Apollo 11

Apollo 11: The Inside Story

by David Whitehouse  · 7 Mar 2019  · 308pp  · 87,238 words

remembered when our Sun is dying. Think of them as a time when for a moment we achieved greatness. All three of the crew of Apollo 11 were born in 1930. All three went into aviation and felt the sky was their natural element. Yet, having faced the danger of the unknown

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Borman, the commander of Apollo 8 – the first mission to travel to the Moon (on an orbital mission) – said he was worried about him before Apollo 11. ‘I thought he had difficulty coping with life’s simpler problems,’ he said. After he returned from the Moon, fame did not wear well with

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even over a cup of coffee. And then there was the squabble with Armstrong over who should step onto the Moon first … Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 crew member who stayed in the Command Module in lunar orbit while the other two descended to the surface, was born in Rome and spent

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But the era of these heroes in their fabulous machines was so long ago. Only 20 per cent of those alive today were around when Apollo 11 landed. Those who woke up that morning long ago feeling that the world had changed when frail humanity descended onto the Sea of Tranquillity are

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fine. From his superb walk in space on his Gemini mission, Aldrin went on to be backup for Apollo 8, which paved the way for Apollo 11. The Gemini project closed in November 1966. It had accumulated 80 man-days in space over ten missions. It had performed orbit changes, spacewalks,

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case, the backup shifted with the prime, so Armstrong in the normal rotation of commanding the third mission after being a backup, became commander of Apollo 11, which was considered to be the first landing mission, and Conrad lost his chance to be first man on the Moon by moving to Apollo

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venture towards the Moon. According to the capsule communicator for that phase of the mission, Michael Collins, soon to become a member of the historic Apollo 11 crew, Apollo 8 and the first leaving may in the long term be considered as more important than the first landing: I think Apollo 8

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was about leaving and Apollo 11 was about arriving, leaving Earth and arriving at the moon. As you look back 100 years from now, which is more important, the idea

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arrived at their nearby satellite? I’m not sure, but I think probably you would say Apollo 8 was of more significance than Apollo 11, even though today we regard Apollo 11 as being the showpiece and the zenith of the Apollo program but, as I say, 100 years from now, historians may say

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would gain, as opposed to what we would lose, the decision was pretty easy.’ On 24 March 1969 Neil Armstrong was told that his mission, Apollo 11, would be the first to attempt a lunar landing. He said: ‘During the flight of Apollo 8 I had three or four meetings with Deke

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had a lot of talks about who might be available and be right to be on that crew, that sort of thing.’ The crew of Apollo 11 – Neil Armstrong, Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and Michael Collins – were introduced to the press on 9 January 1969 and immediately the assembled reporters got down

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arguing what he considered to be obvious – that he, the lunar module pilot, and not Neil Armstrong, should be the first down the ladder on Apollo 11. Since I shared an office with Neil Armstrong, who was away training that day, I found Aldrin’s arguments both offensive and ridiculous. Ever since

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learning that Apollo 11 would attempt the first Moon landing, Buzz had pursued this peculiar effort to sneak his way into history, and was met at every turn by

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to be rolled out of the 140-m hangar doors of the VAB for two months of intensive checkout on Pad B. The components of Apollo 11 had already arrived and were undergoing tests in the VAB and in the vacuum chambers of the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building

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. Apollo 11 would roll out at 12.30, 20 May, one month and 26 days before it was to lift off for the Moon. A Foreign and

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Young, was different again, because it did go to the Moon – or at least within 14,300 m of it – in its rehearsal of the Apollo 11 mission. Stafford later said that it was not until he was placed into pre-flight quarantine in early May that he realized the magnitude of

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Capcom Charlie Duke responded, ‘Roger. I hear you weaving your way up the freeway.’ One of their tasks was to photograph two of the possible Apollo 11 landing sites. Both lay in the relatively flat Mare Tranquillitatis region. Attempting to shoot a photograph every three seconds as Snoopy passed over Site 2

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could do. Even so, von Braun said that it was still possible for the USSR to reach the Moon before the United States if the Apollo 11 mission was delayed, and he strongly believed that the Russians would undertake a piloted lunar flight in the latter part of the year using a

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Braun also talked of the more likely scenario that a Soviet robotic spacecraft would scoop up some soil and bring it back to Earth before Apollo 11 came back with its samples. In fact, the Soviet unmanned lunar sampler mission did indeed have two launch windows to reach the Moon in

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the Moon, the lunar sampler ended up in the Pacific. The USSR had four remaining lunar scoop spacecraft left and only once chance to beat Apollo 11. Things looked bleak; the Proton rocket had failed on all of its last five missions. Meanwhile the Apollo prime and backup crews rehearsed and re

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radar and the rendezvous radar were never operated at the same time because they were used for two different procedures at two different altitudes. For Apollo 11, however, both radars would be feeding information directly into the computer in the LM. A software review insisted that there should be at least

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eventually put their cosmonaut onto the Moon, was moved to the launch pad with lift-off set for 3 July, just under two weeks before Apollo 11. Just before midnight, the N1’s 30 first-stage rockets burst into life. Lieutenant Menshikov recalled that night: We were all looking in the

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five straight failures of the Proton rocket, it finally performed well, lifting their last hope off the pad three days before the scheduled launch of Apollo 11. They called it Luna 15. The Soviet media said it was just to study circumlunar space. ‘The greatest week in the history of the

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15 would fire its main engine to enter lunar orbit at 13.00 Moscow Time on 17 July, one day after the lift-off of Apollo 11. A second orbit correction on 19 July would position it over its landing corridor. If all went to plan, the lander would touch down

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didn’t take it seriously. Astronauts assigned to future missions would have had something to say if they had to forgo a landing attempt if Apollo 11 failed. So the day came. At 04.15 in the Spartan crew quarters in KSC Building 4, Deke Slayton tapped on three doors. ‘It’

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the two hopeful moonwalkers prepared all the equipment and clothing they would need in the morning. Nobody slept well. Collins remembers the wake-up call: ‘Apollo 11, Apollo 11, good morning from the Black Team.’ Could they be talking to him? He’d been asleep five hours or so. ‘I had a tough time

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worked perfectly and had returned with a soil sample it would have got back to Earth two hours and four minutes after the splashdown of Apollo 11. The race had been over before it was launched. Before lift-off procedures, Aldrin and Armstrong were scheduled a rest period but they didn’

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tonight, we give a special thank you, and to all the other people that are listening and watching tonight, God bless you. Good night from Apollo 11. The evening after the Moon landing someone placed a bouquet of flowers next to the grave of President Kennedy at the Arlington National Cemetery. Attached

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the Lunar Module ‘Intrepid’ and separated from Gordon in the Command Module ‘Yankee Clipper’. Their landing site was about 2,000 km west of where Apollo 11 had landed, on a surface believed covered by debris splashed out from the crater Copernicus some 400 km away. The exact site was a point

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where, 31 months before, the unmanned lunar scout Surveyor III had made a precarious automatic landing. The Surveyor site was a natural choice after Apollo 11: it was a geologically different surface, it would demonstrate pinpoint landing precision, and it would offer a chance to bring back metal, electronic, and

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assignments from George Mueller, who rejected the Apollo 13 assignments saying the crew was too inexperienced. Slayton then asked Jim Lovell, the backup commander for Apollo 11, and slated to command Apollo 14, if his crew would be willing to fly Apollo 13 instead. He agreed, and Shepard’s inexperienced crew was

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back now on the flights carrying Pete’s crew and my crew as the real pioneering explorations of the Moon. Neil, Buzz, and Mike in Apollo 11 proved that man could get to the Moon and do useful scientific work, once he was there. Our two flights – Apollo 12 and 14 –

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shirt with ‘Get Your Ass To Mars’ on it, a quote from the science fiction film Total Recall. The final member of the crew of Apollo 11, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, has had the quietest life of the three. Before the mission he had already said he would be leaving the

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then was the director of the world’s most popular museum, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. There he was reunited with the Apollo 11 Command Module which he piloted around the Moon. Collins wrote an autobiography in 1974 entitled Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys. It is regarded

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fellow astronauts. It has been said of him that if he had ever uttered something uninteresting then no one was around to hear it. The Apollo 11 crew, and the other astronauts, engineers, politicians, both American and Russian, who strode the space theatre of the Cold War, have left their mark

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especially those who walked upon it, broke the familiar matrix of life, and couldn’t repair it. For on the night of the climax for Apollo 11 there was, in a way, no return. No way back to their previous home. One commentator said just before the landing that we will always

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A Aaron, John 1 AFD Conference Loop 1 Agena target vehicle 1, 2, 3 Agnew, Spiro 1, 2 Aldrin, Edwin (Buzz) after Apollo program 1 Apollo 11 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 background 1 oldest moonwalker alive 1 and being first out of Lunar Module 1 Gemini 12 1 Moon landing 1

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, 2 quotes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 see also Apollo 11 Aldrin, Edwin Sr 1 Aldrin, Joan 1, 2 Aldrin, Lois 1 all-up testing 1 Allen, Harvey 1 ‘America’ (Apollo 17 Command Module) 1

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7 1, 2 Apollo 8 1, 2, 3, 4 Apollo 9 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Apollo 10 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Apollo 11 abort handle 1 Armstrong chosen as commander 1 astronauts on lunar surface 1 chosen for first lunar landing 1 descent towards lunar surface 1 first

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F 1 ‘Aquarius’ (Apollo 13 Lunar Module) 1, 2, 3 Armstrong, Carol (née Knight) 1 Armstrong, Jan 1 Armstrong, Neil after Apollo program 1, 2 Apollo 11 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 chosen as commander 1 background 1, 2, 3 death and memorial 1 first Moon landing contender 1 and being first

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1 Gemini 8 1 LLRV incident 1 and Lovell 1 Moon landing 1, 2 quotes 1, 2, 3, 4 on Apollo 11 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 recruitment 1, 2 see also Apollo 11 Armstrong, Stephen Koenig 1 Atlas rocket 1, 2, 3, 4 ‘Aurora 7’ (Mercury capsule) 1 B Babakin, Georgy

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Cobb, Geraldyn (Jerrie) 1 Collins, James L. 1 Collins, Michael after Apollo program 1, 2 on Aldrin 1 and Apollo 8 1, 2, 3, 4 Apollo 11 1, 2, 3, 4 on Armstrong 1, 2 background 1 Gemini 10 1 Paris Air Show 1 quotes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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see also Apollo 11 Collins, Pat 1 ‘Columbia’ (Apollo 11 Command Module) 1, 2, 3, 4 Columbus, Christopher 1 Command Module (CM) 1, 2, 3 Apollo 1 1, 2, 3 Apollo 9 (‘

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Gumdrop’) 1 Apollo 10 (‘Charlie Brown’) 1 Apollo 11 (‘Columbia’) 1, 2, 3, 4 Apollo 12 (‘Yankee Clipper’) 1, 2 Apollo 13 (‘Odyssey’) 1, 2, 3 Apollo 14 (‘Kitty Hawk’) 1 Apollo 15 (‘

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Karl 1 Dornberger, Walter 1, 2 Dryden, Hugh 1, 2 Duke, Charlie 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 E E-1 Moon probes 1 ‘Eagle’ (Apollo 11 Lunar Module) 1, 2, 3, 4 communication problems 1, 2 computer alarms 1 landing 1, 2 lift-off and docking 1 Earth, Lunar Orbiter 1

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, Alexei 1 Kraft, Chris 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Kranz, Gene 1, 2, 3 and Apollo 11 1 and Apollo program 1, 2 and Gemini program 1, 2 quotes 1, 2, 3, 4 on Apollo 11 1 on Apollo 13 1, 2, 3 Kuznetsova, Tatyana 1 L L1 Moon program 1, 2, 3

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Charles 1, 2 Lisa (dog) 1 lithium hydroxide 1, 2 Lousma, Jack 1, 2 Lovelace, William 1 Lovell, Jim Apollo 8 1, 2, 3 and Apollo 11 1 Apollo 13 1, 2, 3, 4 and Armstrong 1 Gemini 7 1, 2 quotes 1, 2, 3, 4 on Apollo 13 1, 2, 3

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Landing Reserve Vehicle (LLRV) 1 Lunar Module (LM) 1, 2, 3, 4 Apollo 8 1, 2 Apollo 9 (‘Spider’) 1 Apollo 10 (‘Snoopy’) 1, 2 Apollo 11 (‘Eagle’) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 communication problems 1, 2 computer alarms 1 landing 1, 2 lift-off and docking 1 Apollo 12 (‘Intrepid’) 1

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Shoemaker, Gene 1 Shonin, Georgi 1 ‘Sigma 7’ (Mercury capsule) 1 Sinus Medii 1 Sjogren, William 1 Slayton, Deke and Apollo 1 disaster 1 and Apollo 11 1, 2 Apollo-Soyuz docking mission 1 and astronaut recruitment 1, 2, 3 and astronaut selection 1, 2, 3 and Gemini program 1, 2 grounded

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configuration, 7 March 1969. NASA Gene Kranz was Mission Controller for several Apollo missions. Photo taken 16 April 1972, during Apollo 16. NASA’s official Apollo 11 crew portrait. From left to right: Neil Armstrong (Commander), Michael Collins (Command Module Pilot) and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin Jr (Lunar Module Pilot). Neil Armstrong

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and Buzz Aldrin practise landing in a Lunar Module simulator, July 1969. Apollo 11 launch, 16 July 1969. NASA Pat Collins, wife of Michael Collins, with their children Mike, 6; Ann, 7; and Kathleen, 10, after the successful

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launch of Apollo 11. NASA Charlie Duke, Capcom for the landing. To his left are Jim Lovell and Fred Haise. NASA Flags and cigars in Mission Control as Apollo

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Module after the first moonwalk. NASA The ascent stage of the Lunar Module, ‘Eagle’, returns to the Command Module, ‘Columbia’, 21 July 1969. NASA The Apollo 11 crew in the mobile quarantine facility in which they spent two and a half days en route from their recovery ship USS Hornet to the

Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11

by James Donovan  · 12 Mar 2019

the most part. The men behind the three doors were astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins. They constituted the crew of the Apollo 11 scheduled for launch that morning. In three hours, they would climb into a small chamber atop the 363-foot, three-stage Saturn V, the most

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. Apollo 10 was another Three Musketeers crew: “We were old friends and had total confidence in each other,” observed Gene Cernan. Not the crew of Apollo 11. When the men didn’t have to spend time together, they went their separate ways. They were, as Mike Collins described them later, “amiable strangers

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handle that. He would instead act more as a systems engineer, monitoring the spacecraft. Buzz was perfectly suited for that job. It was settled; the Apollo 11 crew would be Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin, with Lovell, Anders, and Haise backing them up. Borman had decided to retire from astronaut duty rather than

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, it was his insistence on finding the humor in any situation, even serious in-flight ones. Not every astronaut appreciated that much humor. Like his Apollo 11 crewmate Aldrin, Mike Collins had been raised in privileged circumstances, although his parents were not wealthy. His father was a two-star general, but no

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. Collins somehow managed to tell him that yes, he was. On January 9, 1969, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were announced publicly as the crew of Apollo 11. Five days later, Soyuz 4 launched into space with one cosmonaut, Vladimir Shatalov, aboard. Rumors about its intent immediately began to circulate in the West

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Control Center who plotted mission analyses. They began seeing each other and soon fell in love. They became engaged, and planned to marry soon after Apollo 11. But except for the occasional Sunday-afternoon barbecue at Glynn Lunney’s house, where the MOCR people would drink beer and eat burgers and oysters

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elder Aldrin contacted high-placed friends with connections to NASA and the military and tried to get the plan changed, with no luck. Meanwhile, the Apollo 11 crew continued to train. Armstrong and Aldrin spent many hours in a full-size LM mock-up practicing the lunar landing—including their egress onto

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our proceeding toward a July launch. “So, Rocco,” he said to Rocco Petrone, the launch director at Cape Kennedy, “go ahead with your hypergolic loading.” Apollo 11 was on for July 16. IV. DOWN Chapter Fourteen “You’re Go” If we get those first three guys back alive, we’re going to

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them. But if their relationship had been strained by the first-man brouhaha, it was even more so now. Since the day the crew of Apollo 11 had been announced, the astronauts had been inundated with interview requests from media outlets around the world. NASA’s public-relations department handled the demands

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. It was his previous experience with the LM. The prime flight directors, Kranz, Charlesworth, and Glynn Lunney, had been taking turns as lead flight. The Apollo 11 mission was Charlesworth’s turn, and as lead, he was the one who assigned the flight directors for the various phases of the mission. It

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discussed various abort situations, Armstrong remained silent, occasionally smiling and nodding. Kranz saw something in Armstrong’s manner that led him to believe that the Apollo 11 commander had “set his own rules for the landing,” the flight director wrote later—that he could “press on accepting any risk as long as

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Crichton, it featured a deadly, mutating microorganism that comes to Earth aboard a military satellite and wreaks havoc on the planet. Three days before the Apollo 11 launch, on Sunday, July 13, the book ranked number five on the New York Times fiction bestseller list. In addition to the long hours of

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touches he learned on those luxury cruises. He would always return to the Cape before a flight, and he had been providing victuals for the Apollo 11 astronauts since they’d moved into the crew quarters a month ago; he even prepared them overstuffed sandwiches that they wolfed down during their quick

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lunch breaks. Tonight, it was an easy dinner for less than a dozen people: Apollo 11’s prime, backup, and support crews, and Slayton. The only exception was backup LM pilot Fred Haise, who would be in the command module hours

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almost everything, it was noted, except the salad, asparagus, and fruit. Fifty-fifty—that’s what Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins estimated the chances were of Apollo 11 making a successful landing. They thought there were still too many unknowns in the descent from lunar orbit to the surface. Something they didn’t

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Collins pointed it out to Armstrong, who quickly pulled the pocket as far to the right as he could. Unlike Apollo 9 and Apollo 10, Apollo 11 fascinated the entire country—actually, the entire world. People from every state in the Union and many countries outside it had begun descending on the

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the N1’s failure died any Soviet hope of beating the Americans to a manned lunar landing. On Sunday, July 13, three days before the Apollo 11 liftoff, the USSR launched another of its Luna probes toward the moon. With characteristic reticence, TASS, the Soviet news agency, noted only that its mission

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, the three-ton Luna 15 was nearing the moon on a minimum-energy trajectory, and Chris Kraft was incensed. The possibility of a collision with Apollo 11 was remote, but he was convinced that the Soviets had more than once deliberately operated their communications at or near American radio frequencies during missions

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the engine shut down automatically and they were on their way to the moon. Von Braun’s rocket had performed flawlessly once again. “Hey, Houston, Apollo 11,” said Armstrong after shutdown. “That Saturn gave us a magnificent ride.” A short while later, Collins separated the command-service module from the third stage

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would be no radio interference. Late the next morning, the two held a short press conference to announce the news; that information was relayed to Apollo 11, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Friday afternoon, the astronauts took the TV camera out again for a twenty-minute shot of Earth, then

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. “Beautiful.” As they took it all in, there had been nothing but static from Mission Control. Then, right on schedule, they heard McCandless’s voice. “Apollo 11, Apollo 11, do you read? Over.” “Yes, we sure do, Houston,” replied Aldrin. “The LOI burn just nominal as all get-out, and everything’s looking good

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their spacecraft continued to circle the lifeless moon sixty miles below, they were asleep. Chapter Sixteen Descent to Luna The unknowns were rampant. Neil Armstrong “Apollo 11. Apollo 11. Good morning from the Black team.” It was six a.m. Collins, loosely belted and floating over the left seat with his headset on, took

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headlines. He reported that Miss Philippines had won the Miss Universe crown the night before, that congregations in churches around the world were including the Apollo 11 crew in their prayers, and that the Russian Luna probe was still circling the moon, though its purpose remained a mystery and its orbit far

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entered the LM. Once Collins had reinstalled the LM drogue and the command-module probe, Armstrong sealed the upper hatch. An hour later, Duke said, “Apollo 11, Houston. We’re go for undocking.” Three minutes later, Columbia, the command-service module, and Eagle, the lunar module, disappeared around the moon. When they

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trailer, and with a ballpoint pen, above the sextant mount on the wall of the lower equipment bay, he scrawled this legend: Spacecraft 107—alias Apollo 11 alias “Columbia” The Best Ship to Come Down the Line God Bless Her Michael Collins CMP Back in Houston, Steve Bales had left after the

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over to Garman, shook his hand, and said, “Jack, thanks for everything.” Then the two engineers got back to their jobs. At that point, the Apollo 11 crew was still in space, and Garman was providing backroom support for the onboard computer. Bales had to start preparing for the next mission, Apollo

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him around. When they got to the lunar-module simulator, which the museum had received from NASA—the same one Armstrong had trained on for Apollo 11 at the Manned Spacecraft Center—Armstrong stopped. He said, “Can I get in?” “Sure,” Buckbee said. Armstrong stepped in, moved over to the commander’s

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that: Albany Times Union, April 13, 1961; Buffalo Evening News, April 13, 1961. nothing substantive: Seamans, Project Apollo, 119. Soviet space program: Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo, 11–12. the Soviet people: Hardesty and Eisman, Epic Rivalry, xii. “into the cosmos”: Boris Chertok, quoted in Reichardt, “The Luna 1 Hoax Hoax.” “plenty of

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Oral History Project. psychological tests: In the documentary Mission Control (2016), Aldrin blamed “overuse of alcohol” in both his father and mother for his post–Apollo 11 problems, and in his books and other interviews, he has openly discussed, most fully in Return to Earth, the suicide and depression in his family

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: The Translunar Express “I am far from certain”: Collins, Carrying the Fire, 360. “I could see the massiveness”: “Summary of Flight in Their Own Words,” Apollo 11 Mission Account, NASA.gov. Collins pointed it out to Armstrong: Collins, Carrying the Fire, 363–64. “If we could solve the problems”: DeGroot, Dark Side

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Kranz, and others; author interviews with John Aaron, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Steve Bales, Bob Carlton, Mike Collins, and Jack Garman; Eric Jones’s superb Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal. Seventeen: Moondust “We were lucky”: Vine, “Walking on the Moon.” “Good…good…good”: Houston Chronicle, July 21, 1969. had known about beforehand

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, 2011. Bizony, Piers. The Man Who Ran the Moon: James Webb, JFK, and the Secret History of Apollo. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2006. ———. One Giant Leap: Apollo 11 Remembered. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2009. Boomhower, Ray E. Gus Grissom: The Lost Astronaut. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 2004. Borman, Frank, and Robert J. Serling

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Geographic, 2007. Harland, David M. Exploring the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions. Chichester, UK: Springer-Praxis, 1999. ———. The First Men on the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11. Chichester, UK: Springer-Praxis, 2007. Harvey, Brian. Russia in Space: The Failed Frontier? London: Springer, 2001. Heiken, Grant, and Eric Jones. On the Moon: The

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Space. New York: Firefly Books, 2006. ———. Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon, 1963–1972. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2013. Riley, Christopher, and Phil Dolling. Apollo 11: Owners’ Workshop Manual. Sparkford, UK: Haynes Publishing, 2009. Rosenberger, Jim. The Brilliant Disaster. New York: Scribner, 2011. Santy, Patricia A. Choosing the Right Stuff. Westport

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.” Esquire (January 1973). Bogo, Jennifer. “Blasting Off the Moon’s Surface.” Popular Mechanics (May 2009). ———, et al. “No Margin for Error: The Untold Story of Apollo 11.” Popular Mechanics (June 2009). Chaikin, Andrew. “Apollo’s Worst Day.” Air and Space (November 2016). ———. “Bob Gilruth, the Quiet Force Behind Apollo.” Air and Space

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in the Soviet Manned Program, Part 2: The Lunar Project/1968–1969.” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 4, no. 9 (September 1990). Pyle, Rod. “Apollo 11’s Scariest Moments: Perils of the 1st Manned Lunar Landing.” Space.com, July 21, 2014. Reichardt, Tony. “The Luna 1 Hoax Hoax.” Air and Space

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Astronautica (Mark Wade) Eyles, Don. “Tales from the Lunar Module Guidance Computer.” NASA Office of Logic Design, 2004. Jones, Eric M. “The First Lunar Landing.” Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal, 1995. Last revised July 7, 2016. thespacereview.com Thibodaux, Joseph, Jr. “Reflections of Joseph ‘Guy’ Thibodaux Jr.” www.lsu.edu/eng/docs

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taken from the LM shows the command-service module just prior to docking. Apollo 10, launched May 18, 1969, was essentially a dress rehearsal for Apollo 11— everything except for the lunar landing. This photo taken from the command module shows the LM dropping down to orbit the moon just eight miles

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. The “Great Train Wreck”: the Apollo command-module simulator at the Cape. The traditional steak-and-eggs breakfast on the morning of the launch of Apollo 11 (left to right): Bill Anders, Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin, and Deke Slayton. Armstrong (foreground) and Collins, followed by a technician, cross the access walkway to the

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command module. Apollo 11 launches at 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, 1969, from pad A, launch complex 39. Thousands of reporters watched from the press site

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to right) Jan Armstrong, Pat Collins, and Joan Aldrin meet the press on the front lawn. (AP) Mission Control during the Apollo 11 landing. The flight dynamics staff-support room during Apollo 11. Jack Garman, wearing a dark jacket, sits second from left in the front row. Garman (shown here on the right receiving

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an award from Chris Kraft after Apollo 8) was a computer whiz kid, only twenty-four during Apollo 11. Though it had the equivalent of only 72 kilobytes of memory, the rope-wired Apollo guidance computer was extremely reliable. Jack Garman’s cheat sheet

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landing. (Courtesy of Jenny Arkinson and Mary Garman) Flight controller Steve Bales would be on the hot seat when alarms began going off during the Apollo 11 LM descent. (left to right) CapCom Charlie Duke and backup crew members Jim Lovell and Fred Haise during the lunar landing on July 20, 1969

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surface. Armstrong during the lunar surface EVA, standing near the LM. Gene Kranz (left) behind flight directors Glynn Lunney (center) and Cliff Charlesworth during the Apollo 11 EVA. Aldrin took this photo of a tired but happy Armstrong in the LM after their moonwalk. The LM ascent stage rises from the lunar

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left) Max Faget and NASA officials George Trimble, George Low, Chris Kraft, Julian Scheer, Bob Gilruth, and Charles Matthews. President Richard Nixon greets the three Apollo 11 astronauts on the USS Hornet, the prime recovery ship. The crew is in the Mobile Quarantine Facility to avoid the potential spread of moon germs

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. New Yorkers welcomed the Apollo 11 crew in a record-tonnage ticker-tape parade on August 13, 1969. Forty-three years later, in 2012, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this

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photo of the Apollo 11 landing site from fifteen miles above the surface. The LM descent stage is clearly visible, and the dark lines are the tracks made by the

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gone to work for the JSC—or, as it was called at the time, the Manned Spacecraft Center—in July of 1969, just as the Apollo 11 capsule first returned from space. Thad was already in awe of the man. Gibson wasn’t an astronaut, but he was the closest thing a

…

to become real. At the beginning of the speech, Gibson talked about the first samples he’d ever seen when he started at NASA—the Apollo 11 samples, which were collected by Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. Gibson went on to describe how different the samples were from each

…

contained the list of random lunar samples that they would have to check and inventory. The samples were cataloged by mission; samples brought back by Apollo 11 began with the number 11, followed by the catalog number—the first Apollo sample was therefore 110001. The second, 110002. And so on. “And I

…

the carefully lined-up bags and vials containing the lunar samples. Then he reached for the bag with the markings that indicated it was from Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong’s first walk on the moon. Slowly, like he was walking down the aisle of a church, he crossed back to the bed

The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date

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occurring over the previous decade that would have allowed the prediction of this phase transition in humanity’s place in the solar system. Prior to Apollo 11, multiple unmanned and manned Apollo missions had been launched. Apollo 10 actually did everything but land on the Moon—it left the earth’s orbit

…

reasonable detail in order to debunk Goddard. Luckily, the Times was willing to print a correction. The only hitch: They printed it the day after Apollo 11’s launch in 1969. Three days before humans first walked on the moon, they recanted their editorial with this bit of understatement: Further investigation and

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Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future

by Robert Bryce  · 26 Apr 2011  · 520pp  · 129,887 words

Track Changes

by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum  · 1 May 2016  · 519pp  · 142,646 words

The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable

by James Owen Weatherall  · 2 Jan 2013  · 338pp  · 106,936 words

Southwest USA Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

A Crack in the Edge of the World

by Simon Winchester  · 9 Oct 2006  · 482pp  · 147,281 words

Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation

by Yossi Klein Halevi  · 4 Nov 2014  · 752pp  · 201,334 words

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

by Merlin Sheldrake  · 11 May 2020

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017

by Ian Kershaw  · 29 Aug 2018  · 736pp  · 233,366 words

A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson  · 5 May 2003  · 654pp  · 204,260 words

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

by Charles Montgomery  · 12 Nov 2013  · 432pp  · 124,635 words

Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929

by Markus Krajewski and Peter Krapp  · 18 Aug 2011  · 222pp  · 74,587 words

Buyology

by Martin Lindstrom  · 14 Jul 2008  · 83pp  · 7,274 words

Inside British Intelligence

by Gordon Thomas

The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention

by Simon Baron-Cohen  · 14 Aug 2020

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

by Richard Heinberg  · 1 Jun 2011  · 372pp  · 107,587 words

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

by Steve Silberman  · 24 Aug 2015  · 786pp  · 195,810 words

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth  · 9 Feb 2021  · 651pp  · 186,130 words

Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life

by J. Craig Venter  · 16 Oct 2013  · 285pp  · 78,180 words

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders

by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton  · 19 Sep 2016  · 1,048pp  · 187,324 words

The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health

by David B. Agus  · 29 Dec 2015  · 346pp  · 92,984 words

Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again

by Eric Topol  · 1 Jan 2019  · 424pp  · 114,905 words

It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear

by Gregg Easterbrook  · 20 Feb 2018  · 424pp  · 119,679 words

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy

by Philip Coggan  · 6 Feb 2020  · 524pp  · 155,947 words

The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives

by Ernest Scheyder  · 30 Jan 2024  · 355pp  · 133,726 words

Western USA

by Lonely Planet

The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery

by George Johnson  · 26 Aug 2013  · 465pp  · 103,303 words