The full story behind the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing 1201/1202 Alarms

[tomato]

@Tomatobro put me on to this. I always believed the popular story that the LM guidance  computer fell over and Neil Armstrong took over full manual control and saved the day, but this talk sheds some more light on this. Once again the guys (men and women) on the ground played a massive part in the success of the mission.

 

[StarryEyed]

If your really curious you should read.

Don Eyles
Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir

It's by the man who wrote the computer program for the Lander. You want to know what actually happened this is the guy that had it all in his head and the error codes on scraps of paper.

"Go on that alarm"

Such a good read you can taste the moon dust.

 

Edited September 9, 2023 by StarryEyed

[Zermelo]

There is also an excellent BBC radio series, 13 minutes to the moon.

From around episode 9 it covers the decent, including those 1201/1202 alarms).

The same team went on to do further episodes about the Apollo 13 story.

[Mr H in Yorkshire]

Just to say thanks for this, just enjoyed a lazy wake up to a fascinating presentation.

[Justin P]

6 hours ago, Zermelo said:

There is also an excellent BBC radio series, 13 minutes to the moon.

From around episode 9 it covers the decent, including those 1201/1202 alarms).

The same team went on to do further episodes about the Apollo 13 story.

I have been listening to this podcast and agree totally Zermelo ! It’s a really fascinating series. Really would recommend it.

 

best wishes Justin 

[Gfamily]

13 hours ago, Zermelo said:

There is also an excellent BBC radio series, 13 minutes to the moon.

From around episode 9 it covers the decent, including those 1201/1202 alarms).

The same team went on to do further episodes about the Apollo 13 story.

Following a successful Kickstarter, they're also in the process of putting together a new podcast series "Sixteen Sunsets" - title based on the number of sunrises and sunsets experienced by the astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS each day.

https://sixteensunsets.com/

[tomato]

I caught the Apollo 13 episodes, they were excellent.

[malc-c]

I have listened to both series of podcasts mentioned on BBC sounds several times.. excellently produced and transports you to that era...  Another source that covers both Apollo 11 and 13 (plus others) is Gene Kranz's book (audio book) "Failure is not an option"  

It's quite amazing to realize that they managed the feat with computers that had less computing power than modern TV remote controllers.