Men Walk On Moon

Yes it’s been 39 years since you would have woken up to that famous headline :

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0720.html

July 20, 1969: the Eagle landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on it.

A truly great human achievement.

See the landing and the 1st steps again at:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/A11Landing.mov

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11f1092206.mov

The series Moon Machines on the Science Channel is worth checking out if you’re interested in learning more about the massive effort required by hundreds of thousands of individuals to get to the moon before 1970 by building the Saturn V rocket, the Apollo Command Module, the Lunar Excursion Module, spacesuits, the navigation computer, and the lunar rover.

One interesting fact I learned from the series: women’s sewing played a huge role in building 3 critical systems of the Apollo space craft system.

  1. Sewing the command module’s parachutes (need those).
  2. Sewing the navigation programs in rope form because they didn’t have enough memory back then to use more conventional storage devices (without these program “ropes” the trip from the Earth to the moon would have been impossible).
  3. Sewing the spacesuits up that made the walk possible (by a company that, before receiving the NASA contract, made wonder bras).

July 21, 2008 | Filed Under Science

 

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