Apollo 11 related question primarily for forum members under 50.
Coinstartled
Posts: 10,135 ✭✭✭✭✭
This is close enough to on topic with the 50 year anniversary coins on the market.
Us old guys that witnessed the Apollo (and earlier) US space programs often discuss that very memorable chapter in American history.
Those under fifty have no memory of the Moon landing missions that ended in 1972.
What are your thoughts on the great adventure that mesmerized the world for a few days in July of 1969?
Was it mans greatest accomplishment ever, even when considering the technological advances in recent decades?
Would you be interested in seeing future US missions to the Moon?
Any other thoughts are welcome, and the older folks are invited to weigh in as well. 
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Comments
Liftoff from Moon Apollo 17.
That moment of lift-off is one of my absolute favorite film clips from the entire Apollo program. Unreal.
Why we don't go back and it can't all be about money. I say let's colonize the moon fast before we've destroyed earth..
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
Easily the single greatest human accomplishment of the past 500 years. We won’t be forgetting Neil Armstrong’s name anytime soon.
Would you be interested in seeing future US missions to the Moon?
Yes! And elsewhere; Mother Earth is getting crowded.
As someone who's spent more than half my life a member of this message board and who has a degree in aeronautical engineering, I can give some thoughts. I certainly think it's one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of all time. Speaking as someone who's perpetually amazed by flight, I have a good perspective to say that the difficulty of the work we do today to design airplanes would be at a whole different level if we went back to the computing capability of the 1960s.
I saw Apollo 11 in theaters last week--my first time in a theater in probably 6+ years--and it was incredible. Not just the footage of the mission itself, but also everyone coming together. Beyond coming up with a similarly impressive technical accomplishment (a Mars colony?), I'd just love to see everyone get along over something incredible--I'm tired of everyone bickering and finding reasons to distance themselves from each other. One of the things I remember from 9/11 (and don't take this the wrong way), was that right after it happened, we were just Americans. Not divided by political party or other things. I can't recall another time in my life when that was the case, but it would be great to see a positive accomplishment bring people together like that. And not just in one country, but throughout the world.
After I saw the movie, I talked it over with my dad. While we have had many technological leaps since, so many of them are hard for the mind to understand. Computing power is improved when chip components are so small you can't imagine how small they are. A satellite that leaves the solar system has gone so far that you can't understand it. The moon is something everyone has looked at their whole life, and it's tangible. I'm not sure how to recreate that kind of an accomplishment.
One fun story about the lunar landing: Thanksgiving my sophomore year of college, I was checking email at my parents' house and my mom looked over my shoulder and saw an email from a professor. She asked my dad if he knew the name. Sure enough, my grandparents and my professor's parents were friends, and my dad had watched the landing sitting on the floor with my professor when they were both kids.
Great perspective Jeremy. Thank you for the contribution.
I'm hoping we can colonize, not just visit. To start, I'd be happy just to have a space station that didn't have a decaying orbit that required periodic boosting.
I'm glad we have NASA, but I'm also glad we have Elon Musk and SpaceX now.
Would love to see us go back. I can imagine how exciting it must have been at the time. My generation, including myself, takes it for granted.
It was an incredibly fascinating time and an achievement of science and engineering - and American 'can do' spirit - that has not been seen since then. Yes, the unity was impressive, I would love to see that again. I was just about to embark on my career travels at the time....and very proud to be an American...Always termed the 'proud Yank' by my British associates. That certainly was a period worthy of the term 'American Greatness'. Cheers, RickO
I think it was probably the greatest accomplishment of humanity to date. I have always been fascinated by it and I have twice tried to work in the space program. First when I graduated college (in any capacity) and then when I applied to the most recent astronaut class a few years ago (just made the age cutoff). I had no delusions about my candidacy mind you, but applied anyway. Carrier pilots with a 3.8 GPA in a STEM degree from Purdue are good candidates
I am very familiar with the variety of backgrounds from the most recent class but you know what I mean. Anyway I have always been fascinated by spaceflight with the Apollo 11 landing as the crown jewel accomplishment. Sy (regular collector here) has shared his first hand stories about many of these guys but from my brief experience meeting even a few STS astronauts, they are not 'regular' people. There is a certain depth, a certain intellect, and in some cases a certain undeserved humility, that sets them apart. I've also read several books including most recently Michael Collin's Carrying the Fire. One quote really resonated with me, in the context of his experience during the mission:
I have also watched and own several documentaries. One of the best DVD's I have is called Moon Machines. It shows you the less or non-famous people working on the program building the suits, running the wires for the computers, testing prototype guidance systems, etc. The scale of this effort was/is just beyond comprehension.
I do wish we would return to the moon, and I am pleased with the efforts of SpaceX and Virgin Galactic and other companies to once again push the frontier.
Given the somewhat primitive technology of the time, I think the moon landing is incredible! and yes, it was before I was born
My YouTube Channel
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-administrator-statement-on-return-to-moon-in-next-five-years
Don't quote me on that.
As a STEM field space geek astronomy nerd (age 64), I find immense inspiration in Apollo 11, and even more inspiration in Apollo 13, the most stunning and outrageous rescue mission in the history of humankind.
My father-in-law was an IBM electrical engineer who worked on flight guidance in the 1960s. He had great stories.
RIP, Clem.
It seems like as a society we have gone backwards. I've heard going back to the moon is too complicated now, even though the first landings had the computing power of a cheap cellphone. We now use windmills for power (again), have pirate issues we can't solve (again - contact the Dutch East India Company perhaps?). A new moon landing should be a piece of cake now.
Is our space program to become a theme park ride for multi-billionaires? It seems to me to be going in that direction.
Sounds good to me. Get it started then I’ll buy a ticket in economy class.
@3stars you are giving the computing power of the entire Saturn V/Apollo stack WAY too much power comparing it to the cheapest cellphone of our era. Just to put things in perspective, a current iPhone (granted it's more powerful than a cheap cellphone, but still, not too much more in the grand scheme of things) has more computing power than the ENTIRE North American Defense Command (NADC) of the USAF during the early 1970's.
Think about that. Clearly the NADC was the most important branch, of the most computerized variant of the US military, of the most powerful superpower of the era, with the ultimate computers of it's era, scattered across the US with multiple redundancy to survive a nuclear holocaust, and your basic iPhone is more powerful than ALL of that.
Needless to say, the Saturn V/Apollo stack, which was more or less completed using computer technology from 1965-8, had a whole lot less power than the NADC. I can't remember exactly, but I believe the computer storage on the Apollo Command Module computers was on the order of 16 Kb.
@Coinstartled @BryceM @airplanenut @matt_dac
With all due respect, let's put some things in perspective. Was it a GREAT accomplishment? Yes. The greatest ever? No, NOT EVEN CLOSE. Three things that come immediately to mind as possibly the greatest human accomplishments are control of fire, agriculture and writing.
Purely on a transportation field I wouldn't give it the greatest ever either. Ever hear about a thing called "The Wheel"? How about the first great off land technical transportation leap... rafts, boats, canoes etc.? In many regards I would consider this going onto water as the first intellectually guided evolutionary leap into a new environment.
I wouldn't even consider Apollo 11 the greatest human accomplishment of the last 100+ years, much less the last 500. How about the Wright brothers? It's awfully hard to get to the Moon if you can't even get a heavier than air machine off the ground. They even did it the old fashioned American way. They built it in their garage without Government funding.
Obviously I'm a BIG fan of the space program, but let's put things in perspective here guys, what humans have invented since they climbed down out of the trees is pretty frigging amazing in it's own right. To each era there are amazing accomplishments.
U.S. Type Set
It is very frustrating to me personally. We stopped taking risks a long time ago (before I was born) and now we just have a bunch of scientists circulating the globe doing whatever little experiments they can come up with without leaving the space station. Space is now boring for us younger members and all we have are black and white photos of the moon landing to see. Why not send a team to the moon again and send us back some color video in HD and show we are still in the game?
Guess we have to wait for China or India to land on the moon now while our scientists watch water float in space and they show they can grow cilantro. I wish we would go back and I hope my children someday see it.
Not many know this and many “news” outlets either glossed over or omitted this but China has landed on the moon on 3 Jan 19. Unmanned but they are catching-up fast.
https://www.history.com/news/china-plans-historic-landing-on-dark-side-of-the-moon
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Insight landed on Mars on 26 Nov 18.
My 2 cents.
We should just declare the moon ours and everyone else has to stay off it.
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
While I realize you're joking, the LAST thing we should want is an old fashioned territorial claims (like the Europeans did circa 1500 - 1900) kind of race in space. Furthermore, national territorial claims are illegal under the current Space Treaty, which was predominantly negotiated between the US and the USSR in the 1960's, and then the other nations more or less joined the Treaty.
I'm Proud to be an American, and I wish that our country was pushing manned space EXPLORATION more, but I'm glad that the ISS is International. Our partners on the ISS include Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency (which is comprised of 22 European countries, including all the big ones). I hope that further manned space exploration will be International with our current partners on the ISS, and hopefully a few other countries, such as India and South Korea. I just hope that the lead country for manned space exploration is the US.
As an aside, given China's proclivities in stealing technology and intellectual property, I do NOT CURRENTLY support working with China in space. Let them spend the time, effort, money (and potentially dead citizens) to build up to a true space power. Yes, it's nice that they currently have sent a lander/rover to the backside of the Moon. However, the US was contemplating doing a manned landing there in 1972, so what China is doing right now is not anything particularly earth shaking.
I will point out that China had more launches last year than any other country. A healthy percentage of them were military, which is unfortunate, but is to be expected for an up and coming superpower. Give them 15 - 20 more years of putting the money etc. into their civilian space program, and I think at that point they'd be a worthwhile partner to work with... e.g. they'd have some technology that would be ahead of ours, and we'd have some technology that would be ahead of theirs. At that point I'd be willing to have them join whatever international coalition we are part of.
U.S. Type Set
Apollo 11 was quite the achievement. Human touchdown on another celestial body. What was also impressive was the bringing home safely of the astronauts from the Apollo 13 incident.
Damn Skyman...now we have to debate the greatest accomplishment.
Apollo 11 was the epitome. Maybe the only event in the nation's history...hell the world, where you can remember where you were without a tragedy occurring.
Audacious of JFK to direct the nation to achieve such a goal in a decade. Indeed it was hard as predicted.
As for practical inventions, I nominate the telegraph. For the first time, the world could communicate across great distances at near instantaneous speed.
@SkyMan
Didn't expect you to be the naysayer........
Interesting.
Could you imagine if JFK ran for president as a Democrat today and during a campaign speech he announced that the USA would land a man on the moon and return him to earth.
Howls of protest would echo across the land.
Though the USA manned space program of the 1960s and 1970's, including the Apollo moon landings were a by product of the Cold War, it is an example of what human society can do if it puts its mind to it.
Interested ...... only I can get on the shuttle upon the end of this world
@Coinstartled @PipestonePete @BryceM @Hemispherical @airplanenut @ricko @matt_dac @asheland @Whit @3stars @SanctionII
Here's a little something to give you an idea of the difference between then and now with regards to technology. Here's a roughly 1:30 minute video of the Apollo 15 LM Data Card book (generically a book like this would be called a checklist). ALL of the Moon landings would have had one of these checklists, with slight modifications for each mission.
As I mentioned in a previous post, the data storage capacity of the Apollo computers was, by today's standards, laughable. Basically there was no such thing as storage from one procedure to another. So the astronauts had to write down everything, from the inputs given from Mission Control (MCC), to the answers displayed by their own computations on the computer, so that they could do multi-step processing.
They'd start by getting assorted input from MCC and write that in their LM Activation Card. That would then cascade through their PDI cards (Powered Descent Initiation... basically firing the LM's descent engine to go down to the Moon's surface). The Lunar Surface and the Abort/Ascent cards would again be a set of data inputed from MCC. Once they've launched from the Moon's surface they'd try and rendezvous with the orbiting CSM. This is called Terminal Phase Initiation, TPI, and they'd have to write down the numbers from their rendezvous radar, and check how things were going (see the second graph with circles on it) to make sure their rendezvous was progressing properly. The curved lines heading toward the center of the circle show whether they were on track or not. Notice again how in the lower right hand corner they had to write the information down, as the rendezvous computer could not hold even a fraction of the data. FWIW, the AGS page has to do with the Apollo Guidance System, and again is a bunch of values read up from MCC.
Needless to say, nowadays there wouldn't even be this checklist, much less handwritten data that needed to be saved for proceeding computer operations. It would all be digital.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KpKUm3EwI_w
U.S. Type Set
Interesting.
@SkyMan
Thank you for the information! Then versus now. Then, you had to use your brain. Now, not so much.
Far be it for me to say anything negative against flight, but there are different ways of looking at things. Everything you mentioned was the result of a lot of trial and error without much to lose in the process. Small, continuous developments look like incredible accomplishments in hindsight, but are the product of many incremental improvements. Yes, some, like heavier-than-air flight, have an obvious mark when achieved, but they are still the product of lots of trial and error. Other things, like language, simply get more complex over time.
Everything you've mentioned, while important, would have been reached eventually if the credited party hadn't done it. That's where reaching the moon is different. Unlike anything you've listed, it was the product of an enormous series of steps that all had to be done just right or the mission would have failed. Depending on the failure, it could have prevented any future missions. There was also just one shot to get it right. Lots of trial flights and air vehicles were made on the way to a short hop, which, over time, led to flight as we know it today. Yes, there were space achievements that led to the lunar landing, but the lunar mission still had so many unknowns.
Alternatively, let's just say that there have been a bunch of amazing developments in human history, and the lunar landing is one of them. This way we can also include the development of the 747, which is the greatest airplane every made
747 is a great airplane but does about what the 707 did but can hold more people...and a piano bar.
Moon is a quarter million miles from Earth. Since Apollo program ended, other than Alice Kramden, no human has been 1000 miles from the surface of our planet.