I still get chills and misty eyes watching this. For those of us that watched the Apollo 11 moon landing live on TV, we had to be content with the voices of Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra along with simulated models and radio traffic. Here, thanks to this award winning new website, we can experience the landing as if we are in the cockpit of the LEM and listening in the live communications loop (both Air-to-Ground and Flight Director’s audio loop) from the beginning of the descent, to the touchdown, and the STAY/NO STAY decision making afterwards.
This website even keeps track of the pitch angle of the LEM from telemetry data, and tracks what console at Houston Mission Control is speaking. You can even watch the heart rate of Neil Armstrong.
Trust me, this will be the best 18 minutes you ever spend online. It makes me proud to watch.
From the About page at the website:
This project is an online interactive featuring the Eagle lunar landing. The presentation includes original Apollo 11 spaceflight video footage, communication audio, mission control room conversations, text transcripts, and telemetry data, all synchronized into an integrated audio-visual experience.
Until today, it has been impossible to comprehensively experience mankind’s shining exploratory accomplishment in a singular experience. We have compiled hours of content available from public domain sources and various NASA websites. Thamtech staff and volunteers generously devoted their time to transcribe hours of speech to text. By using simultaneous space and land based audio and video, transcripts, images, spacecraft telemetry, and biomedical data—this synchronized presentation reveals the Moon Shot as experienced by the astronauts and flight controllers.
Our goal is to capture a moment in history so that generations may now relive the events with this interactive educational resource. The world remembers the moon landing as a major historical event but often fails to recognize the scale of the mission. This interactive resource aims to educate visitors while engaging them with the excitement of manned-spaceflight to build a passion for scientific exploration.
Visitors begin the experience by hearing the words of Buzz Aldrin while simultaneously viewing the moon through the lunar module window. Moments later, the audience hears capsule communicator Charlie Duke inform flight director Gene Kranz that the astronauts are on schedule to start the descent engine. Throughout the presentation, visitors are able to customize their experience by jumping to key moments in the timeline. The timeline guides visitors to the crucial moments in the mission, including: program alarms (computer alerts), famous Go No-Go polls in the control room, low level fuel milestones, and landing.
“The Eagle has Landed.” Neil Armstrong’s words signal a technical milestone and successful execution of John F. Kennedy’s vision to land a man on the moon safely. Prior to these famous words, visitors see the synchronized audio communications, transcripts, video of the lunar module’s casting a shadow on the lunar surface, and biomedical telemetry of Armstrong’s heart rate surpassing 150 beats per minute!
The footprints from Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969 paved the way for five additional successful trips to the lunar surface over the following years. Thamtech takes pride in providing visitors with a glimpse into this and mankind’s enduring spirit for exploration.
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Click the image below to watch, listen, and experience the moon landing like you have never seen it before. – Anthony
P.S. For you Lewandowsky types, if you happen to run into Buzz Aldrin at a climate conference where he talks about his climate skepticism, it is probably best that you don’t call him a “denier” (moon landing or otherwise) to his face.
Here’s video of Buzz landing the punch heard round the world.
When we were young we were looking forward to having holidays on the Moon when we were older. What happened to the space program? Somewhere along the line we stopped reaching for the stars. We have placed to much emphasis on “it’s the taking part that counts”. No it isn’t! What counts is that you fought with all of your might to be the best. Not just the best that you could be but better than everyone else. That you tried to smash your competitors and take all of the glory. Not that you “took part”. F*** that, taking part is for wimps. Let’s get people back onto the moon and further. Not because we can’t build a robot to go there for us, but because it is our dream.
For some reason I get the impression that someone here follows John Ringo on Facebook. I think that punch video is getting a lot of play today.
Much of my manned space flight live TV watching was spent finding the network where the talking heads said the least and didn’t talk over the capcom and astronaut chatter. I even listened to a couple space shuttle launches on shortwave radio when NASA relayed the feed there.
One of the great things about the Apollo 11 landing was that Walter Cronkite was actually speechless for a few seconds.
I’ll watch the site later tonight. And cheer again for Buzz. It’s got to be galling to spend so much of your life training to get to the moon and then be accused of being part of a con.
The sequence brought a tear to my eyes … and I’m not even an American ! That was such a great day, what an achievement for those dedicated patriots and smart people at NASA … can’t say much for NASA today except that they aren’t a shadow of the past.
The punch brought joy to my heart … LOL !
Great! Just great!
Thanks, Anthony.
What planet does Bart Sibrel come from…? The lunar landing sequence was enthralling. Breathing again.
Thank you!
We need reminded of our accomplishments as a “unified” country more often!
That was a good punch. He rocked that moron’s world.
Great site, really enjoyed that. I remember watching on TV that night as a young squirt. I wish they had a graphic showing the trajectory; its really amazing.
Back in the early 90’s I worked at JSC on a small robotic Lunar Lander called Artemis. My job was to design the guidance system for each of the burns. The last burn, the powered descent phase as seen at this web site, was the most difficult. First thing I did was ask around to see if NASA had any old timers left who understood this maneuver. Sad thing was, no one did. So I spent hours at the JSC technical library scrolling through microfiche records of technical papers from the 60’s. I found several written by an engineer named George W. Cherry around 1963. He really should get the credit for that maneuver. From this theoretical work, called “e-guidance”, I was able to create a new guidance algorithm and improve on it.
First time I got it working in the simulator I plotted out the trajectory. It wasn’t what I had imagined. The vehicle comes screaming in almost horizontal, parallel with the Moon’s surface for almost the entire flight, until the very end when the pitch to vertical maneuver begins. Most people might imagine this long benign vertical descent as seen in Kubrick’s 2001. Not at all. I can imagine why Armstrong’s heart rate was well over 100.
It was a hoot to think that back then I was probably the only person at NASA who knew how to land on the moon. I left NASA several years later after that program and several other advanced projects were canceled. It was the Apollo program that inspired me to go into aerospace engineering. We just don’t have the will to embark on such adventures any more.
Like most of us who regularly come here I come primarily for the latest on the climate wars, but every now and then Anthony throws us a curve. What a curve. A wonderful achievement landing on the moon, what a wonderful achievement building WUWT.
Loved the landing sequence , as Niff said , breathing again.
As for Bart Sibrel , what a pathetic excuse for a human being , watch Sibrel`s body language toward the end , He`s trying to use His size , youth and crazy to intimidate what He sees as just an old man . Trying to intimidate someone who`s ridden into space on something could have easily become pretty much the world`s biggest non-nuclear bomb ? Well that was never going to work .
I remember clearly watching it – they had the studio mock up ready as the live transmission was a bit sketchy, and the stand in was starting to back down the ladder then the live feed came back on and we got to watch the real thing. Pretty sure about that..
Good for Buzz having known an 82 year old retired Ranger-82nd Airborne- I would not want to have eve considered making Buzz mad. He got exactly what he deserved…
Thanks, Anthony for the web link!!!
It sounds wonderful, but I’m happy with my childhood memories of being allowed to stay up for the event. And the punch is a classic.
When heroes lived among us. It was a great time to be alive.
I remember the day well – I spent the morning riding horses with a friend in the foothills west of Calgary, Alberta and listened to the landing on the radio; then driving back into Calgary to watch the first steps on the moon. Such a dichotomy.
Great day.
The Landing Sequence is Wonderful !, Absolutely Wonderful !
Thank you Anthony. And thank those who worked so hard to get all of this important information together and compiled into a format that conveys the reality of the events as they occurred every second of the way, 43 years ago. This is a major achievement.
I can’t believe that an otherwise intelligent website would champion the placement of men on the moon as a worthwhile accomplishment. This was nothing more than a political stunt to show that we had rocket technology and could threaten the Soviet Union. I ask, what was learned that could not have been learned with robots at much reduced expense? As we are doing regarding Mars. There is no good reason to send men to Mars as there was no good reason to send men to the moon.
Where’s the thumbs up / down buttons when they’re needed?
“When we were young we were looking forward to having holidays on the Moon when we were older. What happened to the space program?”
I have it from the head of NASA himself that Muslim Outreach is a much more important goal then your silly “space program”!!!
@ Jim Butts says:
May 1, 2013 at 8:33 pm
Well Jim. At least you admit Buzz took the trip.
@ Jim Butts: Your name says it all.
I am SO PROUD to be an American! That night (or day, depending on where you were), the entire WORLD (except Kruschev and his gang) were Americans. For a few hours, as we gazed up at that quiet, bright, silver disc in the sky and prayed, or sat glued to the television set, or listened to the radio, or heard the news from the barefoot boy running back to the village in Africa, we were all Americans.
And that one of those brave men, our heroic astronauts, who insisted on celebrating communion while on the moon, should be harassed by a man not fit to wipe their helmets AND USING THE BIBLE (“…even the Devil…”), is despicable. How old was Buzz Aldrin in 2011? WAY TO GO, BUZ! Always a hero.
@ Codetech and all the other software engineers here, DO YOU REALIZE WHO SAVED THE DAY for that mission? The computer programmer! As I recall, from a 1969 the computer was given code that made it do far more calculations than it needed to and it was bogging down and kept turning the alarm on that would auto-shut down the engines ON THE SPOT with only minutes to re-write the code, the programmer DID IT and the alarms stopped and the flight continued — WHEW! The astronauts got most of the glory, but, one (see, I can’t even recall his name!) stalwart computer programmer was a hero that day. As were hundreds of others whose names most of us will never know. But, they were there.
And so, too, are you, all you fine scholars who doggedly pursue the battle for truth with wit, grace, and integrity. YOU GO, WUGT Science Heroes!
God, bless America!
“… from a 1969 ‘Readers Digest’ article (September, I think)… ” [oops!]
Why don’t we have a Buzz Aldrin day? / Moonwalk Parade. Where all realists can come together and properly celebrate the acheivements of this man…
Jim Butts says:
May 1, 2013 at 8:33 pm
======
click-off
Maybe we can get REM to headline the event.
I remember this like it was yesterday. Watched it on a black & white TV with a hundred other soldiers in Tuy Hoa, Viet Nam. It was the only TV in the barracks. Everyone was proud, amazed, and astonished at what we were witnessing. Still gives me goose bumps.
And, Mr. Stealey, I am so proud of YOU. Thank you for fighting for the freedom of the South Vietnamese and Cambodians and for all of us who wanted to stop the spread of that deadly plague, Communism. You guys had them on the run. Then, the politicians yanked you back home. I’m glad you made it back. I (virtually) shake your hand, soldier.
A thousand years from now no one will remember B. Hussein Obama, or Iraq, or the EU, or Vladimir Putin, or Puff Daddy, or Al Gore.
But they will remember this.
[And thank you, Janice.]
I’m old enough to have watched this landing live at my friend’s house (we were in high school). Having grown up following the space program, I took the technology and skills for granted; that didn’t really change after my stint working at NASA/JSC (Space Shuttle simulators) shortly after college. But watching this now, I am awestruck at the accomplishment; it’s like watching Lindbergh fly across the Atlantic solo. We’re talking about technology nearly half a century ago, being used to land men on the moon and then return them safely to earth. It staggers me, but it also gives me great hope for the current private space ‘race’ going on, and I hope I live long enough (just turned 60) to see humans set foot on the moon again.
GREAT SHOT BUZZ: Thank you Anthony!!!
“… Buzz Aldrin day? / Moonwalk Parade. Where all realists can come together… ” [Papiere Tigre]
Hey, Mr. Tiger, that sounds, GRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrEAT!
That physicists, mathematicians, chemists, computer scientists, mechanical engineers, and all the others PUT A MAN ON THE MOON is an accomplishment that SHOULD be honored every year. And I think, while America and its “We can do it!” attitude ought to be celebrated (in the hope that such an attitude might once again be the norm, here), such a parade’s main focus should be on the achievements of the various scientific disciplines demonstrated by the Apollo missions. All the hardworking, genuine, scientists OF THE WORLD should be honored every year.
A bunch of science geeks put a man on the moon.
That was really something.
I had always wanted to do this – not that I ever had the knowledge, ability or access to information to actually write the software. The only thing else I wanted to see was a simulated lunar surface view of the LM descending, skipping over the boulder field and landing. That can be V2.0 of their video.
I know you can bounce a lander onto Mars, then operate it by speed of light radio (which has a delay of 4 to 24 minutes depending on the position of Mars orbit).
We’ll need some more speed, to get a human there and back ?
U.K. (US)!! I sure hope I’m not too late, this time. THANK YOU, so much, for your very kind and encouraging compliment to me a couple weeks ago (re: my first post). YOU MADE MY YEAR. I’ve been looking out for you (and posted a thank you once, alas, you were long gone). And, you CAN write.
Gratefully yours,
Janice
@ Janice Moore says:
May 1, 2013 at 10:19 pm
A film strip showing the group photos of the participants, with vintage era photos of specific engineers and crew and then a fade into the current of the person.
And maybe a tribute reel showing those who have passed, like they do at the Oscars.
From the Wright brothers first flight in 1903, it took less than 44 years for the US to break the sound barrier and 66 years to leave the Earth and touch the Moon. What a great achievement for all humanity, from a time when science, the US government and NASA were dedicated to the discovery and wonder of Truth. Now our tax dollars give us Carbon endangerment findings and Moslem outreach. Thanks for the reminder Anthony….when we reclaim our democracy, we can again expand humanity’s boundaries.
dbstealey — my pleasure.
http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com/ Was fantastic !!!!!!! It’s great to see and hear all the background as it happened.
Now as for Buzz hitting that Bozo, I sure wish he hit him harder. ;-))
@ Papiere Tigre — yeah. And have “Give Me One Moment in Time [when I’m more than I thought I could be]” by Whitney Houston … when I’m racing with destiny…
@u.k.(us) We’ll need some more speed, to get a human there and back ?
If we had a real goal of doing it, then we would be able to develop the technology to go faster. Humans can do anything if they try. The problem is, we are not trying anymore. Too much worrying about “terrorism” and “security”. If all of the money that we spend in all of the wars and propping up other governments was put into a space program we would probably be building the first MacDonald’s on Mars next year.
… playing in the background, rewoitoiaejirw2983y49hunfvbhdasj I am too tired!
R.O.
F.W.E.
(a little mystery for the WUWT bloggers to solve, heh, heh, heh – Clue: The captain of the Titanic never entered that into his log.)
Oh, no, don’t try to solve the string of chars in line 1!! AAck — that was just me demonstrating how tired my brain is!
What have we learned from you? Perhaps you can be replaced by a robot, too.
For reasons that escape me you did not touch at all on the knock-on effect of the space program. When that butterfly flapped its wings a direct consequence was this website and other electronic and technological marvels that fill our lives and save many more. So very much we take for granted was kick started by the space program and the support industries and research laboratories that sprang forth to fill the need created by that program. I can create a precise connection between the launch of Sputnik, an event I remember well, and my very successful career in the high tech fall-out produced in the historic wake of that launch that is as clear and concise as if written by James Burke himself. Reading your post one would think you hadn’t lived through any of it.
http://buzzaldrin.com/the-man/faq/
Question: I’ve heard that the MTV Video Music Award statuette is named after Buzz. Is this true?
Answer: Yes, the VMA “Moonman” award has been alternately referred to as the “Buzzy” and images of Buzz on the moon were used for MTV’s original station identification. In fact, the network aired “20 Things You Didn’t Know About the VMA’s” as part of the 20th Anniversary of their awards show, featuring Buzz as the inspiration for the “Moonman” statuette. MTV former President Tom Freston is a personal fan of Buzz’s, and recently presented him with the statuette inscribed “To the original Moonman.”
I bet MTV would provide the float decorations, just from left over VMA gear.
dbstealey says:
…Watched it on a black & white TV with a hundred other soldiers in Tuy Hoa, Viet Nam. It was the only TV in the barracks.
>>> Meanwhile, back at the Tropic Test Center in Panama (home of the jungle training school, an alma mater of special forces, astronauts, and thousands of GIs), where I was learning the Army version of tropical meteorology and its varied uses, we all took a break to watch it on our barracks’ B&W TV set next to the pool table. Like db, I got a good case of goosebumps too, despite the sticky hot weather. We were lucky to see it at all – the US Southern Command and the Panamanian TV station got together and bought up all the undersea cable bandwidth that evening to pipe the show across the Caribbean. If they hadn’t, we would have not seen it until tapes were flown down from Miami the next morning.
So on a warm, still, drippy equatorial evening this motley crew, dressed in jungle pants and sweaty T-shirts, watched humanity’s high water mark live on a B&W television next to a pool table.
I took some Kodachromes of the broadcast, and will send one to Anthony, in case he’d like to add it to this post.
I remember seeing that video of Buzz duking that doofus years ago. I was almost as proud of him at the time as I was the day we sat in front of the tv watching that historic landing. The new presentation is terrific. It gives one a much better notion of just how exceptional those guys really were.
DavidH, Take a look at this video which uses archival navigation data from the LM telemetry, combined with Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images to simulate a wider view of the landing.
Also, the Orbiter space flight simulator available at http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ will allow you to fly a landing yourself. It’s a pretty steep learning curve, but doing a successful landing on target is a remarkable feeling. (Of course a modern autopilot puts it exactly on any point you choose, with no skills needed.)
Janice Moore says:
“A bunch of science geeks put a man on the moon.”
And only using vacuum tube computers! It is that old American “Can Do!” attitude that I miss most of all.
Thanks, Anthony.
@bfwebster: Yes, it was a bunch of geeks who put men on the moon. And machinists. Pilots, Draftsmen, Engineers, Secretaries, and Payroll clerks. That’s really the miricle in the Apollo-Lunar missions — so many people, so little time, doing what had not been done before.
This website’s presentation of the simultaneous communication loops between CapCom and Eagle and the “Loop” at JSC is great in that it shows a small part of the teamwork at play so necessary for success.
The movie Apollo 13 did justice to that sense of teamwork.
Likewise, the HBO miniseries, From Earth to the Moon covered so many under-appreciated aspects of the space program. Episode 5, “Spider” was the 8 year history from the “crazy” idea of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous to the Grumman team development of the LEM on impossible deadlines. And absurd weight budgets. “What if they don’t need seats?”
Read “Failure is Not an Option”, by Gene Kranz.
They have vid of Buzz Aldrin giving Buzz Lightyear space travel tips. How cool is that.
Buzz Aldrin Day at Disneyland. Give it a think.
Those videos bring back a marvelous event. I’m from the UK, but I felt just the same pride as the LEM came in to land – pride for science and engineering! From the UK, at least, the Voice of America seemed to bring the most detailed and interesting accounts of every space mission.
Could anyone imagine then, that the lunar missions would be cut short before they were finished, or that there would be no meaningful continuation of manned space missions, or that by 2013, the US would only be able to put astronauts into space by sending them abroad!
I guess politicians can spoil anything.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the website to do much – does it only work in the US?
Jim Butts says:
May 1, 2013 at 8:33 pm
Were you christened BUTTS or did you achieve it ?
@Janice Moore 8:53 pm
It is true that there was some heroic software work arounds developed in the hour the LEM was behind the moon before GO/NOGO descent. Frankly, trying to debug and patch machine language an hour before powered descent just shows how close to the line of death NASA played then. But that wasn’t in regard to the 1201 landing alarms.
One of the key people that made of the Apollo 11 landing a success was Dick Koos and the team that designed and ran the lunar landing simulations. From “Failure is Not an Option” (pages 268-272), six days before Apollo 11 launch, the Mission Control White Team with Kranz leading, went in for a full landing simulation with the Apollo 13 crew. Koos told his team to load Case 26. Three minutes into the landing sequence Koos nodded to his team, “Okay, gang, let’s sock it too them and see what they know about computer program alarms.“
It was a 1201 program alarm. The Guidance controller was seeing the alarms thinking the computer was sick and shortly called for an ABORT. Kranz ordered the ABORT, which is a very dicey maneuver, but saved the crew in the simulation. But Kranz was “really unhappy with Koos.” The last simulation should have been one that landed on the surface.
Steve Bales worked the night with his team and the next morning understood that Koos was right. Bales and Koos worked up four hours of simulation exploring computer alarms. By July 11, Steve Bales had a descent program list of computer alarms that would require an abort — 1201 and 1202 were NOT on that list. Kranz writes that if not for Koos’ last simulation problem, the Apollo 11 landing would probably have turned into a harrowing abort.
Computer problems and re-programming aside – and though crude, they were very important to Apollo’s success – Armstrong had to pilot the LEM himself “over” and around a rock-strewn landscape that no one anticipated. Landing directly on the boulders would have been fatal, landing safely but skewed or twisted would have prevented take-off later. Landing off-centered (hitting one with a single leg) would have also been fatal.
We did not have the autopilots, the sensors, the controllers, the radios and radars and robots to do it. He had to land and guide it himself by hand. And ended up landing with only seconds to spare of fuel. (You can here them counting it down…)
Science fiction note: no science fiction writer had ever written a story of any lunar landing that was televised live to the world. The idea of doing that never occurred to fiction writers.
Marvellous, but in a way sad, because we are looking to the past for evidence of mankind’s capacities and talents, there being little sign of it today in the old democracies. As it stands America has no chance of duplicating this achievement anymore, never mind thinking in terms of an manned expedition to Mars. The rot of political correctness, misplaced self importance, the entitlement culture, corrupt government and fantasies such as equality and fairness have combined with other factors to corrode the spirit that made the US so inventive, courageous and important to the world. It is difficult to convey how disappointing this conclusion is.
Friends:
I, too, watched the Apollo 11 landing live. And a few years ago I had the great thrill of walking the length of the last remaining Saturn V.
But the greater thrill was before that.
In 1968 Apollo 8 went around the Moon for Christmas. For minutes the vehicle was behind the Moon and out of any communication so would have to do its deceleration burn ‘on its own’. Had its crew got it wrong then they would have died away from Earth, and the later Moon landing may not have happened. We waited – we waited – we waited – we waited. And then the vehicle came from behind the Moon, the news came that the burn had worked, and people around the entire world let out a collective sigh of relief. That moment is even more memorable than the later “One small step for man”.
And Apollo 8 was important for another reason. Indeed, to date it is more important than Apollo 11.
Apollo 8 took a photograph of the Earth rising above the Moon’s surface. For the first time people saw the Earth as a small, seemingly fragile orb floating in space.
Before that image all peoples at all times had considered the world as a provider of threats to be opposed; storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, diseases, predators, etc.. After that image many people saw the world as a fragile globe needing our protection. Environmentalism became a major philosophy with international influence; e.g. the AGW-scare.
Yes, Apollo 11 was a great achievement and I thrill at the memory of it. But Apollo 8 was the game-changer.
Richard
The glory days of NASA are long past. By the eighties, no astronaut was safe in their hands. At present it is simply a stale, giant bureacracy searching for a role, flirting with the global warming crowd and besmirched by the Hansen and Schmidt types. I am not impressed by today’s NASA. Mission over and long gone.
As for saying it is a fake they are still pinging signals off kit left on the moon to study it’s position and orbit around earth and other features of both earth and moon
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1971-008C&ex=09
You can’t do these sort of experiments if the kit is not there.
PS I did like the punch. For an older man he still had some power in his arm beautiful.
James Bull
I was 5. Well, almost 6. But watching this “live” in grainy B/W fuzz-o-vision is still one of the most memorable moments of my entire childhood. I’d be lying if I said I remembered exactly what I saw, it probably involved Walter Cronkite and I think I recall also wishing the announcers would shut up so I could hear the REAL stuff they were talking over.
Since Neil Armstrong passed away I have watched all of the NASA videos I could find, and my respect for the men and women involved with NASA in the 60s is about as high as it can get. The real money was in defense, and these people essentially “repurposed” the DoD hardware for this. The LEM was nothing more than crepe paper with a bamboo frame (yes, I’m exaggerating… but not much). In that era my brother, the artist and near-pro Model maker, built a perfect replica of the LEM from a kit. I’m still not sure where he got the gold foil, but I remember he used charcoal ash from the BBQ for the lunar surface and dropped pebbles into it to make craters. Clear memories.
My memories of the actual landing are as grainy and fuzzy as the ancient vacuum tube TV I watched it on. This presentation makes it crystal clear, accessible, and relevant. I never knew about the loops (read the user comments, some are from people actually involved in 1969).
And Janice Moore, if you’d like to learn more about the computers of the era, try YouTube. There are a few incredible series on the history of computing, and even some Defense Department videos explaining the immense tracking system they built, at a time when even the most remotely useful computer filled a multistory building. In fact, IBM built some of the Saturn 5 guidance computers into the rings between stages, where they were jettisoned when no longer needed.
I started my career in programming back in the era of 4k RAM on a Z80 in 1979, and at that those were powerful machines compared to what NASA was using. In 1982 I was working for a seismic data processing company that had a VAX 11/780 and several surplus NASA Raytheon computers. Anyone else remember DECUS? Anyone else ever get disciplined for using too many CPU cycles during an overnight shift?
To put this in perspective, I just bought two Raspberry Pi computers, each the size of a deck of cards, each $35, each more powerful than those two million dollar VAX’s. One of them is now a 1080P media center (it’s a bit slow, but the playback is hardware accelerated), and the other is my development web server. They have 512Mb of RAM, run at 1GHz, hardware GPU, hardware H.264 encoder/decoder, Ethernet, USB, and a 16Gb SD card from Walmart for $10. If I could only time-travel to 1960 with these things…
Well done NASA. How the mighty have fallen.
I listened to the landing on a Short Wave radio in a car in the mist driving back to college across the African highveldt late at night. I was so moved and excited and proud to be a human being that I welled up.
In 1995 I visited Cape Canaveral and stood in the dark, with a hundred or so Americans while the whole landing was emulated on the same kit that was used originally. At the end one guy in the crowd shouted out “America” and I welled up again and I felt a huge surge of pride for all Americans.
Watching this now I have once again welled up because I understand the spirit and astonishing teamwork that America puts into such grand projects as this and also all of the much smaller adventures I have had with so many Americans in my business and private life.
What a beacon of hope and progress you are. No wonder there are malcontents and self haters trying to pull you down when you stand head and shoulders above so many.
richardscourtney says:
May 2, 2013 at 2:47 am
– – –
There is a very old movie long pre-dating the moon landings which shows an Earth rise. When I hear the story of the real image of the Earth rise, I can’t help to wonder if it’s a bit of exaggeration of the reaction to this image. Surely someone at NASA must have seen that movie and therefore the “surprise”, the statements I have heard stating no one thought of this, rings hollow to me.
The movie was released in 1902.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon
“Landing safely on the Moon, the astronomers get out of the capsule and watch the Earth rise in the distance.”
Now we, US, rest on our laurels, our thorny crown misplaced. The music has died.
To put the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programme into context, the total cost from when Kennedy said go to Apollo 17, the last lunar mission, was $25.4bn
In the same period of time, US women spent more on cosmetics!!!
garymount:
re your comment to me at May 2, 2013 at 3:42 am.
Perhaps the Earth-rise picture was planned. I don’t know. As you say, it seems likely that a photo of the Earth from the Moon seems likely to be one of the things scheduled to be obtained from the first manned flight around the Moon.
But the effect of that photo is not altered by whether it was planned for Apollo 8 to obtain the photo or it was fortuitously obtained.
For me, as I said, my personal greatest Apollo memory is the waiting for Apollo 8 to return from behind the Moon while hoping all had gone well with the burn, and the immense relief of everybody when told it had.
And there was the Christmas message to the world from the space capsule. Oh, yes, Apollo 8 was the ‘big one’ for me. After that we ‘knew’ a Moon landing flight was going to happen.
Apollo 11 came close especially the LEM landing with its exhausting fuel, but we were seeing what we thought we would see. Not until Apollo 13 was there another ‘fingers crossed’ mission as severe as Apollo 8, and Apollo 13 is memorable because it went wrong.
Heroes. Long may they be remembered. They achieved one of the two greatest achievements of humankind: only the eradication of smallpox surpasses it.
Richard
Yes, what happened to NASA? Political correctness. They should leave Earth monitoring to NOAA and develop rockets.
Jim Butts says May 1, 2013 at 8:33 pm
There was no good reason to get out of the trees either; and we all know what damage fire does. And that language thing just leads to arguments.
garymount:
It always amused me, that one. The Earth doesn’t rise to an observer on the moon… it just appears to rotate. The only way it can rise is if the observer is in orbit.
My future bride and I watched this through the outside display window of a Penny’s. Of all the things you barely remember, this is one I remember in great detail. Great post.
MY memory of watching this event on a tiny B&W portable TV in my college apartment at UCSB (Isla Vista) includes Armstrong humming quietly, as he back down the ladder, “Heigh Ho Heigh Ho, Off to Work We Go”.
Honest question –> Does anyone else share this memory?
Thanks so much Anthony! Talk about memories… I was a student operator of a proton linear accelerator at USC. Hughes Aircraft rented the accelerator to calibrate the proton sensors for Apollo 8. We worked all weekend 24 hours a day. What a thrill to know that our sensors made it to the moon and back.
NASA may have degenerated into a typical governmental bureaucracy, but the can do attitude is alive and well in the USA. Scalable Composites just flew the Virgin Galactic rocket, we have two firms delivering payloads to space on their new boosters, it’s looking like a privately developed throttleable engine for vertical landings is going to be successful, that’s a lot of space activity which doesn’t require taxpayer subsidies.
Since when was success measured by what the Federal Government did? They actually subcontracted virtually all of the manufacturing of the Apollo components. The first Apollo systems didn’t have any integrated circuits at all – the technology was called cordwood, and the components were stacked like cordwood between the two circuit boards. The components were actually, in some cases, spotwelded together. We were still learning how to do space qualified assemblies.
Despite what you are told, very little electronics technology came from the space program. In fact, much of what we’re told about the results isn’t true at all.
I’m delighted to see a private group win the Ansari X-Prize for the first private launch of a vehicle into outer space with SpaceShipOne. I look forward to Virgin Galactic being successful, and resulting in private space flight becoming a regular means of traveling around the world.
At the time that Apple has over $100 billion in corporate cash, the idea of some company spending $20 billion developing a viable moon spacecraft isn’t science fiction any longer. There are funds available, and if there’s a market for the services, they will come.
Took this for granted as a kid.
Now I well understand the huge effort it truly was, right at the extremity of the technology of the time.
However I am still in awe of the incredible courage of these men, calmly going about their work in spite of having an intricate understanding the risks involved. Armstrong’s heart-rate during the landings showed that they had the same feelings as ordinary men, but could calmly over- ride any fear.
And this was not the sort of courage of a quick adrenaline rush leap into danger, it was facing years, month, days, hours then minutes of danger.
Here is a bailout of the landing simulator during training by Armstrong. He just went straight back to the office to catch up with work after that.
http://www.airspacemag.com/video/Armstrongs-Close-Call.html
Here is a great interview of Neil Armstrong in recent years. 51 minutes, but well worthwhile.
Jim Butts: May 1, 2013 at 8:33 pm
I find your attitude a bit sad. Did you never get in the car and just drive to see what was around the next bend, or take a vacation to see a place you hadn’t been before? When you were young, did you not take walks through the woods just to see what you could find. Did you never take on a challenge just for the sake of the challenge? It is to people who took the challenge, went exploring, and tried new things that we owe our way of life. We are very fortunate that we are not all as incurious as you.
The moon landing was a highlight of my youth. I remember arriving home from a trip just in time to turn on the TV (small, B&W) to watch the landing. It raised the spirits of the nation, and surprisingly of most of the world, like nothing before or since. Sending a robot would not have had that impact. Sending a robot does not require the incredible courage of those astronauts. Next time you get a chance, sit in a replica of a space capsule at a museum and get a feel of what it must have been like, lying on your back, enclosed, constrained and helpless, waiting for a controlled explosion to be triggered beneath you.
I am a little confused: the esteemed Lewandowsky writes alarmist acclaimed reports how none of us WUWT readers believe the moon landings actually happened because we are all conspiracy-driven denier nutters. Yet everyone here – one sourpuss excepted – is so enthusiastic about the NASA moon landings. Could it be that there was a flaw in the great Lewandowsky’s research?
However, as already commented, those were the glory days of NASA. Now it is a bloated stale bureaucracy, prouder of Hansen’ rantings than Armstrong or Aldrin’s achievements.
I was watching on a small B&W TV brought to work for the occasion. The parallel chatting was great – the excitement of the Go/NoGo calls, the moment of greatest stress filled with alarms and people knowing whether or not they could safely be ignored….absolutely amazing. Brought back all those memories and imprinted a, ‘where were you when…’ moment on us all.
@Clay
Thanks for your story and the hints of many great things happening behind the scenes. There are many more heroes behind stories like this and the SR-71 which was still secret at the time.
Clay Marley says:
May 1, 2013 at 7:29 pm
I assume not too far removed from a parabola. At least that’s what you’d get for a constant pitch and thrust. For a practical landing, especially if the landing zone is rockier than expected, the vertical pitch and fly-around is rather important. 🙂
There was a PDP-11 program for GT40 and VT11 displays that was a passable lunar lander simulator for the day. I landed safely on my first try after watching someone else a few times. The best landing was next to McDonalds where an astronaut would get out, walk to the restaurant and order a Big Mac and fries to go.
I did pretty well trying to keep the velocity vector at about 1/10 the position, both X & Y. At the start, it was pretty much 100% retro thrust until it slowed down enough that I could start using the 1/10 target.
http://technologizer.com/2009/07/19/lunar-lander/2/ has some of the story behind it.
Clay Marley says:
May 1, 2013 at 7:29 pm
Wow. Or dreadfully depressing. 🙂
After the last launch of the Space Shuttle, even before it reached the ISS, I was telling anyone who would listen that America no longer had the ability to launch someone into Low Earth Orbit.
After it landed, I mentioned that was okay because we couldn’t bring anyone back, either.
Uh – uh.
A lot of the support equipment was tubed and partially tubed (Oscilloscopes and other test equipment), and the high-powered transmitters, but, little else was ….
.
“Buzz Aldrin giving Buzz Lightyear space travel tips. How cool is that.” [P. Tigre @0043, 5/2/13]
SUPER cool. “To infinity… AND BEYOND!”
Yes, Science Heroes of the World Day at Disneyworld or land would be GREAT.
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@ Stephen Rasey [re: 0041, 5/2/13] — Thank you for your correction and fine amplification re: computer programmer heroes.
Thank you to you, and CodeTech and A LOT OF OTHER POSTERS, for all the GREAT videos, books, and other resources to learn more about this topic.
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Dear Mr. Huffman, M. Painter, et. al. — take heart! The music has not “died.” [See, e.g., W. S. Briggs k@ 0738, 5/2/13] It is still playing brilliantly and beautifully, but it gets drowned out a great deal of the time by a lot of NOISE…. ‘”…saaaaave the plaaaaanet….. saaaaaaaaaaaaaaave the planet!!!!!…. Muslim self-esteem……………………. orgaaaaaaaaaaaaanic………….. America is arrogant…not special………. you drink too much soda pop……………… cars are evil!!!!!!!!!!!!!…………… consssssssssssssssensusssssss…. ” — by those ANNOYING announcers (yeah, CodeTech, they never change, do they)
Truth stands the test of ———— time.
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Mr. Butts, you might want to take a tip from “A Boy Named Sue” and be extra sweet.
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Amazing Armstrongs heart rate at 150bpm and he’s reclined in a seat!!! glory days for NASA, OH how we wish for the old NASA to come back
If an alien landed and asked why mankind deserves to live I would mention the first moonlanding and nothing else.
No need to be an American. If you’ll remember their words from the lunar surface, it was “one giant leap for all mankind.”
I agree that I’d wish we were doing much more aggressive space exploration, but I think that’s an unfair knock on some of NASA’s accomplishments. The asteroid rendezvous with the controlled crash landing at the end was remarkable. The Curiosity landing was another incredible feat. Oh, and btw, NASA and partners have had a continuous human presence in space on the ISS for over a decade.
My dad worked on the Apollo program and we lived near Cape Canaveral. I remember watching the launch and for a change, my mom let us stay up late when they landed. I was only 7, but still understood the significance of the event. Of course i wanted to be an astronaut. This is an excellent video, and shows how a complex task was broken down into manageable components and people. Amazing what we were able to do with what were fairly primitive hardware in comparison to today’s capabilities.
I recently had the great good fortune to talk to Buzz one-on-one for about an hour. Wonderful person and extremely sharp. And, no, I did not bring up AGW as a topic.
Having grown up with the space program, it really saddens me when I look at the latest rover on Mars.
For whatever reason NASA / JPL managed to put only 1 US flag on the rover and they put it in a location which never shows in the images we get from it during normal operation. Best I can tell from the one or two images I saw that had the flag on it, looks like it’s on the underside of the rover.
It’s almost like we do not want to offend the rest of the world with our success. Very sad.
This may get lost in the multi-tude of comments but I am currently listening to an interview with the Canadian Astronauts who have been to space. One of them (I think it was Chris Hadfield but not sure) mentioned they have oxygen sensors on the exterior of the space station. He commented on how powerful the relationship between the earth and the sun is as the O2 level goes up when the station is on the sun side, and goes down when they go into the dark side. He also noted that when the sun was more active, the oxygen levels went up. I was hoping they might comment on solar wind and atmospheric shedding but they didn’t. Nevertheless, the oxygen variation from night side to day side was extremely interesting.
@ Dan in California says:
May 2, 2013 at 1:46 pm
There is the beauty of it. You don’t have to bring it up. Doesn’t even have to be an add-on in the parade. With Buzz Aldrin there’s so much to cover that his views about the AGW scam are incidental. Well covered and on record. No need to tub thump.
Ric Werme says:
May 2, 2013 at 10:52 am
Lunar Lander
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There are still PDP 11/70’s running. Amazing longevity. (of course I still have a VIC20 and a Commodore 64 in the basement and I just threw out a bunch of punch cards for some IBM 360 engineering programs last year.) I remember “flying” the Lunar Lander with the PDP 11/70 and the old textual dungeons and dragons and the first versions of CAD with Intergraph as well as the first generation of geographic information systems. Then came VAXes and then Victor’s and Trash 80’s and then PC’s and Mac’s. (and a host of others – remember the Osborne?). Computer systems have flourished but sadly it seems the Space program has not. Once proud NASA seems unable to even do good programming these days, but then I have become biased.
What a fantastic link, thanks Anthony. I can heartily recommend the book How Apollo Flew to the Moon by David Woods to everyone. It very clearly explains what the engineering and navigation challenges were and how they were overcome; a fascinating read for any engineer or science buff. Having read it, I could follow most of the jargon in the link.
Wow. Thanks, Anthony. Thanks, http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com.
“I started my career in programming back in the era of 4k RAM on a Z80 in 1979, and at that those were powerful machines compared to what NASA was using.”
Actually, the Apollo Guidance Computer would have had similar capabilities, executing about 100,000 16-bit instructions per second but with 64k of memory. If I remember correctly, it also had some sophisticated capabilities the Z80 lacked, such as updating counters on an interrupt without having to run a full interrupt routine.
Go here if you want to play with one: http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/
There’s a great video on youtube showing how it was built: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIBhPsyYCiM
just superb thanks anthony
And another thought. I recall a few years ago, the MSM saying the Chinese will catch up to us and send a man to the moon. Uhm… wait, using stolen technology and the blue prints from 1969, they will be where we were over 4 decades ago? That’s caught up? Ugggh.
MarkG, that seems a bit too advanced… the Apollo 11 AGC appears to have the following specs:
2K RAM (an upgrade from the original 1K version)
32K ROM (upgrade from the original 24K version)
1MHz
1KHz external signalling
4 x 16bit registers (plus some special purpose registers)
It would appear this same AGC was used on all Apollo 7 – 17 missions and some afterward.
An interesting article about it: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2009/07/20/how-powerful-was-the-apollo-11-computer/
Not arguing or fighting or anything, to be honest I would have been surprised and VERY impressed to find the specs you quoted… but I’m pretty sure that 64K of RAM in 1969 would have been prohibitively large (of course, cost was not really a factor when it came to Apollo)
As usual, wonderful material here on Anthony’s site.
Some might enjoy this very informative video:
Silicon Valley could have been called Microwave Valley.
Time capsule story: http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/amazon-ceo-and-his-expedition-team-recover-apollo-f-1-engines-from-ocean-floor/
“I’m pretty sure that 64K of RAM in 1969 would have been prohibitively large”
I believe those numbers are _words_, so presumably 4k bytes of RAM and 64k bytes of ROM. And yes, the computer was a pretty sizeable box.
From what I remember, a typical instruction took about 10 clock cycles at 1MHz, vs around 8 on the Z80 at 3-4MHz. But many of the Z80 instructions were only 8-bit so there’s probably less difference than that implies.
I wish I had been present when that scumbag reporter was annoying one of the greatest human beings that has ever lived. I would gladly have punched him on behalf of Buzz and all decent people.
Jim Butts says:
May 1, 2013 at 8:33 pm
I can’t believe that an otherwise intelligent website would champion the placement of men on the moon as a worthwhile accomplishment. This was nothing more than a political stunt to show that we had rocket technology and could threaten the Soviet Union. I ask, what was learned that could not have been learned with robots at much reduced expense? As we are doing regarding Mars. There is no good reason to send men to Mars as there was no good reason to send men to the moon.
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Back in the 17th Century, there wasn’t any good reason for the Brits to send ships to northern America to set up permanent settlements there, either.
But there you are.
I was five and I still remember those days. Fantastic.
Interesting to see from this app that they had twitter back then as well.
😉
A phenomenal presentation. Thank you for posting it, Anthony.
I watched the landing on my 14th birthday. My sisters kept talking about how they just couldn’t believe it was really happening. I recall thinking, “What took them so long, Werner Von Braun had it all worked out before I was born”. (I had no inkling how failure modes multiply in complex systems.)
I had immersed myself, for years, in everything I could read about the NASA hardware and missions. People say they felt a tingling down their spine as when the LEM set down and they knew we’d actually done it. For me, that tingle of triumph came when they were still in Earth orbit checking out their systems, and I heard Houston tell them, “You are go for TLI.” That’s TransLunar Injection, the burn to depart Earth orbit for the moon. Up until then I had feared that they’d find something wasn’t quite right, and scrub the mission. I had confidence though that once they were “go”, everything had been checked, so nothing would go wrong.
I had by that time realized that I’d never be an astronaut, because to even be considered you had to first be a hotshot pilot, and to be accepted for training as a fighter pilot you needed 20/20 uncorrected vision. My goal had become rocket scientist.
It’s all different now, of course. A high-school friend of mine, Mae Jemison, later became a shuttle astronaut, although not a pilot. I became a telecommunications engineer.
Many thanks Anthony. Truly inspiring.
@Doug Jones
Thanks so much for that link to the descent video. I’ve finally had time to watch it and the ensemble of the moon landing that Anthony posted – couldn’t view at work because video streams are blocked (oh, and I guess because I’m supposed to be working too).
Mark X, thanks so much for the link to the Neil Armstrong interview. Indeed, worthwhile.
Humility. It really is the key, isn’t it. The brains of the prideful let them achieve, but only the humble achieve greatness.
I worked at “The Cape” during my engineering student days, summers ’67 and ’68, first as a mail courier (TWA) and second as student engineer (General Electric Apollo Systems). A very small spoke in a very large wheel. Never-the-less, great pride and the most exciting jobs of my 65 years and counting.
Why was the sky black when they landed on the moon? Shouldn’t it have been full of sunshine?
No atmosphere to scatter/fluoresce and provide ‘back-lighting’ is why, Anjum.