[V.Narayan]

Apollo 11 : One small step for (a) man one giant leap for mankind

On this day 55 years ago Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on its surface. It was the first ever and till date only visit by humans to another heavenly body. In terms of sheer magnitude of effort, technology break throughs, logistics organization and dare to dream it is probably the greatest single endeavour of humankind ever.

As a young boy I sat up with my uncle and father to listen to the landing live on radio - TV had not come to India yet {and even if it had we could not have afforded a TV set in any case!}. I was drowning in sleep. I recall my uncle {still alive} saying that it would be impossible for India to ever develop such technology. And in those days of famines, abject poverty, shortages of everything yes it did seem it was a bridge too far. And yet today here we are with Chandraayan.

The Apollo space craft comprised of 3 parts - command module, lunar module and service module. The lunar module was the one which landed on the moon. The service module, the largest of the 3 was as the name suggests the supply truck and the command module was the nerve centre and the piece that came back to earth and was designed to withstand re-entry. While the Lunar module landed on the moon, the Command & Service modules circled around the moon and served as the lifeboat that would bring the 3 astronauts and the samples of moon rock back to earth. The complexities of weight amongst other factors required that one component circled the moon and maintain adequate velocity to swing the way back to earth.

Today of the 3 astronauts only Buzz Aldrin is alive at the ripe age of ~94.

May we explore space in peace.




Lift off from Cape Kennedy. The Saturn moon rocket comprised of 3 stages required to give the mission speed to break away from earth's gravity. They were designed by Wernher von Braun a German rocket engineer who had earlier designed the path breaking V-1 & V-2 rockets for Germany in World War 2.



From left to right: Neil Armstrong {1930-2012}, the Commander of the mission and the first man on the moon; Michael Collins {1930-2021}, Command Module pilot who circled the moon while his other two colleagues walked on the service; Buzz Aldrin, the Lunar Module pilot. He was the 2nd man to walk on the moon. All 3 were 39 years old when they went to the moon.



Lunar Module on its way to the moon surface with an Earth Rise in the background.



Command & service Modules orbiting the moon. The conical part on the right is the command module that returns to Earth. The cylindrical portion in the centre is the service module i.e. the supply truck {fuel, oxygen etc} At the left is the small rocket engine that will push them away from moon's gravity and drift the spacecraft back to earth. Before re-entry into earth's atmosphere the service module and attached rocket are jettisoned.



The Lunar Module on the Moon with Buzz Aldrin in the picture.



Lest we forget. The very first picture ever taken of Mother Earth as a whole was this by the crew of Apollo 8 in December 1968. this photo was published a million times across every newspaper and magazine in the world. Those were days of peace before social media and the internet overcame us! It serves as a reminder of the fragile ball in space that carries us and how we owe it to our future generations to preserve it.

[Rehaan]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[Naetik30]

To think they achieved this all, with a space vehicle that had lower compute power than what we have in an average mobile phone, is just mind boggling.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by Naetik30

To think they achieved this all, with a space vehicle that had lower compute power than what we have in an average mobile phone, is just mind boggling.

Beat me to it!

This is what amazes me about the whole space effort too. I have, casually lying around my house today, access to more computing power than the entire team at NASA did back then.

What the human brain can do with resources available. That's amazing!

Sadly, space as a goal, as an interest, seems to have died down. We seem to be looking inward and most mainstream reporting on science or technology seems only at the level of 'latest camera array in the new phone model x'.

Hopefully, with countries like ours reaching for the stars again, we'll inspire a new generation.

[Eddy]

This thread reminded me of a very popular quiz question in my school days - Who was the second man to walk on the moon?

This huge step for making also gave birth to some interesting conspiracy theories that made for some real entertainment