News & Analysis
Slideshow: Remembering Neil Armstrong & Apollo
George Leopold
8/31/2012 12:00 PM EDT
WASHINGTON – It’s been a momentous year for space exploration. The Mars Curiosity rover continues to astound with its desert southwest-like vistas of Gale Crater. The most complex machine ever sent to explore another planet is gearing up for its first drive into the Martian highlands to an area with promising geological features dubbed Glenelg.
The sustained excitement over Curiosity’s mission has of course been tempered by the untimely death on Aug. 25 of the first man on the Moon, Neil Alden Armstrong.
The Apollo 11 commander understood he was part of a continuum -- just one of 400,000 engineers, technicians and managers working on the Apollo program.
[ Don't miss DESIGN East, Sept 17-20 in Boston. Embedded, Android, MEMS, and more. Click here to register and get a 15% DISCOUNT ON ALL-ACCESS AND SUMMIT PASSES or a FREE EXPO PASS.]
Just as Armstrong stood on the shoulders of aviation giants, so too the designers of Curiosity relied on the powered descent landing technique pioneered by Armstrong on Apollo 11 to land a two-ton machine in the middle of a Martian crater.
Armstrong’s humility and dignity endeared him to humankind as much as his feats as a test pilot and astronaut. As reader Mike Peralta noted, Armstrong lived an “exemplary life.”
The crew of Apollo 1 shortly before a launch pad fire in January 1967 that killed (from left) commander Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. Before the fire, Gus Grissom had been ticketed to be the first man on the moon.
What follows is just a small part of the Smithsonian’s collection, along with other tributes to Neil Armstrong and the Apollo program.
A section of Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral, Fla, where the crew of Apollo 1 was killed in a launch page fire on January 27, 1967. The tragedy forced NASA to completely redesign the Apollo spacecraft that eventually carried 24 astronauts to the moon.
Next: Landing Practice
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
george.leopold
8/31/2012 12:29 PM EDT
Some more insights into the character of Neil Armstrong by Washington Post science writer Joel Achenbach:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/post/neil-armstrong/2012/08/26/fd66f16c-ef8d-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_blog.html
Sign in to Reply
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/poconoarmchairreview
8/31/2012 5:31 PM EDT
What an inspiring man Armstrong was, for his humility as well as for the intellect and athleticism he had to have to be an astronaut. My impression is that a measure of humility is not understood to be a virtue as much now as it was back then. That's a shame. Even though people have different temperaments, where some are more outgoing and others are more to themselves, there is still something to be learned from him about sharing the limelight, and keeping some restraint on the ego.
Sign in to Reply
Sanjib.Acharya
9/1/2012 12:37 PM EDT
"Aldrin said that when he looks at the moon, he thinks: “It’s no longer a stranger. It’s a friend.”"...really it might had been a completely different feelings they experienced when they looked at the moon in the night sky after they came back...it was like a puzzle solved for them...
did Neil or other moon walkers feel nostalgic about going back again there?
Sign in to Reply
george.leopold
9/4/2012 8:56 AM EDT
Mike Collins said he has two moons in his head: the one he gazed up at as a kid and the other, the one that took three days to reach and didn't seem very welcoming when he got there.
Sign in to Reply
Sanjib.Acharya
9/4/2012 11:36 PM EDT
Very well said! :)
Sign in to Reply
David Ashton
9/4/2012 6:54 PM EDT
I don't like to complain George and it was an interesting enough article, but I was hoping for a bit more on the technology. For starters, what are all the red and blue thingys on the space suits (page 9)? And it would be really interesting to see some of the electronics boards that were used, with maybe some architecture diagrams or even schematics?
Sign in to Reply
JackCrens
9/4/2012 8:59 PM EDT
Excellent!!
Sign in to Reply
The MicroMan
9/5/2012 4:38 AM EDT
I always loved this story I heard about Neil Armstrong-
Some people see the glass as half empty. Some see the glass as half full.
Neil Armstrong, who had to deal with the logic and methodology of scientists and engineers in preparation for his flight to and walk on the moon, reportedly proclaimed: "An engineer would just see the glass as being twice as big as it needs to be."
Sign in to Reply
jaybus
9/5/2012 8:10 AM EDT
I believe the red and blue thingies are where the umbilicals attach. These are the flight suits and are liquid cooled. During flight, O2, CO2 removal, and suit coolant were supplied by the ship through umbilicals.
Sign in to Reply
george.leopold
9/6/2012 2:54 PM EDT
If you want to hear what it was like to be flying the Apollo 11 command module while entering the moon's domain, listen to this:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo11/audio/11_highlight_2.mp3
Neil Armstrong is as usual on top of the situation, telling CM pilot Mike Collins to keep an eye on engine chamber pressure. Meanwhile, Armstrong observes that the fast approaching moon in "plaster of paris."
The highlight of this audio, which I believe occurs at SPS engine shutdown as the command module settles into lunar orbit, is an exchange between Collins and Buzz Aldrin. Collins is sneaking peeks out the window at the surface of the moon. "Tan, it's tan!" he yells. "Jesus!" Aldrin, an MIT grad, is telling Collins to keep an eye on his instruments. Collins replies: "I take back any bad things I ever said about MIT, which I never have."
Sign in to Reply
chipmonk
9/7/2012 4:19 PM EDT
Its uncanny how similar Neil Armstrong the first Man on Moon looked to Yuri Gagarin, the first Man in Space. Perhaps a case of the genes for the Right Stuff spreading from Russia to Germany ( Armstrong ).
Sign in to Reply