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The Eagle has landed


Doc

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Just watching James May and the moon on bbc2.

It sent shivers down my spine when Neil Armstrong says....

"The Eagle has landed"

What a moment that must have been.

Amazing program.

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That U2 plane was cool.

What James May saw out of it's window at 70,000 ft was amazing.

The curvature of the Earth and black space above him. Must have been one hell of a ride.

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Just watched it and the follow up program on BBC4 showing his U2 training. James May's dialogue in the first program brought back to me the sense of awe and wonder I had when I watched the Apollo missions live way back when I was a young teenager. Someone in another thread had slight misgivings about having an 'overgrown schoolboy' from 'Top Gear' presenting a program about an historic scientific event but James May was just the man for the job - lucky [removed word] :)

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How old was you Astronut when the first landing occured. I was only 3 years old but I've seen it a few times since. I would have loved to have seen it live.

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I was holidaying with the wife and my two kids in a little holiday bungalow on the Solway Coast. A lovely little place called Silloth.

There was no TV in there, so I pleaded with my good lady to allow me to go home to watch it on Tele at home. Fortunately, home was only 21 miles away:D. Yep, we had to take cheap holidays in those days, money was really tight, but we liked to take the young usns somewhere different. There was the sea, and some great beaches.

Anyway, I watched till the early hours, and I sweated out the landing, as profusely as If I was in the lander myself.

What a relief when they got the Eagle on the moon. Those Words are etched on my brain. No, not Armstrongs, the guy in Mission control who said. " We copy you on the ground Eagle, we have a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we can breathe again".

He could have been talking about me.:):D.

What a night that was. A realisation of a dream of my own. To actually see man on another world, albeit our own satellite.

Ron.:D

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How old was you Astronut when the first landing occured. I was only 3 years old but I've seen it a few times since. I would have loved to have seen it live.

I was 12 and just like James May I had the Airfix Saturn V model. I also had the Lunar Lander model :)

What nobody knew at the time (I'm talking about Joe Public here) was how close to disaster the Apollo 11 landing was - recent documentaries have shown that they only had seconds of fuel to spare at touchdown.

The black and white pictures from the Moon were fairly poor quality but the later missions which were much longer were in colour and much higher quality and by that time Mum and Dad had bought a colour TV too.

It's a pity that a general sense of apathy had set in during the later missions.

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I was 9 when Armstrong stepped out on the moons surface. I can remember going outside, looking up at the moon, and thinking "wow - there are people up there right now".

When I first visited the Kennedy Space Centre in 2000 I was in the hall where they have the Saturn VI and I got chatting to one of the "curators" - he turned out to be a (now retired) engineer who had worked on the Apollo programme and was especially involved in the Apollo 13 mission. He was pretty modest and matter of fact about these things and I chatted to him for around 10 minutes or so. Before I moved on I shook his hand and thanked him for what he and the 100's of his colleages had done - it sounds dead corny as I relate it now but I could not help myself !.

John

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Despite my initial concern about the presenter, I thought it was a very enjoyable programme. The old Apollo astronauts came across well, as usual. There must be something about going to the moon which gives you a unique sense of humility and perspective.

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I was 9 when Armstrong stepped out on the moons surface. I can remember going outside, looking up at the moon, and thinking "wow - there are people up there right now".

When I first visited the Kennedy Space Centre in 2000 I was in the hall where they have the Saturn VI and I got chatting to one of the "curators" - he turned out to be a (now retired) engineer who had worked on the Apollo programme and was especially involved in the Apollo 13 mission. He was pretty modest and matter of fact about these things and I chatted to him for around 10 minutes or so. Before I moved on I shook his hand and thanked him for what he and the 100's of his colleages had done - it sounds dead corny as I relate it now but I could not help myself !.

John

Nothing corny about it John. The Apollo 13 Episode was modern day miracle of mans ingenuity and skill under duress.

Pretty remarkable stuff.

Ron.

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Amazing program.

Rather weak, I thought, in comparison with the "Sky At Night" special edition "Apollo 11 - A Night To Remember" (BBC4 21/06/09 2335-0135) which used 40 year old archive film of James Burke doing similar things, but with access to genuine Apollo hardware.

As for the U2 flight, great stunt but don't forget that only 6 years ago you could travel commercially at 65,000 feet on Concorde.

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What nobody knew at the time (I'm talking about Joe Public here) was how close to disaster the Apollo 11 landing was - recent documentaries have shown that they only had seconds of fuel to spare at touchdown.

That was expected. Armstrong in fact said before the flight that if they had 15 seconds of fuel left at touchdown, it would be plenty ... despite the manoeuvring around the boulder field, the gauges were in fact indicating 20 secs when the contact light lit, and after the fuel settled it was discovered that there was actually a bit more than that (the fuel was sloshing about a bit).

The biggest problem Apollo 11 had was that, having go back in to the LM, it was discovered that a circuit breaker switch was missing - one which was necessary to engage the ascent stage engine! (Aldrin thinks he broke it by bumping it with his backpack when exiting the LM.) The fudge was to enable the circuit by jamming a felt marker into the hole.... if this had not worked, they would of course still be there.

Other "big issues" which tend to get forgotten about:

Apollo 10, loss of control of lunar module following seperation of landing stage, the computer program to control the attitude control thrusters didn't cope with the sudden change of inertia correctly; this would have been fatal if it had happened in a low altitude landing abort situation;

Apollo 12, major lightning strike on the Saturn V 30 seconds into the flight, knocked out guidance for a critical 20 second period;

Gemini 8; stuck thruster caused loss of control, very skilful piloting only just regained control retaining sufficient maneovering fuel for a successful emergency re-entry;

but the real biggie has to be the Gemini 6 no launch, when the Titan booster fired up, the clock in the spacecraft indicating liftoff started running but the booster then shut down, and the crew did not press the "eject" button - sensing that lift off had not occurred!

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I went to the Kennedy Space Centre in 1995 or 96.

There was a bloke giving a talk in this open hall, and he was just finishing as we walked through. People wandered off and I was looking at a display and the bloke who had been speaking sauntered over in our direction. I turned round and asked him some question about the display (can't remember what) and he was dead friendly and answered a few of my questions, then he sauntered off.

My (then) partner was suspiciously quiet, and I commented on the fact.

He said, "Do you know who that was?"

I didn't.

Apparently it was Jim Lovell (it had said so on his name badge, although I hadn't noticed).

By sheer coincidence, the Apollo 13 film had come out that year and I said "Do you mean Tom Hanks?!". If I hadn't seen the film, the name would not have meant anything to me.

How cool is that?

He seemed like a really friendly, unpretentious guy too.

I actually liked the Kennedy Space Centre a lot. It was the least commercialised place in Florida (and it had turtles and alligators in the drainage ditches!). The Saturn V rocket gave me the *******, though - HUGE. And the command capsule on display there was like a sardine tin.

I also saw the shuttle on the launch pad in the far distance. How marvellous was that?!

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As for the U2 flight, great stunt but don't forget that only 6 years ago you could travel commercially at 65,000 feet on Concorde.

Is it the extra few thousand feet that require all that extra safety?

I wonder if that extra bit of height is worth all the extra hassles, and that it does in fact reveal a lot more when looking out the window!

Anyone here do the 65,000 feet on concorde?

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