First Moon Landing, One Shot, 1969, Apollo 11

You Tube ^ | 07/20/08 | Kevin Davis

[KevinDavis]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2BvbD-1qZtc

[KevinDavis]

This is the Space Ping List.. Let me know if you want on or off this list!!

[Yo-Yo]

Poor Neil.

“That’s one small step for Man ... (thinks ‘aw crap, did I mess it up?’) ... one ... (’yup, I did forget the “a” before the word ‘Man.’ Can I start over? Oh well, too late now’) ... giant leap for Mankind.”

[FReepaholic]

I doubt you would do any better in that situation.

[Doohickey]

I was suprised to learn that Armstrong had to pilot the LM down manually because the flight computer kept crashing from the volume of data received from the landing radar. They had an estimated 15 seconds of fuel left when Armstrong and Aldrin touched down.

[Yo-Yo]

No sir, I certainly would not even have made it past the initial Astronaut Selection process, let alone all the way to the moon. I stutter in front of our family saying prayer, let alone performing the Reading at Church.

Neil has spoken many times about those first words, how he wrote them and practiced them, andclaimed that the "a" before "Man" was cutoff by an overly agressive VOX circuit on his suit radio, or other source of static.

He has eventually agreed that he mispoke, and said that he his is comfortable with the quote:
"That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for Mankind."

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/onesmall.asp

[Steely Tom]

Martin Gardner, who edited Scientific American's Mathematical Games column, noted at the time that the dropping of the word "a" from Captain Armstrong's historic announcement caused the number of words in it to equal eleven.

[ALOHA RONNIE]

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On to Mars

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/834847/posts

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[Young Werther]

Buzz Aldrin was the LEM Pilot. Buzz saw that the touchdown point was a crater and he "flew" the LEM to a safe landing.

I met Buzz last year at the National Space Society International Space Developement Conference which was held here in Dallas. I asked him to sign one of my Boy Scout Space Exploration Handbooks which our club had written. I showed him a picture of him in his Apollo gear and told him that we had included him in the handbook. When He asked if he could have the handbook, I said NO!, (just kidding) I gave him a copy and he signed one for me!

[Southack]

39 years ago today!

[AntiKev]

It wasn’t the data volume from the landing radar, but it was the fact that they had both the landing radar AND the rendezvous radar on and feeding the system. The designers hadn’t given the computer enough bandwidth to cope with this scenario.

Buzz describes it as being necessary in an abort because the rndz radar took too long to come up.

[JewishRighter]

And they tell us they can’t build a border fence?

[ItsForTheChildren]

I've always heard it was Armstrong who flew the LM to the landing. From Wikipedia...

The objective of Apollo 11 was to land safely rather than touch down with precision on a particular spot. Three minutes into the lunar descent burn he noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which meant the Eagle would likely land beyond the planned landing zone by several miles. As the Eagle's landing radar acquired the surface, several computer error alarms appeared. The first was a code 1202 alarm and even with their extensive training Armstrong or Aldrin weren't aware of what this code meant. However, they promptly received word from CAPCOM in Houston that the alarms were not a concern. The 1202 and 1201 alarms were caused by a processing overflow in the lunar module computer. As described by Buzz Aldrin in the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, the overflow condition was caused by his own counter-checklist choice of leaving the docking radar on during the landing process. Aldrin stated that he did so with the objective of facilitating re-docking with the CM should an abort become necessary, not realizing that it would cause the overflow condition.

Armstrong took over manual control of the LM, found an area which to him seemed safe for a landing and touched down on the moon at 20:17:39 UTC on July 20, 1969.[29] Some accounts of the Apollo 11 landing describe the LM's fuel situation as having been dire, with only a few seconds remaining when they touched down. Armstrong had landed the LLTV with less than 15 seconds left on several occasions and he was also confident the LM could survive a straight-down fall from 50 feet (15 m) if needed. Analysis after the mission showed that because of the moon's lower gravity, fuel had sloshed about in the tank more than anticipated, which led to a misleadingly low indication of the remaining propellant; at touchdown there were about 50 seconds of propellant burn time left

[SunkenCiv]

[singing] that’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh...

[chimera]

Aldrin was the LEM pilot but mission rules forbade the LM pilot from touching the (piloting) controls of the LEM except in an emergency, such as incapacity of the Commander. Armstrong did the final approach piloting, as did all mission commanders on the moon landings, as well as the CM rendezvous piloting.

The only exception I know to this rule was when Pete Conrad let Al Bean take the controls for a brief period on Apollo 12 when they were behind the moon and out of contact with MC. They had lifted off from the moon and were not too close to CM rendezvous, so as a favor to his friend Conrad let Bean get a little stick time.