39 years ago today,
Apollo 17 splashed down in the South Pacific, marking the end to manned
exploration of the Moon. What we learned from those 10 years of discovery was amazing.
It wasn't cheap or easy to send men to the Moon. In 1960 dollars, the financial cost was $25 billion dollars (estimated to be $170 billion in 2005 dollars).
The human cost is harder to quantify. While it's easy to note the three astronauts who died in
the Apollo 1 fire, others died
during training. Meanwhile, the long hours required for training left families bereft of a spouse and parent,
a hole that the wives and families had to fill on
their own.
Despite the long hours and the turblence of
1960s America and
the world, humanity accomplished a feat that reaped four benefits.
1: The rapid developement of fuel cells and computers
The
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was used for control, guidance and navigation of the Command and Lunar module. Developed at MIT laboratories (then headed by
Charles Draper), the computer required the large scale development of
intergrated circuits, a low cost amd low power chip. This propelled the development of hardware and software, as chronicled in
Moon Machines: Apollo Guidance Computer (
1,
2 &
3).
Yet as
powerful as the computer was, the amout of RAM it used is dwarfed by the size of
a font in modern day systems.
To run the AGC and everything else on the ships, a power source was needed. Batteries couldn't do the job, not with the size and weight needed for a 8-12 day voyage in space. Enter the
fuel cell,
a device that uses hydrogen and oxygen to provide a constant supply of electricity, along with a useful by-product, water. Developed early in the '60s, fuel cells saw
development and use in the Gemini program and
further refinement in Apollo.
These days, the technology is viewed
as a possible alternative to gas cars.
2: Insight into the orgin of the Earth and the universe
While Apollo was largely about
beating the godless commies to the moon,
scientific exploration was a major component of the program. Each mission carried numerous experiments, most of them bundled into the
Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package or ALSEP. The package contained instruments that measured the
internal structure of the moon, revealing that
moonquakes occurred, information that indicates
the moon did not form at the same time as the Earth. Also measured was the
"atmosphere" and the
solar wind that mixes with it;
the distance from the Earth to the Moon, within centimeters; and the
magnetic field.
But what about the 800 plus pounds of
rocks and dust brought back from the Moon? Surprisingly, they're similar to Earth rocks, giving weight to the
Giant Impact Theory. But the most amazing fact is that with no true atmosphere, there's no erosion. The Moon rocks, laying on the surface for billions of years, contain
information about the universe from early era of the universe, which also reveals the conditions of Earth shortly after it was formed.
3: A stunning collection of photographs and video was taken
If you just want to start clicking and viewing, check out the
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, which has an amazingly huge library of images and video for missions 11-17. Be warned that many of the videos are in the RealVideo format, so one would have to download the RealVideo player to view them. All the links below are to non RealVideo Clips from other sources.
Note that Apollo 11 made it into
Big Picture on the 40th anniversay of the landing. Oddly enough, there are
very few photos of Armstrong on the moon. Every classic and iconic picture from the mission is of Buzz Alrdin, taken by Armstrong.
Rumors persist that Aldrin was annoyed about
not being designated the first man out and delibrately snubbed Armstrong in revenge.
All the missions carried
still and TV cameras, even the unmanned Apollo 4 and 6, which produced the famous scenes of
booster stages separating. This enabled
Apollo 7 to be the first US mission to broadcast video from space. The next mission, Apollo 8,
continued doing live transmissions,
including the low resolution but moving Christmas message of 1968. Later, Apollo 9 produced remarbly
better color videos of the astronauts and Earth,
particularly the spacewalks.
With the tenth mission, the
increased quality and color provided not only
breathtaking video of moon but
pretty decent video of the astronauts inside the ships. Yet for the history making moon landing, that quality was
noticably absent for the historic first step, probably due to the more rigorous demands of having the the camera outside.
That was supposed to be remedied on Apollo 12, which had a color camera for the moonwalking astronauts. Unfortunately, the camera didn't come with a lot of instruction, so one of the astronauts ended up pointing the camera at the sun, which destroyed the video tube. Other than
the landing, taken with a 16mm camera from the pilot's window, no video exists of the crew on the moon.
Apollo 13 transmitted a
public broadcast, as all missions did. But later the crew ran into
a problem that resulted in no images from the lunar surface.
For Apollo 14,
good video footage of astronauts on the moon was finally seen, a trend that conintued for the rest of the program. Apollo 15, 16 and 17 increased the quality even further with a camera on the Lunar Rover, allowing the public to
come along for
the ride and
see men leave the moon.
4: A different view of ourselves and our home
As Apollo 8 circled the moon late in 1968, astronaut William Anders snapped
the famous color photo known as Earthrise.
Widely credited with igniting the environmental movement, the picture offered a startling view to humanity, that Earth was fragile and alone in space. As Anders himself
later noted "...we came all the way to the moon to discover the Earth."
This wasn't the first photo of Earth from the vantage point of the moon.
Lunar Orbiter 1 had done that two years earlier, in grainy black and white. But the Apollo 8 crew had
better cameras and more importantly was a sign that humans had actually traveled so far from home.
24 men traveled to the moon, thanks to the work of
400,
000 people. It wasn't easy or cheap, the cost was enormous,
arguably spent better elsewhere and perhaps, in the end,
the Apollo program was an anomaly.
But it was worth it.
Great post.
A good book we got recently is the NASA Apollo 11 Owners workshop Manual which has some great behind the scenes info and pictures of the whole Apollo program. Even though its pretty in depth and wordy my 3.5 year loves it and can't get enough of the pictures and stories.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 1:28 PM on December 19, 2011