Link tags: apollo11

The sublime Romanticism of the moon landing

The lunar landing was not a scientific announcement or a political press conference; it was a performance, a literal space opera, a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk that brought together the efforts of more than 400,000 people, performed before an audience of some 650 million. It was a victory, as Armstrong immediately recognized, not of Western democratic capitalism over Soviet tyranny, or of America over the rest of the world, but for humanity. It belongs to the United States no more than Michelangelo does to Italy or Machu Picchu to Peru.

The Management Strategy That Saved Apollo 11

The story of Jack Garman and the 1202 alarm—as covered in episode two of the 13 Minutes To The Moon podcast.

Next time you’re faced with a decision, ask yourself: how can this decision be made on the lowest level? Have you given your team the authority to decide? If you haven’t, why not? If they’re not able to make good decisions, you’ve missed an opportunity to be a leader. Empower, enable, and entrust them. Take it from NASA: the ability to delegate quickly and decisively was the key to landing men on the moon.

Neil & Buzz

A delightful dialogue …on the moon!

BBC World Service - 13 Minutes to the Moon

I’ve been huffduffing every episode of this terrific podcast from Kevin Fong. It features plenty of my favourite Apollo people: Mike Collins, Margaret Hamilton, and Charlie Duke.

BBC Shows and Tours - Shows - James Burke: Our Man on the Moon

I wish I were here for this (I’m going to be over in Ireland that week)—an evening with James Burke, Britain’s voice of Apollo 11.

Here is your chance to find out what went on behind the scenes as James revisits the final moments of the Apollo mission. He’ll recreate the drama, struggling to make sense of flickering images from NASA and working with the limitations of 1960s technology. We’ll hear what went wrong as well as what went right on the night! Illustrated with amazing archive material from both the BBC and NASA, this will be the story of the moon landings brought to you by the man who became a broadcasting legend.

Apollo 11 in Real-time

What a magnificent website! You can watch, read, and listen to the entire Apollo 11 mission! Do it now, or wait until until July 16th when you can follow along in real time …time-shifted by half a century.

How to land on the Moon

Take a tour of the Lunar Module.

The LM (or “LEM”, as it’s pronounced) has the appearance of an aeronautical joke, with not a trace of streamlining. Instead, it’s an insect-like asymmetrical collection of legs, angles, bulges, and surfaces that’s very hard to visualize. Frankly, it looks like it was thrown together on a Friday afternoon by someone in a hurry to go fishing.

APOLLO 11 [Official Trailer] - YouTube

This documentary, made entirely with archive footage, looks like it will be amazing! I really hope I get to see it in a cinema.

Crafted from a newly discovered trove of 65mm footage, and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings, Apollo 11 takes us straight to the heart of NASA’s most celebrated mission—the one that first put men on the moon, and forever made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin into household names.

Aw! What about Michael Collins‽ He’s always the Ringo of the mission, even though he was the coolest dude.

Smithsonian 3D Apollo 11 Command Module

This is so wonderful! A 3D fly-through of the Apollo 11 command module, right in your browser. It might get your fan whirring, but it’s worth it.

Click through for lots of great details on the interface controls, like which kinds of buttons and switches were chosen for which tasks.

And there’s this lovely note scrawled near the sextant by Michael Collins (the coolest of all the astronauts):

Spacecraft 107, alias Apollo 11, alias ‘Columbia.’ The Best Ship to Come Down the Line. God Bless Her.

Moonscape – The Apollo 11 Moonwalk in HD

Moonscape is a free and freely shareable high-definition documentary about the first manned Moon landing. Funded and produced by space enthusiasts from all over the world, it shows the full Apollo 11 landing and moonwalk, using only the original audio, TV and film footage and the original photographs, rescanned and restored from the best available sources, with full English subtitles (other languages will follow).

Original Apollo 11 guidance computer (AGC) source code.

Margaret Hamilton’s code after scanning and transcribing.

The code is commented too. But there might still be issues.

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 on Vimeo

45 years ago today.