Today is the day. July 16th, 2019 marks 50 years to the day since the launch of Apollo 11 and humanities first landing on the Moon — an event which, to me, is the single greatest accomplishment in human history.
It’s amazing how quickly we got to this point – from the Write Brothers first flight to Apollo 11 was 66 years. Of more interest, to me, is the speed with which Apollo itself got into action. While started in early 60’s, the manned portion of the program only began (successfully) on October 11th 1968, with the flight of Apollo 7. Delayed by the Apollo 1 fire it was incredible how in just a year and a half we had learned from the fire and prepared a vehicle which could actually do its half of the mission — the Apollo spacecraft was ready.
With Apollo 7’s success, things were in place for an incredibly rapid-fire set of missions to get to the first landing. Apollo’s 4 and 6 had tested the Saturn V booster, and Apollo 5 tested the Lunar Module. Apollo 8 in December of 68 would test the Apollo Command/Service Module in a trip around the Moon. Apollo 9 in March of 1969 would test the Lunar Module with a crew in Earth Orbit – the only time this would happen. Apollo 10 in May of the same year would test the Lunar Module in Lunar orbit on a “dress rehearsal” of the landing. Everything went well enough for the first landing attempt, Apollo 11.
That was just an 8 month period. That’s all. 2/3rds of a year for manned spaceflight to go from “dead in the water” to being ready to go to the Moon. Granted, this was based on effectively a decade of previous effort, but the human factor was still critical. The machines and the men had to work together and be tested. We had to know things would work, and work they did.
Move to July 16th, 1969. Saturn V number 506 was on the pad at LC-39A, fueled and ready for its flight, and at 9:32 AM Eastern Time the massive vehicle lifted off, carrying its 3 crew members, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, into Earth orbit and then, after a second burn of the S-IVB 3rd stage of the Saturn V booster, onward to the Moon.
It would be a 3 day or so trip to the Moon, and on July 20th Armstrong and Aldrin would pilot the Lunar Module to a landing at the Sea of Tranquility. A few hours later, Neil would exit the Lunar Module and step onto the Lunar surface. The impossible had become a reality, and it amazes me to think that was 50 years ago this week.
I don’t really have words for it. Those who know me know how much I’ve always loved this subject — space and humanities exploration of it in what capacities we can. It’s something I’m incredibly passionate about and Apollo 11, as I said before, represents that singular moment, regardless of why we did it (which was, at its core, just a way to “beat” the Soviet Union in something) that humanity truly took our collective knowledge of just how things work and put it to a singular goal of not only leaving this rock we live on, but going to another world. Even if it was just our own Moon, it was still something other than Earth proper.
More to come as always. It’s been a while since I’ve written about such subjects. It feels good, but I don’t want to devote too much time to all the details like I used to, as these articles didn’t trend as well as I hoped they would have. For now, I guess I’ll leave you with the usual stuff – video of the launch and some recent related content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11