Apollo 50 Countdown: 5...4...3...

"Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare."

After the launch from Cape Kennedy, the three members of the Apollo 11 crew spent the next four days crammed together in the Command Module, the only part of the rocket which would complete the round trip and return to Earth.

The command module had a full volume of 218 cubic feet, although I suspect that some of the space wasn't really accessible to the crew*.  Sources describe this as "the same interior volume as two midsize American cars", but obviously with less opportunity to roll down the window, get out to stretch your legs, or to visit a gas station men's room - which would have been a useful thing, given that the systems used for urination and excretion were messy and unavoidably public.**

In her excellent 2010 book Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, one of the topics addressed by author Mary Roach is the manner in which potential astronauts are observed and tested in regards to their psychological stability.  Looking at the Apollo moon missions reveals the critical nature of these tests. Imagine that you have to spend a week seated on a small couch with two of your co-workers - I'll even let you pick which two - and you all have to keep some part of your body in contact with the couch while you perform every possible physical function for those seven days. And at least one of you probably snores.

- Sid

* If you'd like a better idea of what this was like, the Smithsonian has created a fascinatingly detailed virtual model of the module's interior:

https://3d.si.edu/object/3d/command-module-apollo-11:d8c63e8a-4ebc-11ea-b77f-2e728ce88125

It doesn't look like two midsize cars to me, whether they're American or not.

** The Lunar Excursion Module made no provision at all for the astronauts' basic needs, relying instead on oversized diapers for Armstrong and Aldrin during their 21 hour excursion.  Wearing a set of Depends™ must have diminished their sense of history just a little bit.

Apollo 50 Countdown: 5...4...

"We have liftoff."

The Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo 11 mission into orbit is defined as a "super-heavy launch vehicle" - 363 feet tall, and weighing in at 6,540,000 pounds.

It took about five hours to move the rocket over the four miles from the gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Kennedy to Launch Pad 39A on the back of a crawler-transporter, one of two, the largest self-propelled land vehicles in existence.

 

The first stage is equipped with five F-1 rocket engines, which utilized 203,400 gallons of kerosene and 318,000 gallons of liquid oxygen to create 7.5 million pounds of thrust.

 

The Saturn V took about two years to build, and cost $110 million dollars - that's about $696 million in current cash*.

It was used once for about 20 minutes, and then thrown away.

- Sid

* To add some perspective, that's actually a little bit less than the box office for an MCU Spider-Man film.

Apollo 50 Countdown: 5....

"We are still Go with Apollo 11."

 

Counting down - just five days left until the 50th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin in 1969.

It surprises me that there isn't more public attention being paid to the anniversary - the Apollo 11 landing is arguably the most significant accomplishment of the 20th Century.  Neil Armstrong's step onto the surface of the Moon is a clear demarcation point in the history of our planet, the moment when we truly became a spacefaring species.

In saying that, I don't mean to diminish the importance of the missions that preceded Apollo 11, but somehow it seems a game of incremental steps that eventually lead to the Moon - increasingly higher flights until Yuri Gagarin crosses the line and orbits the earth in 1961, followed by multiple orbits, unmanned test flights, longer duration manned missions, the first lunar orbits by Apollo 8, more orbital tests, and the final "small step" onto the surface of the Moon on July 20th.

However, in some ways that culminating footstep was as pointless as it was historic.

The competitive origin of the initial landing contained the seeds of the Apollo program's termination.  The sole purpose of the Apollo missions was political: for the United States to land on the Moon before the Soviet Union.  Once that goal was accomplished, the Apollo program was more than a little like a dog chasing a car - what do you do after you catch one?  And so, after five more landings*, distinguished only by Alan Shepard's Apollo 14 golf stunt** and a few lunar rover photo ops, the program sputtered out in 1972 after Apollo 17.

The fiftieth anniversary of that final landing will arrive in 2022, and it might well be just as important to acknowledge that landmark as it was to recognize the anniversary of the first landing.  Hopefully by then we will have permanently returned to the Moon, or perhaps bypassed it on the way to Mars, but if not, a reminder of that last point in time when impossible was made possible might revive the desire to do so again.

- Sid

* The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission would have made it six.

** Insert "Moon shot" joke here.