Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Anyone else watching these documentaries?

[docohm]

Yes! I have been watching all the specials I can find on cable for the last week or so. Really am enjoying all that, brings back many memories. My Mom was a huge fan of the space race, we watched with her all the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo flights that we could find on TV. I was in the 9th grade 50 yrs ago and I still remember watching the whole day on TV. We even recorded much of it on reel-to-reel and I dug out my old tapes today and listened to some of it. I will sit down on Saturday and listen to the whole tape! It was the TV audio recorded on the tape.
I also did not remember hearing ANYTHING about the Russian Luna spaceship that was heading to the moon at the same time. It crashed while our men were on the moon only 500 miles away from them! They were planning to land their un-manned ship on the moon, scoop up some rocks, and return to earth before our Apollo mission to beat us at getting something back from the moon. Of course, it crashed like most of their lunar probes so they failed.

 

[Snattlerake]

8 days to the moon and back is on OETA. It is a re-enactment using the exact recorded words from Apollo, Houston, and the news media. So far it's great!


I forgot to add something to my first post I learned from this show. Michael Collins was about the only one in the entire universe that didn't get to see the landing, the moon through the TV cameras and the excursion of Neal and Buzz. He didn't have any TV capabilities in the Command Module.

 

[SoonerP226]

Two of my favorite astronaut quotes:

Had that rocket not fired, I'd still be orbiting the moon. Forever. And I really didn't want to do that. -- Frank Borman, Apollo VIII Mission Commander, When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions

Truth needs no defense. Nobody, nobody can ever take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me. -- Captain Eugene Cernan, USN (Ret.), Mission Commander, Apollo XVII, In The Shadow Of The Moon

 

[dennishoddy]

What’s amazing is the calculation for trajectory was done on paper and loaded into a computer with much less computing power than a cheap cell phone.

 

[Snattlerake]

Listening to Rush today explaining the computer was a 32 K capability. Our $700 cell phones could handle the computing power of 120,000,000 missions to the moon at the same time.

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/07/17/remembering-apollos-on-board-computer/

 

[chuter]

Really enjoying the documentaries, brings back memories, and lots of stuff I didn't know went on.
Like why is the space center located in Houston? Because the House rep from that district controlled the money for NASA. He said you want money; that center goes in my district.

 

[TerryMiller]

8 days to the moon and back is on OETA. It is a re-enactment using the exact recorded words from Apollo, Houston, and the news media. So far it's great!


I forgot to add something to my first post I learned from this show. Michael Collins was about the only one in the entire universe that didn't get to see the landing, the moon through the TV cameras and the excursion of Neal and Buzz. He didn't have any TV capabilities in the Command Module.

Not quite true. I didn't see it either. I was a trick chief in the Army and they let everyone go up to the barracks to watch the event, but they also said work would begin again at a certain time. As that time approached, I told my guys to stay and watch, and I went back to work.

 

[SoonerP226]

Here's your Apollo trivia of the day. There were 12 men who walked on the moon, but there are only photographs of 11 of them that were taken on the moon.

Who's the odd man out?

 

[OKCHunter]

Here's your Apollo trivia of the day. There were 12 men who walked on the moon, but there are only photographs of 11 of them that were taken on the moon.

Who's the odd man out?

Armstrong? I seem to remember they had a hard time finding any pictures of him - he was doing most of the photography.

 

[SoonerP226]

Armstrong? I seem to remember they had a hard time finding any pictures of him - he was doing most of the photography.

Yep, it was ol' Neil. He had the still camera, so the only pictures you see of him on the moon are either captures from the movie cameras or reflections of him in Buzz's visor.

Somewhere I have a book called Full Moon (I think) that's full of Apollo photographs. When they got the film back, they processed the film and made duplicates of the negatives, then put the originals permanently in cold storage (where they remain to this day). That first set of duplicates was used to make further copies of the negatives, then they were put in cold storage; so all the photos you've seen of the Apollo missions (prior to this book) were at least third generation copies. For this book, NASA went back to those first-generation duplicates and commissioned a new set of negatives, which were then used to generate the imagery for this book.

It's a pretty cool story, and some way cool photography.