NFC - 40th anniversary of the moon landing - PICTURES

Since we celebrate tomorrow already 40 years of mankind's greatest achievement, I dug through my archives and found some Apollo related fotos from various places in the US:

- the beach house at KSC
- Apollo 1 launch pad, now a memorial
- VAB
- Saturn V at the KSC visitors center
- gantry for TV camera operator, after ignition, he would duck in the small bunker
- launch complex in today's Shuttle configuration
- upright full scale replica of Saturn V in Huntsville, AL
- "Craters of the moon"National park in Idaho, one of many places the astronauts trained (and somebody later shot a movie)
- White room
- JSC control room with original consoles
- Little Joe, used to develop the LES
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And some more shots:

- Alan Bean mural (Apollo 12 lunar pilot)
- capsule with protective launch cover
- LEM at the craddle of aviation museum
- astrovan
- The Outpost, astro watering hole in Houston
- lunar rock vault
- recovery basket
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Great shots! I still remember that day and have the Life magazine with the news details.

 

Great shots! Fantastic lighting in all of your shots. You know, I could see these in a set on Flickr in the not so distant future...

 

I remember vividly sitting and watching on TV. Even at the age of nine it was captivating. The magnitude of the achievement didn't sink in until years later. On a sad note, I read recently that all of the original video shot was erased. NASA is now working to restore copies obtained from various sources.

 

About 15 years ago, when I worked for Amoco, Neil Armstrong was hired as a motivational speaker for one of our meetings. He was a very approachable guy and stood around long after the meeting signing autographs and talking.

His behind the scenes stories were fascinating. The highlights were his description of the landing when he took control from the computers and with only a few seconds of fuel found a better landing site was breath taking. Up until that point I had no clue how close they were to a crash landing. Neal also said that he and Buzz Aldrin fully expected to never lift-off from the moon.

 

great shots!

 

Thanks!

Some of the stuff is off limits to the public, which is a real shame. Touring JSC for instance as well as some areas on KSC. I was very fortunate to have met some of the right folks at the right time.

Do you have any idea how lucky you guys were? Neil has become totally reclusive and isn't signing anything anymore. His signature goes for 4 figures, if one is for sale at all. I have met many astronauts, but never had the pleasure of seeing him in person, let alone getting his signature. I am however very happy and proud to have Buzz' signature (whom I met twice) on a model of the LEM and Collins' sig on a Command Module model I built.

In rural Switzerland nobody had a TV. But we were lucky as our neighbour was the richest man in town and actually had a B/W TV. So very late at night my parents took me over to the neighbour to watch the landing. I realized how important that must have been and got hooked on manned space flight. About a year later I was giving "tours" in our basement about manned space flight. Spent my childhood playing with Major Matt Mason action figures...

 

Amazing!!! As Andreas said, consider yourself extremely lucky.

Great pics as well....I too have been enthralled by human space flight since I was a child and can not wait for man to return to the Moon and beyond. That's a great story, Andreas!

 

I just hope I live long enough to watch humans set foot on Mars.

At the rate we're going (or rather not going) the same thing could be said about the moon, but I'm pretty sure I'll live long enough to at least see taikonauts on the moon.

And if I get really lucky I might even get to do a suborbital. 100 km altitude is all it takes to become a member in the world's most desirable club.

 

And it might be a service provided by Richard Branson. I personally believe that public investment into private space industry is the fastest/most efficient way forward here.

I am 25 so, God willing, I should catch Mars as well (but as you said at this rate, who knows? We MAY be lucky to even have manned space flight.)

 

Ditto, super photos Andreas.
I can't believe NASA wiped over the original video footage!!

 

I know! The significance of such documentation would have been lost on NO ONE....makes you wonder what the back story is on that one.

 

Couldn't agree more. Time for the private sector to step in. And luckily they do with Branson and Bigelow.

Not to worry: Garver just defined the #1 priority, which is Earth Science. Most likely that translates into ISS support for years to come. Then there are the Russians and the Chinese. And ESA isn't far behind with their efforts: First a transporter to and back from ISS for cargo, later man rated. And then the private sector.

Well, it sounds a bit weird. Not that I don't believe somebody taping over, but more the fact that this is the one and only copy. Think about it: Those images were transferred through several relay stations, each probably with a chance of taping the stream. And even at JSC I can't imagine they only had one tape of it. Probably several and one got wiped. And: What technical difference does it make whether they used their own tape or someobody else's (assuming it came from the same source) for their made over release.

 

I remember that day well. I was at my girlfriend's parents house(she later became my 1st wife) watching it on their B/W TV.

It was a tube type that had a bad tube. When it heated up the picture would go out, and her father would pull the tube out and put it in the freezer. After a few minutes, he'd put it into the TV again and we'd have an additional 10 minutes of viewing time.

 

Did you happen to catch the Apollo Astronaut news conference on Monday? It was VERY interesting...most of them seemed to be against the ISS and said that it was a big waste of time and money. Their rationale was that the future of manned spaceflight should be defined by exploration and innovation and less by scientific discovery. After I thought about it, the argument isn't surprising given the background and achievements of that group of men, but it was a bit of a paradigm shift for me. Low earth orbit has been the only form of manned spaceflight during my lifetime so it was interesting to get their perspective on it; it seems they view it as a "holding pattern" of sorts.

 

I saw it and wasn't surprised (if anything I was surprised to see Neil). Remember that only in the last Apollo mission a real scientist was part of the crew. And that after a long struggle against the fighter jocks. Things started to change with Skylab.

While I'm happy that we have the ISS as an outpost, it is fairly useless for exploration beyond LEO. Trying to go to the moon via ISS is about as pointless as trying to go to Mars via the moon. Assemble your crafts in LEO and off you go. No stopover required.

 

Now THAT would be a construction project!

Your comments are spot-on regarding the psychological makeup of the Apollo guys. Exploration first, science second. I loved the characterization in "From the Earth to the Moon" of the different personalities and the "evolution" of the astronauts from 11 to 17. I hope that Mars maintains its place as our main objective; it certainly is a worthwhile goal.

 

I still don't think it ever happened.

 

I've got a t-shirt for you. As soon as I get home I'll post a picture of it. Might be violating some TOS rules though. I might have to give myself a ban for a day.

 

Had the time of my life yesterday at Oshkosh meeting the folks from Virgin Space and some of their hardware.

We might not go back to the moon as a National endevour, but private space tourism has never been more promising.
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Was Richard there?

 

He was there on Monday, but not when I visited. There were however some Brits there part of the team. So I would assume he wasn't far away.

I got a kick out of meeting all 3 pilots: Siebold, Binnie and Melville plus the man himself: Rutan

 

Meeting Burt should have been quite an experience. I met him and his brother Dick quite a few years ago, and our conversation was most interesting.

 

I can imagine. I consider him one of the coolest people of all times.