Every Day Is Special: Apollo

Showing posts with label Apollo. Show all posts

April 13 - “Houston, we've had a problem here...”

Posted on April 13, 2022

This is an update of my post published on April 13, 2011:

Apollo 13, on the 13^th of April, 1970:

Oxygen Tank No. 2 exploded.

Oxygen Tank No. 1 also failed.

Three astronauts—close to their intended mission of landing on the moon, but about 200,000 miles away from Earth—were suddenly left with a spaceship that had lost its normal supply of electricity, light, heat, and water.

Astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise reported the bad news to Mission Control, in Houston, Texas, just after they had wished everyone a nice evening and said goodnight.

The astronauts had to use the resources of the Lunar Module as a “lifeboat”...

This is Swigert helping to jury-rig equipment
to keep the astronauts alive.

...and they had to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, following directions that engineers radioed from Mission Control.

Finally, after six long days in cold, dim, hardship conditions, with Haise suffering from a urinary tract infection due to lack of water, the astronauts reached Earth, safely re-entered the atmosphere, and splashed down.

Mission Control celebrating after the successful splashdown.

Naturally, the Apollo 13 astronauts didn't get to land and walk on the moon, as they'd planned. As a matter of fact, none of the three were ever able to go back to the moon. Jim Lovell had earlier flown with Apollo 8 to the moon and back to Earth (no problems on that flight--but it was never meant to land) -- so he is the only person ever to have flown to the moon twice and never landed.

The best way to celebrate NASA's most dramatic “successful failure,” IMO, is to watch the movie Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell.

You may want to check some movie discussion resources, found here.

If you can't get the movie, you could read About-dot-com's interesting account of the mission here.

Also on this date:

Songkran in Thailand

Anniversary of the coining of the word “microscope”

National Scrabble Day

Anniversary of the arrival of the first elephant in the U.S.

Anniversary of a Pulitzer won and lost

Anniversary of the founding of NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art

Birthday of Eli Terry, the "Henry Ford of Clocks"!

Teacher's Day in Ecuador

President Thomas Jefferson's birthday

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March 15 - Happy Birthday, Alan Bean

Posted on March 15, 2022

This is an update of my post published on March 15, 2011:

An astronaut who dared to “litter” on the Moon?

Born in Texas on this day in 1932, Alan Bean grew up to be an astronaut who flew with the Apollo program and became the fourth person to walk on the Moon.

Bean took a silver astronaut pin that had been given to him by NASA and threw it as far as he could, because he knew that when he returned to Earth he would be given a gold pin as a replacement. (NASA gave astronauts-in-training silver pins; when they finally got to go to space on a mission, they earned gold pins of the same style. And Bean had had his silver pin for six long years before he finally got to "graduate" to being a "real" astronaut.) Bean liked to think of that pin, later, whenever he looked up at the Moon.

Bean also left the silver pin belonging to the astronaut that was supposed to be on the mission - Clifton C. Williams - but who had died in a plane crash. Bean was actually chosen to replace Williams. Taking the astronaut pin of Williams to the Moon was a way of honoring him.

While on the Apollo 12 moon walk, Bean and his fellow astronaut Pete Conrad wanted to use a self-timer to take a photograph of the two of them together. Apparently they were hoping to confuse people back home—wait, who took that picture?—but the two couldn't find the self-timer in the carrier tote bag, and so they lost the opportunity. At the very end of the lunar walk, when it was too late, Bean found the self-timer and, according to Wikipedia, “threw it as hard as he could.”

As a woman with a purse, I can totally relate to Bean's frustration.

By the way, since they didn't get their buddies-on-the-Moon-together photo, Alan Bean - who was an artist as well as an astronaut - painted a picture of them, and he included the astronaut who had had to stay in lunar orbit while he and Conrad had frolicked on the Moon, too - because why not?

Apollo astronauts have left a fair number of items on the moon, deliberately, including mirrors that can bounce back lasers to Earth scientists. Some stuff that was left behind was not for scientific-experiment reasons, but just to lighten the load so that lunar samples can be safely returned to the Earth. That includes things like bags of human poop, hammers and other tools unneeded on the ride home, vomit bags, and lunar overshoes. Astronauts left more than 100 items during the Apollo 11 mission, and at least 796 items from the entire Apollo program.

This photo is not real!

However, there is quite a lot of human-made
stuff on the Moon, including some items that
are basically trash, and we may eventually
need to consider what to do with the stuff!

Wikipedia has a list of the larger human-made items that have crashed onto or landed on the moon—more than 180,000 kg (400,000 pounds) of stuff!

What do you think about the fact that so many items have been left on the surface of the moon? Will these items be studied by scientists to learn the long-time effect of lunar conditions on items made of various materials? Will they be the treasured discoveries of future historians? Will they be enshrined in future lunar museums?

Also on this date:

The Ides of March

Buzzard Day

Maine Celebrates Its Statehood

Birthday of U.S. President Andrew Jackson

Anniversary of Canada honoring Wilder Penfield with a postage stamp

Anniversary of an amazing gardenscape open to the public

Anniversary of Meat Free Week

Birthday of dearly departed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

National Day in Hungary

Constitution Day in Belarus

J. J. Roberts Day in Liberia

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July 20 - Moon Day

Posted on July 20, 2021

This is an update of my post published on July 20, 2010:

On this day in 1969, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to land on the moon. During the 21 hours that the two astronauts were on the moon, they planted a U.S. flag on the lunar surface, spoke to President Richard Nixon through a telephone-radio connection, took the first moon walks, and collected more than 47 pounds of lunar rocks.

And they did it all on TV! I was among the more than 600 million people watching―and for me it was THE highlight of TV in my childhood! (You Tube has lots of videos that include the first broadcast from another world.)

Armstrong, Aldrin and astronaut Michael Collins flew to the moon on the space flight called Apollo 11. Once there, Collins stayed with the command ship, Columbia, while Aldrin steered the landing craft, Eagle, to the lunar surface, landing in the so-called Sea of Tranquility. (There is no liquid water on the moon, so it isn't really a sea.) NASA personnel in Houston, Texas, stayed in touch with the astronauts through radio transmissions and cheered them on.

Some of the big moments included Neil Armstrong announcing, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” and, when he first stepped down onto the dusty moon, “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Check out this more detailed You Tube video about Apollo 11.

Did you know...?

One of the first things Buzz Aldrin did on the moon was to take communion privately and quietly. His church in Webster, Texas, still has the chalice used in the Lunar Communion.

The astronauts were supposed to sleep for five hours after landing on the moon, before they went outside. But like little kids too excited to sleep, they skipped the sleep period.

Even though we cannot see the astronauts' faces,
we can assume that they are pleased as punch to
be the first humans on the Moon!

Recordings of the original transmission of that first moonwalk were accidentally destroyed. Of course, there are lots of copies of the video in broadcast format, but NASA was happy when copies of the original footage were located in Australia, in one of the places that originally received the lunar broadcast.

Some people have concocted a crazy conspiracy theory that humans have never really flown to and walked on the moon. They claim that all of the moon landings (there were five more after Apollo 11) were hoaxes!

One of the moon-landing deniers was bugging Buzz Aldrin for several minutes―in his face, over and over again accusing him of being a liar and a thief, and even calling him a coward―when Aldrin finally, famously, punched him in the face. The moon-landing denier sued Aldrin for the attack, but the lawsuit was quickly thrown out of court. (If you want to watch this widely-viewed incident, here it is.)

Here is a website that briefly shows why we know the moon-landing deniers are wrong.

One way to prove that humans have been to the Moon
is to shoot a laser beam at it and clock its return. Buzz
Aldrin laid a reflector module on the Moon's surface so that
scientists on Earth could accurately measure the Moon's
distance over time. (The Moon is very very slowly getting
closer to the Earth.) Lots of different scientists have done
the simple experiment of sending a laser beam to the reflector.

Learn more about the moon landing

This website was created in time for the 50-year anniversary of Apollo 11! The anniversary's logo features a photo of Mars and the words "the next giant leap."