40 years since the first moon landing

[Ivan Seeking]

...almost to the minute. The precise moment is about six minutes away.

I can still remember that day as if it were yesterday. Forty years ago, the world was holding its breath.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTBIr65cL_E

 

[Cyrus]

http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/

 

[Theelectricchild]

http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/

Simply amazing. Thank you for sharing.

 

[Janus]

I was 10, going on 11 (put away the calculators, that means I'm 50, going on 51) and we were on a cross-country car trip. We had stopped at Soap lake, WA and while we were walking across the beach back to the car, a guy laying on a blanket listening to the radio suddenly jumped up and started yelling "They did it! They did it! They landed on the Moon!

We were on our way to some friends of my parents who lived not too far away and my dad drove as fast as he could, but by the time we got there the EVA was over and I had missed it.

I was so disappointed that my mom felt sorry enough to let me stay home from school to watch the Apollo 12 landing. Wouldn't you know it, just moments after it was unpacked, the TV camera they were using was accidentally pointed at the Sun and burned out.

 

[lisab]

I was 10, going on 11 (put away the calculators, that means I'm 50, going on 51) and we were on a cross-country car trip. We had stopped at Soap lake, WA and while we were walking across the beach back to the car, a guy laying on a blanket listening to the radio suddenly jumped up and started yelling "They did it! They did it! They landed on the Moon!

We were on our way to some friends of my parents who lived not too far away and my dad drove as fast as he could, but by the time we got there the EVA was over and I had missed it.

I was so disappointed that my mom felt sorry enough to let me stay home from school to watch the Apollo 12 landing. Wouldn't you know it, just moments after it was unpacked, the TV camera they were using was accidentally pointed at the Sun and burned out.

At least you remember where you were, Janus. I don't remember where I was, when Louis Armstrong walked on the moon (I was 5...I should remember!). All I have is pictures...

 

[mgb_phys]

Really belongs in the hoax thread

 

[Pengwuino]

Really belongs in the hoax thread

That picture gives youtube viewers WAY WAY too much credit. Most of their statements are actually readable and there's much too little cursing and racism. The statements in the picture that is.

 

[Cyrus]

Really belongs in the hoax thread

Hahaha, good one. You have to wonder why YouTube doesn't do something about the comments.

 

[jtbell]

That was the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school, and I was at a nearby college studying chemistry in summer school. A bunch of us gathered in the dormitory lounge late in the evening to watch the moon walk on TV. I put my camera on a tripod in front of the TV and took a few pictures.

 

[russ_watters]

At least you remember where you were, Janus. I don't remember where I was, when Louis Armstrong walked on the moon (I was 5...I should remember!). All I have is pictures...

Why would Louis Armstrong be playing the guitar? He was a trumpet player! Must be a fake!

Since I wasn't born yet, the best I can do for this is Apollo 13 and the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon.

 

[Huckleberry]

There is no question that is obviously Armstrong playing a guitar and not a trumpet. It is a fake though. Where are recordings from this performance? There must be a conspiracy to hide information from us!

 

[jtbell]

Armstrong playing a guitar

Don't you know a banjo when you see one?

Actually, the real secret is that Tiny Tim came on next with his ukulele.

 

[Cyrus]

I don't know why, but I really have the urge to run my hands through moon dust to feel its texture. I'm curious to know what it feels like since the dust isn't round like sand, but jagged. I think it would be like kitty litter.

When you think about it they were extremely lucky landing those lunar modules. If they came down and a landing pad came down on a rock or sunk into the surface, they would have been stuck there - forever. It could easily have tipped over on landing.

Explains why it has such a wide base and low CG.

 

[Office_Shredder]

fourty year sinse the 1st moon facking noobs!

 

[GeorginaS]

That was the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school, and I was at a nearby college studying chemistry in summer school. A bunch of us gathered in the dormitory lounge late in the evening to watch the moon walk on TV. I put my camera on a tripod in front of the TV and took a few pictures.

Nifty! I can't believe you had the foresight to take your own pictures of the teevee screen.

I'm trying to think of why I didn't get to see this as it happened. I believe we only got two television stations at that time: CBC English and CBC French. I remember the newspaper front page vividly, though.

 

[jobyts]

There is no question that is obviously Armstrong playing a guitar and not a trumpet. It is a fake though. Where are recordings from this performance? There must be a conspiracy to hide information from us!

Come on, he very well knows you cannot play a wind instrument, if there is no wind! This is certainly not fake.

 

[Office_Shredder]

Look, everyone knows the moon is made out of cheese. Based on the "craters", or bite marks as they're more commonly called, left by the astronauts, there is going to be plenty of wind

 

[Pengwuino]

Look, everyone knows the moon is made out of cheese. Based on the "craters", or bite marks as they're more commonly called, left by the astronauts, there is going to be plenty of wind

Further proof: Nasa sent up a crate of bread and deli meats and the crew returned mysteriously gaining 40 pounds.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Here's to Louis Armstrong and all the brave astronauts who walked on the moon, paving the way for entertainers like Michael Jackson.

 

[Huckleberry]

Further proof: Nasa sent up a crate of bread and deli meats and the crew returned mysteriously gaining 40 pounds.

That is a common misunderstanding. None of the crewmembers of the Apollo11 mission returned to Earth. The crate was inventory for the very first Cracker Barrel family restaurant. I told them they should make a Hooters, but they wanted a place with more family values. The people on Earth impersonating them were just clones left in the growth vats a little too long.

 

[BobG]

That was the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school, and I was at a nearby college studying chemistry in summer school. A bunch of us gathered in the dormitory lounge late in the evening to watch the moon walk on TV. I put my camera on a tripod in front of the TV and took a few pictures.

Nifty! I can't believe you had the foresight to take your own pictures of the teevee screen.

I'm trying to think of why I didn't get to see this as it happened. I believe we only got two television stations at that time: CBC English and CBC French. I remember the newspaper front page vividly, though.

Not only good foresight, but good photography. Your typical picture of a TV screen always had the camera set at too high a speed and only part of the TV picture would show in the picture.

 

[jobyts]

Here's to Louis Armstrong and all the brave astronauts who walked on the moon, paving the way for entertainers like Michael Jackson.

As Louis Armstrong once said, "That's one small step for [a] man; one giant dance step for Michael Jackson."

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

As Louis Armstrong once said, "That's one small step for [a] man; one giant dance step for Michael Jackson."

Good one.

 

[mgb_phys]

Look, everyone knows the moon is made out of cheese. Based on the "craters", or bite marks as they're more commonly called, left by the astronauts

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8b/A_Grand_Day_Out.png/200px-A_Grand_Day_Out.png
Lost footage of the secret British moon mission. The project was abandoned after discovering that the lower gravity meant it was impossible to make a proper cup of tea.

 

[jtbell]

Your typical picture of a TV screen always had the camera set at too high a speed and only part of the TV picture would show in the picture.

Fortunately, I had taken pictures from TV screens before, so I knew the proper settings. In that ancient pre-digital era I had to wait until developing the film and printing the pictures, to see how they turned out. I did that myself, in my parents' basement, to save money. I still remember the smell of the developer, fixer, and stop-bath solutions!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I just had an interesting thought. There was a discussion [on the news] about the possibility that much higher quality copies of the moon landing footage existed, but that they were probably destroyed by mistake. Appparently there were recordings made at the first relay station in Australia, which then broadcast to somewhere else, I think, and finally to mission control, and then the major networks. At each step in the process, image quality was lost. What we got were the worst images. The hope was that upline versions still existed, but now it is thought that along with a good deal of related information, they were destroyed by mistake back in the 1970's. In fact I heard about that some years ago from a guy who worked with NASA. He said the much of the engineering information about the rockets was lost as well. Someone actually went into the wrong storage room and threw it all away.

I wonder if the [former] Soviets may still have copies. They almost certainly intercepted and recorded everything.

 

[BobG]

I just had an interesting thought. There was a discussion [on the news] about the possibility that much higher quality copies of the moon landing footage existed, but that they were probably destroyed by mistake. Appparently there were recordings made at the first relay station in Australia, which then broadcast to somewhere else, I think, and finally to mission control, and then the major networks. At each step in the process, image quality was lost. What we got were the worst images. The hope was that upline versions still existed, but now it is thought that along with a good deal of related information, they were destroyed by mistake back in the 1970's. In fact I heard about that some years ago from a guy who worked with NASA. He said the much of the engineering information about the rockets was lost as well. Someone actually went into the wrong storage room and threw it all away.

I wonder if the [former] Soviets may still have copies. They almost certainly intercepted and recorded everything.

We have the tapes of the data that an early Sputnik satellite transmitted to the ground that would have resulted in the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts. The recorder on the satellite failed, so the Soviets couldn't receive any data the satellite received when the satellite was out of sight of Soviet tracking stations.

Unfortunately for them, the satellite passed through the Van Allen radiation belts over the South Atlantic where the Americans could receive the data, but the Soviets couldn't. Unfortunately for the Americans, the data was encrypted so they had no idea what they were recording at the time. (Years later, after the end of the cold war, the US gave the Russians a copy of the data their satellite had been transmitting during the time the Americans were tracking the satellite).

In any event, the Americans wound up discovering the Van Allen radiation belts at a later time with one of our own satellites.

 

[jobyts]

By now, we should all agree on the following facts:

1. The first one to walk on the moon is not Louis Amstrong, it's Michael Jackson.

2. The moon is flat. You need flat surface to do moonwalk. You just can't do it on a sphere. Another evidence is, only flat Earth theory is not allowed in Physicsforums. They are silent about the flat moon theory. The PF admins must be knowing something that we, the common people don't.

3. There's no gravity on the moon. That's why they do moonwalk backwards.

 

[Office_Shredder]

jobyts, everyone knows a sphere is locally homeomorphic to a plane. Moonwalking is topologically invariant as evidenced by its constancy over Jackson's many topological facelifts, hence moonwalking can occur on a sphere.