had been a grim year for Americans -the Vietnam War was raging, and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. had both been assassinated. How could the astronauts simultaneously orbit the Moon, introduce millions to outer space on TV, and buoy the American spirit?

The men were stumped. They began enlisting the help of media experts, who were mostly just as clueless as they were. The answer finally came from the wife of Joe Laitin, a former reporter who’d worked as a public affairs officer under five presidents. She made an elegant, simple suggestion: Why not just read from the book of Genesis?

The astronauts jumped at the idea. They reasoned that genesis had a broad enough appeal across religions to add a hint of spirituality without ostracizing non-Christians. Borman, the mission’s commander, had the first ten verses typed onto fireproof paper and tucked the sheet into his flight plan. The astronauts had their script.

The broadcast began with the crew showing some of the first images of Earth ever seen from space. Lovell remarked, “The vast loneliness up here of the Moon is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realize just what you have back there in Earth.”

Viewers were captivated. But as airtime dwindled, Anders revealed that the crew had a special message for all the people of the planet. He started with the familiar “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth…”

He read the first four verses; Lovell read four more. Borman recited the last two and ended the show, saying, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with a good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you -all of you on the good Earth.”

In the end, the crew’s effort paid off. Half a billion people tuned in, making it the largest TV event in history at the time, and the reception was overwhelmingly positive; even Walter Cronkite admitted that he had tears in his eyes. Of course, not everyone on Earth was thrilled; one atheist activist sued NASA for interjecting religion into a government project, but the Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit. Enough nitpicking! The Christmas Eve special won an Emmy, and Time made the crew the magazine’s “Men of the Year” for 1968. The broadcast was truly out of this world.

(YouTube link)

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The article above, written by Ethan Trex, is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the November-December 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

NASA has just released new images of the Apollo landing sites on the Moon (or Burbank sound studio, to all you conspiracy theorists):

The twists and turns of the last tracks left by humans on the moon crisscross the surface in this LRO image of the Apollo 17 site. In the thin lunar soil, the trails made by astronauts on foot can be easily distinguished from the dual tracks left by the lunar roving vehicle, or LRV. Also seen in this image are the descent stage of the Challenger lunar module and the LRV, parked to the east.

Link

Photo: Alan Boyle / MSNBC

Houston, we have an art exhibit. Seattle-area resident Dale Cox III has got what is probably the most out-of-this-world artwork you'll see today: they're made from components of NASA's Apollo lunar modules.

Alan Boyle of MSNBC writes:

Dale's father, Dale W. Cox Jr., picked up all this metal back in 1970, when NASA decided to cut the Apollo moon program short. The Apollo 18, 19 and 20 missions were canceled, and the tanks were no longer needed. The elder Cox, a former astronaut candidate who was familiar with the rainbow look of titanium, spotted the pieces in a California scrap yard.

"Basically, my dad bought everything he could get his hands on," Dale Cox III told me.

His mother, an artist, added metal embellishments to the titanium — and collaborated with another artist, Jae Carmichael, to present an exhibit of the pieces titled "Titanium One" in 1971. Titanium's color depends on the metal's alloy content, surface cleanliness and the temperature at which it's fired. Low-temperature firing produces a golden sheen, while higher temperatures result in shades of green, red, red-violet and blue.

Link

While we are all familiar with the conspiracy theory that the Apollo moon landings were faked, here are a few moon conspiracies that you may not have known. Some of these are more far out there then faking a moon landing (or are they?) What is your favorite moon conspiracy theory?

In their book “Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA,” authors Richard Hogland and Mike Bara claim that glass or crystal-like ruins can be seen on the lunar surface. The towering structures are said to be over a mile long. Photos of the ruins, they say, were photographed by Apollo astronauts and withheld from the public by a NASA employee for over 30 years.

Link

Worden, now 79, and his Apollo 15 crewmates David Scott and James Irwin suffered stinging NASA reprimands for bringing with them into space about 400 unauthorized postage-stamped envelopes (called first-day covers) with the intention of selling them later as souvenirs.

“It wasn’t as bad as people thought. We didn’t violate any regulations, we broke no rules,” Worden said Tuesday from his home in Vero Beach, Florida.

An investigation into the incident revealed that previous Apollo astronauts had carried unauthorized memorabilia on board. But Worden and his fellow crew members bore the brunt of the backlash.

Link

Over the past several decades, every mission that NASA has ever flown has first been practiced right here on Earth. This gallery shows dozens of training exercises from the Apollo missions through the shuttle launches.

In space, no one wants any surprises. To avoid being caught off guard where no one can hear you scream, every step of every space mission is practiced on the ground (or underwater, or in the air). We take a look back at NASA’s decades of creative methods of astronaut training.

Link

How to you kill two birds with one stone? We haven’t been back to the moon since the Apollo missions and we have a looming energy crisis. Former NASA astronaut Harrison Schmitt has a big plan to solve both those issues.

 Former astronaut, Apollo moonwalker, geologist and former Senator Harrison Schmitt has a modest plan to solve the world’s energy problems. All we need is $15 billion over 15 years and some fusion reactors that have yet to be invented.

Link

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy Blog points out that today is the 44th anniversary of the Apollo I fire that killed three astronauts: Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom. I was very young, but recall being shocked and devastated that three of our national heroes died doing what they do. Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, and next week is the 8th anniversary of the Columbia disaster. Dr. Plait published a tribute to all those astronauts and others who have died in the pursuit of space exploration. Link

Steve Eves is building a functional 1:9 scale Saturn 1B rocket. That was a type of rocket used in America’s Apollo program. At the link, you can see an extensive gallery of process photos as Eves constructs the model.

Link via Make | Photo: Rockets Magazine

The crater shown was created in 1970 by the Apollo 13 moon mission. Wait -you remember Apollo 13 {wiki}, don’t you? That’s the one where Tom Hanks James Lovell and his crew didn’t get to land because everything went wrong! Still, they ejected the third stage of the Saturn V rocket and sent it toward the moon’s surface. Forty years later, this is considered a fairly new crater. The picture was taken just last year. Read all about it at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link

(image credit: NASA, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

Everyone wanted a Moon tree. In 1975 and ’76, trees were sent to the White House, to Independence Square in Philadelphia, to Valley Forge. “One tree went to the Emperor of Japan. Senators wanted trees to dedicate buildings. We even did some plantings in New Orleans because the mayor there, Mayor Moon, wanted some,” says Krugman. There were so many requests that “we had to produce additional seedlings from rooted cuttings of the original trees.”

No one kept systematic records, notes Dave Williams. That’s why the whereabouts of the trees today are mostly unknown.

There may be a moon tree somewhere near you! Link to story. Link to website. -via reddit

Link via Popular Science

“Not only do these images reveal the great accomplishments of Apollo, they also show us that lunar exploration continues,” said LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “They demonstrate how LRO will be used to identify the best destinations for the next journeys to the moon.”

NASA officials say the next round of photographs, to be taken during the final mapping orbit, will have even greater resolution. Link -via Bad Astronomy Blog, where these pictures caused great excitement.

(image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University)

You can tell Apollo was faked because … only two astronauts walked on the moon at a time, yet in photographs such as this one where both are visible, there is no sign of a camera. So who took the picture?

The fact of the matter is … the cameras were mounted to the astronauts’ chests, said astronomer Phil Plait, author of the award-winning blog Bad Astronomy and president of the James Randi Educational Foundation.

In the picture above, Plait notes, “you can see [Neil's] arms are sort of at his chest. That’s where the camera is. He wasn’t holding it up to his visor.”

Link

(image credit: NASA)

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.

Link

The liftoff from the moon was intrinsically a tense time . The ascent stage simply had to work. The engines had to fire, propelling us upward, leaving the descent stage of the LM still sitting on the moon. We had no margin for error, no second chances, no rescue plans if the liftoff failed. There would be no way for Mike up in Columbia to retrieve us. We had no provision for another team to race from Earth to pick us up if the Eagle did not soar. Nor did we have food, water, or oxygen for more than a few hours.

Link -via Digg

Space tourism is still horribly expensive (a flight to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz spacecraft goes for about $20 million). But if you want, you can now step into the boots of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin by donning the replica of the iconic Apollo 11 spacesuits. It’ll set you back $9.5K (Tang not included): Link