Archive for category: Apollo 11

On July 20

July 19, 2019/0 Comments/in Apollo 11, Friday Afternoon, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

(top) Earth sweet earth; (row two) You know that image that everyone has seen again and again of the footprint on the moon? Well, this is what it looked like before he got his foot out of the way; (row three) Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, prepares to deploy the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package; (row four left) The gold replica of an olive branch, the traditional symbol of peace, which was left on the moon’s surface by Apollo 11 crewmembers. It is less than half a foot in length. The gesture represents a fresh wish for peace for all mankind; (row four, top right) Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. moves to deploy two components of the Scientific Experiments. The Passive Seismic Experiments Package is in his left hand and in his right hand is the Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector. Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera; (row four, bottom right) Our wonderful flag (with all of the footprints) planted on the moon! Are you kidding!!! (bottom) The Apollo 11 crew await pickup by a helicopter from the USS Hornet. They splashed down at 11:49 a.m. (CDT), July 24, 1969, about 812 nautical miles southwest of Hawaii and only 12 nautical miles from the USS Hornet. Wow!! God Bless America!!!

Talk about a PIA (Pain in the @%$) Job! When the President of the United States gives you a project, never before attempted, you accept. And then set out to accomplish the greatest event in history. Given all the space specials and history news this week, you probably know tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing. With so many amazing problem-solving solutions that had to come together, it’s tough to find them all. A task this big, with no past history, is simply unheard of – but we did it. My team solves PIA (Pain in the @%$) jobs each and every day. When I explored deeper into the history of Apollo 11 I was amazed and humbled at the dedication of this previous generation. All of us Americans should /can be so proud of their accomplishments and know that together there is nothing we in these wonderful United States can’t solve together! Here is some fun trivia from the mission. Enjoy! And special thanks to NASA, Smithsonian, cnet, and Wikipedia.

The ultimate PIA (pain in the @%$ Job(s)! – On May 25, 1961, when Kennedy asked Congress to send Americans to the Moon before the 1960s were over, NASA had no rockets to launch astronauts to the Moon, no computer portable enough to guide a spaceship to the Moon, no spacesuits to wear on the way, no spaceship to land astronauts on the surface (let alone a Moon car to let them drive around and explore), no network of tracking stations to talk to the astronauts en route, no Mission Control, no nutrition plan, no multi-gravity food – in essence we didn’t even know what was needed.

Our unpreparedness for the task goes a level deeper: We didn’t even know how to fly to the Moon. We didn’t know what course to fly to get there from here. And as the small example of lunar dirt shows, we didn’t know what we would find when we got there. Physicians worried that people wouldn’t be able to think in micro-gravity conditions. Mathematicians worried that we wouldn’t be able to calculate how to rendezvous two spacecraft in orbit—to bring them together in space and dock them in flight both perfectly and safely.

Ten thousand problems had to be solved to get us to the Moon. Every one of those challenges was tackled and mastered between May 1961 and July 1969. The astronauts, the nation, flew to the Moon because hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers, managers and factory workers unraveled a series of puzzles, often without knowing whether the puzzle had a good solution.

Here are just some of the PIA Jobs that were solved:

That computer navigated through space and helped the astronauts operate the ship. But the astronauts also traveled to the Moon with paper star charts so they could use a sextant to take star sightings—like 18th-century explorers on the deck of a ship—and cross-check their computer’s navigation.
The software of the computer was stitched together by women sitting at specialized looms—using wire instead of thread.
The heat shield was applied to the spaceship by hand with a fancy caulking gun;
The parachutes were sewn by hand, and then folded by hand. The only three staff members in the country who were trained and licensed to fold and pack the Apollo parachutes were considered so indispensable that NASA officials forbade them to ever ride in the same car, to avoid their all being injured in a single accident.
Three times as many people worked on Apollo as on the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb. In 1961, the year Kennedy formally announced Apollo, NASA spent $1 million on the program for the year. Five years later NASA was spending about $1 million every three hours on Apollo, 24 hours a day.
The LM was, in fact, perhaps the strangest flying craft ever created. It was the first, and remains the only, manned spacecraft designed solely for use off Earth. It would never have to fly through an atmosphere, so it didn’t need the structural robustness that would require.
The lunar module’s other significant challenge was that it could never be test-flown before being used for its critical role. There’s no place on Earth to take a spaceship designed for flight in a zero-gravity vacuum and fly it around. So the people who would pilot the lunar modules to the Moon never practiced flying them, except in simulators, which were designed and built by people who had never flown a lunar module.
For the first Moonwalk ever, Sonny Reihm was inside NASA’s Mission Control building, watching every move on the big screen. Reihm was a supervisor for the most important Moon technology after the lunar module itself: the spacesuits, the helmets, the Moonwalk boots. The spacesuits were the work of Playtex, the folks who brought America the “Cross Your Heart Bra” in the mid-1950s, a company with a lot of expertise developing clothing that had to be flexible as well as form-fitting. The suits were hand stitched marvels: 21 layers of nested fabric, strong enough to stop a micrometeorite, but still flexible enough for Aldrin’s kangaroo hops and quick cuts.

And here is some trivia about the mission:

On July 20, 1969, an estimated 650 million people around the world watched the same televised image of an otherworldly sight. It’s an amazing number, based on the lack of cable, dish, the internet and global communications today.
The American flag the Apollo 11 astronauts planted on the moon was manufactured by Sears, but NASA wanted that information kept secret.
Tang. The powder-based orange drink from General Foods – ideal for consumption in a zero-gravity environment – soared to celebrity status in 1962 when Mercury astronaut John Glenn performed eating experiments while orbiting Earth aboard Friendship 7. Astronauts brought Tang on their missions and all manned space flights from 1965–1975.
There’s a mystery surrounding Neil Armstrong’s famous quote. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Fake news? Not exactly. Armstrong has always insisted that he said “one small step for a man,” not the widely quoted “one small step for man,” and the grainy NASA audio recordings don’t offer a definitive answer. Researchers from Michigan State University and Ohio State University set out to solve the mystery, and their findings seem to back up Armstrong’s assertion. They analyzed recordings of conversational speech from 40 people raised in Columbus, Ohio, near Armstrong’s hometown of Wapakoneta, and found that they typically blended the words “for a” so they sound like “frrr(uh)”.
Your cellphone is more powerful than Apollo 11’s computers. While the Apollo Guidance Computer systems that powered Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon and back in July 1969 were cutting-edge for the time, they’re technologically primitive compared to the cell phones and smartwatches we use half a century later. Today’s Samsung Galaxy S10 Smartphone6, with its eight gigabytes of memory, is light years ahead of the Apollo 11’s computer, which propelled our fearless astronauts to the moon and back with only two kilobytes.
Krispy Kreme doughnuts were served. This marketing ploy is not just empty calories: Krispy Kreme was at the launch of Apollo 11 in 1969, serving fresh doughnuts to Americans who had gathered to witness lift-off of this monumental mission.
“The Eagle has landed,” is one of the most famous quotes in NASA history. It was named in honor of America’s national bird, while the mission’s command module, Columbia, was named after Columbiad, the giant canon that launched the moonship in Jules Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon.
The Apollo’s Saturn rockets were packed with enough fuel to throw 100-pound shrapnel three miles, and NASA couldn’t rule out the possibility that they might explode on takeoff. NASA seated its VIP spectators three and a half miles from the launchpad.
Drinking water was a fuel-cell by-product, but Apollo 11’s hydrogen-gas filters didn’t work, making every drink bubbly, making going to the bathroom troublesome.
When Apollo 11’s lunar lander, the Eagle, separated from the orbiter, the cabin wasn’t fully depressurized, resulting in a burst of gas equivalent to popping a champagne cork. It threw the module’s landing four miles off-target.
Pilot Neil Armstrong nearly ran out of fuel landing the Eagle, and many at mission control worried he might crash. Apollo engineer Milton Silveira, however, was relieved: His tests had shown that there was a small chance the exhaust could shoot back into the rocket as it landed and ignite the remaining propellant.
The “one small step for man” wasn’t actually that small. Armstrong set the ship down so gently that its shock absorbers didn’t compress. He had to hop 3.5 feet from the Eagle’s ladder to the surface.
The astronauts all carried Duro-brand felt-tip pens, and if not for these the mission would not have made it home. In the cramped environment, someone had broken off the switch to the circuit breaker that activated the ascent engine. This is where Aldrin had a flash of ingenuity. “Since it was electrical, I decided not to put my finger in, or use anything that had metal on the end. I had a felt-tipped pen in the shoulder pocket of my suit that might do the job. After moving the countdown procedure up by a couple of hours in case it didn’t work, I inserted the pen into the small opening where the circuit breaker switch should have been, and pushed it in; sure enough, the circuit breaker held. We were going to get off the moon, after all.”
The toughest moonwalk task? Planting the flag. NASA’s studies suggested that the lunar soil was soft, but Armstrong and Aldrin found the surface to be a thin wisp of dust over hard rock. They managed to drive the flagpole a few inches into the ground and film it for broadcast, and then took care not to accidentally knock it over.
A few minutes after Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins remained in orbit. They sent a message back asking for a moment’s silence. In this time, Aldrin, an elder in his local Presbyterian Church, had a little communion ceremony of his own, reading scripture and taking the sacrament. “I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: The very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”
Along with the American flag, the Apollo 11 mission left behind a small collection of items. Among them were medallions honouring Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and Vladimir Komarov, both of whom died tragically. Komarov’s death is particularly shocking. The story goes that he knew he was probably going to die on the 1967 mission to put a man into Earth orbit. He didn’t back out, because Gagarin was his back-up and he didn’t want Gagarin to die.
On their return to Earth, the three astronauts were brought back via Hawaii. On their entry, they had to be processed like any other traveler, filling out customs declarations. In the “Departure From” field, they simply wrote “Moon,” and declared the “moon dust” and “moon rock” as items they were bringing back into America.
Life insurance premiums for a trip to the moon were well beyond the means of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. As a preemptive measure to take care of their loved ones if they didn’t come back, the astronauts signed hundreds of postal covers. If they did not return, their families could sell these signatures. Today, these signed postal covers occasionally show up in space memorabilia auctions, where they can sell for thousands of dollars.
President Richard Nixon had a contingency speech lined up for if the mission failed, too. You can read it here.
The Moon has a smell. It has no air, but it has a smell. Each pair of Apollo astronauts to land on the Moon tramped lots of Moon dust back into the lunar module—it was deep gray, fine-grained and extremely clingy—and when they unsnapped their helmets, Neil Armstrong said, “We were aware of a new scent in the air of the cabin that clearly came from all the lunar material that had accumulated on and in our clothes.” To him, it was “the scent of wet ashes.” To his crewmate Buzz Aldrin, it was “the smell in the air after a firecracker has gone off.

CLICK HERE to download this cool chart I found on the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s website. It shows the major events of the Apollo 11 mission from ignition to splashdown. Everything had to go absolutely right on this mega PIA job.

What Armstrong and Aldrin Saw: Simulation vs. Original 16mm Film

WANT CHILLS TO GO UP YOUR SPINE? WATCH AND LISTEN TO THIS! The only visual record of the historic Apollo 11 landing is from a 16mm time-lapse (6 frames per second) movie camera mounted in Buzz Aldrin’s window. The visual above is from the footage (l to r) at 568 feet, 370 feet, 230 feet and 15 feet. More notes and links on the You Tube page.

One Small Step for…

July 20, 2018/0 Comments/in Apollo 11, Friday Afternoon, Moon Walk, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

Apollo 11 blasts into space on July 20, 1969 for a couple of guys to take an historical walk on the moon!!

Recently, Kowalski Heat Treating received a wonderful hard earned accreditation – we are now NADCAP™ certified for aerospace heat treating. For those who may not be familiar, NADCAP™ (National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program), is an unprecedented cooperative industry effort to identify a select group of top-quality vendors for the aerospace and defense industries. Special thanks to my entire team for all their hard work, and focus on quality. To put it mildly…..“I’m thrilled!”

To celebrate a bit, I went back to one of those special events locked in my memory, that still to this day amazes me, as today marks a special anniversary, not only in America, but throughout the world (and all of mankind), when almost 50 years ago today, mission commander Neil Armstrong, module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and command module pilot Michael Collins circled the moon and then landed their lunar module named Eagle on the moon. An accomplishment like this is filled with tons of facts and trivia, so for your pleasure, I picked some of my favorites – read along and check out the links, and thanks to NASA and Wikipedia for the info.

Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida. It was the fifth manned mission of NASA’s Apollo program.
The Apollo spacecraft had three parts: a command module (CM) with a cabin for the three astronauts, and the only part that returned to Earth; a service module (SM), which supported the command module with propulsion, electrical power, oxygen, and water; and a lunar module (LM) that had two stages – a descent stage for landing on the Moon, and an ascent stage to place the astronauts back into lunar orbit.
After being sent to the Moon by the Saturn V’s third stage, the astronauts separated the spacecraft from it and traveled for three days until they entered into lunar orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin then moved into the lunar module Eagle.
The crew assignment was Neil Armstrong as Commander, Jim Lovellas Command Module Pilot (CMP) and Buzz Aldrin as Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) officially announced on November 20, 1967.Due to design and manufacturing delays in the Lunar Module (LM), Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 swapped prime and backup crews. Based on the normal crew rotation scheme, Armstrong was then expected to command Apollo 11. Mike Collins, scheduled for the Apollo 8 crew, began experiencing trouble with his legs. Doctors diagnosed the problem as a bony growth between his fifth and sixth vertebrae, requiring surgery. Lovell took his place on the Apollo 8 crew, and, when he recovered, Collins joined Armstrong’s crew as CMP.
After the crew of Apollo 10 named their spacecraft Charlie Brown and Snoopy, assistant manager for public affairs Julian Scheer wrote to Manned Spacecraft Center director George M. Low to suggest the Apollo 11 crew be less flippant in naming their craft. During early mission planning, the names Snowcone and Haystack were used and put in the news release. The Command Module was later named Columbia after the Columbiad, the giant cannon shell “spacecraft” fired by a giant cannon in Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moonand the Lunar Module was named Eagle for the national bird of the United States, the bald eagle, which was featured prominently on the mission insignia.
The Apollo 11 mission insignia was designed by Collins, who wanted a symbol for “peaceful lunar landing by the United States”. At Lovell’s suggestion, he chose an eagle as the symbol, put an olive branch in its beak, and drew a lunar background with the Earth in the distance. NASA officials felt that the talons of the eagle looked too “warlike” and after some discussion, the olive branch was moved to the claws. Armstrong was concerned that “eleven” would not be understood by non-English speakers, so they went with “Apollo 11” and decided not to put their names on the patch, so it would “be representative of everyone who had worked toward a lunar landing”.
When the Eisenhower dollar coin was released in 1971, the patch design provided the eagle for its reverse side. The design was also used for the smaller Susan B. Anthony dollar unveiled in 1979, ten years after the Apollo 11 mission.
Neil Armstrong’s personal preference kit carried a piece of wood from the Wright brothers’ 1903 airplane’s left propeller and a piece of fabric from its wing,along with a diamond-studded astronaut pin originally given to Deke Slayton by the widows of the Apollo 1 crew. This pin had been intended to be flown on Apollo 1 and given to Slayton after the mission but following the disastrous launch pad fire and subsequent funerals, the widows gave the pin to Slayton and Armstrong took it on Apollo 11.
In addition to thousands of people crowding highways and beaches near the launch site, millions watched the event on television, with NASA Chief of Public Information Jack Kingproviding commentary. President Richard M. Nixonviewed the proceedings from the Oval Office.

For the aeronautic – engineering gang or those of you who just want to win a bet at your favorite watering hole!

A Saturn V launched Apollo 11 from Launch Pad 39A, part of the Launch Complex 39 site at the Kennedy Space Centeron July 16, 1969, at 13:32:00 UTC (9:32:00 a.m. EDT local time). It entered Earth orbit, at an altitude of 100.4 nautical miles (185.9 km) by 98.9 nautical miles (183.2 km), twelve minutes later.
After one and a half orbits, the S-IVB third-stage engine pushed the spacecraft onto its trajectory toward the Moon with the trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn at 16:22:13 UTC. About 30 minutes later, the transposition, docking, and extraction maneuver was performed: this involved separating the Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM) from the spent rocket stage, turning around, and docking with the Lunar Module still attached to the stage. After the Lunar Module was extracted, the combined spacecraft headed for the Moon, while the rocket stage flew on a trajectory past the Moon and into orbit around the Sun.
On July 19 at 17:21:50 UTC, Apollo 11 passed behind the Moon and fired its service propulsion engine to enter lunar orbit. In the thirty orbitsthat followed, the crew saw passing views of their landing site in the southern Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis) about 12 miles (19 km) southwest of the crater Sabine D (0.67408N, 23.47297E). The landing site was selected in part because it had been characterized as relatively flat and smooth by the automated Ranger 8 and Surveyor 5 landers along with the Lunar Orbiter mapping spacecraft and unlikely to present major landing or extravehicular activity (EVA) challenges.
On July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module Eagle separated from the Command Module Columbia. Collins, alone aboard Columbia, inspected Eagle as it pirouetted before him to ensure the craft was not damaged. As the descent began, Armstrong and Aldrin found that they were passing landmarks on the surface four seconds early and reported that they were “long”; they would land miles west of their target point.
Five minutes into the descent burn, and 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above the surface of the Moon, the LM navigation and guidance computer distracted the crew with the first of several unexpected “1202” and “1201” program alarms. Inside Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, computer engineer Jack Garmantold guidance officer Steve Bales it was safe to continue the descent, and this was relayed to the crew. The program alarms indicated “executive overflows”, meaning the guidance computer could not complete all of its tasks in real time and had to postpone some of them.
Due to an error in the checklist manual, the rendezvous radar switch was placed in the wrong position. This caused it to send erroneous signals to the computer. The result was that the computer was being asked to perform all of its normal functions for landing while receiving an extra load of spurious data which used up 15% of its time. The computer (or rather the software in it) was smart enough to recognize that it was being asked to perform more tasks than it should be performing. It then sent out an alarm, which meant to the astronaut, I’m overloaded with more tasks than I should be doing at this time and I’m going to keep only the more important tasks; i.e., the ones needed for landing.
When Armstrong again looked outside, he saw that the computer’s landing target was in a boulder-strewn area just north and east of a 300-meter (980 ft) diameter crater (later determined to be West crater, named for its location in the western part of the originally planned landing ellipse). Armstrong took semi-automatic controland, with Aldrin calling out altitude and velocity data, landed at 20:17:40 UTC on Sunday July 20 with about 25 seconds of fuel left.
Throughout the descent, Aldrin had called out navigation data to Armstrong, who was busy piloting the LM. A few moments before the landing, a light informed Aldrin that at least one of the 67-inch probes hanging from Eagle‘s footpads had touched the surface, and he said: “Contact light!” Three seconds later, Eagle landed, and Armstrong said “Shutdown.” Aldrin immediately said “Okay, engine stop. ACA – out of detent.” Armstrong acknowledged “Out of detent. Auto” and Aldrin continued “Mode control – both auto. Descent engine command override off. Engine arm – off. 413 is in.”
Armstrong acknowledged Aldrin’s completion of the post landing checklist with “Engine arm is off”, before responding to Duke with the words, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Armstrong’s unrehearsedchange of call sign from “Eagle” to “Tranquility Base” emphasized to listeners that landing was complete and successful. Duke mispronounced his reply as he expressed the relief at Mission Control: “Roger, Twan – Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
Two and a half hours after landing, Aldrin radioed to Earth: “This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” He then took communion privately.
Armstrong initially had some difficulties squeezing through the hatch with his Portable Life Support System (PLSS). According to veteran Moon-walker John Young, a redesign of the LM to incorporate a smaller hatch had not been followed by a redesign of the PLSS backpack, so some of the highest heart rates recorded from Apollo astronauts occurred during LM egress and ingress.
At 02:39 UTC on Monday July 21, 1969, Armstrong opened the hatch, and at 02:51 UTC began his descent to the lunar surface. The Remote Control Unit controls on his chest kept him from seeing his feet. Climbing down the nine-rung ladder, Armstrong pulled a D-ring to deploy the Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA) folded against Eagle‘s side and activate the TV camera, and at 02:56:15 UTC he set his left foot on the surface.
Despite some technical and weather difficulties, ghostly black and white images of the first lunar EVA were received and broadcast to at least 600 million people on Earth. Although copies of this video in broadcast format were saved and are widely available, recordings of the original slow scan source transmission from the lunar surface were accidentally destroyed during routine magnetic tape re-use at NASA.
While still on the ladder, Armstrong uncovered a plaque mounted on the LM descent stage bearing two drawings of Earth (of the Western and Eastern Hemispheres), an inscription, and signatures of the astronauts and President Nixon. The inscription read: Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.
Six hours after landing, Armstrong stepped on to the moon’s surface, and declared, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” He was joined by Aldrin about 20 minutes later and then spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and collected 47.5 pounds of lunar material to bring back to Earth.
Armstrong said that moving in the lunar gravity, one-sixth of Earth’s, was “even perhaps easier than the simulations … It’s absolutely no trouble to walk around.” Testing methods for moving around included two-footed kangaroo hops. The PLSS backpack created a tendency to tip backward, but neither astronaut had serious problems maintaining balance. Aldrin remarked that moving from sunlight into Eagle‘s shadow produced no temperature change inside the suit, though the helmet was warmer in sunlight, so he felt cooler in shadow.
The astronauts planted a specially designed U.S. flag on the lunar surface, in clear view of the TV camera. Sometime later, President Richard Nixon spoke to them through a telephone-radio transmission which Nixon called “the most historic phone call ever made from the White House.

Nixon: Hello, Neil and Buzz. I’m talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House. And this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. I just can’t tell you how proud we all are of what you’ve done. For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And for people all over the world, I am sure they too join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one: one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.

—————

Taking a break. Advertising people…you gotta love ’em. This art was developed for a Carlsberg Beer ad. While this is a marvelous image, (you can find posters of it on ebay & Amazon) the links below are totally real and even more incredible.

CLICK – Video of the very first moon landing of the apollo 11 mission in 1969! Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon with his now legenday words “One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.” This is a truly amazing video and it was in 1969!!! If you think about it, you have orders of magnitude more processing power in your mobile phone than they did in the whole space craft!! Incredible!

CLICK – A NASA page with full audio of Armstrong preparing to walk on the moon with a transcript to follow as you listen. Also, scroll down half way to see Neil collecting moon dirt and rock samples. (originally16 mm film) Then scroll to the bottom to see the guys taking the US flag to plant from two angles. (TV transmission from the ground and 16mm film from the lander) WOW!!

CLICK – On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men on the moon when they landed in the Sea of Tranquility. During their initial 21-hour foray onto the lunar surface, they received a telephone call from President Nixon. This is historic footage of that interaction. (The call was made around midnight, so some reports list the call as happening on July 21.) Nixon himself considered it the most important call he had made during his time in office, even more specifically, “the most historic phone call ever made from the White House.”