"It Was Impossible"— The Starry-Eyed Dream that Launched Us to the Moon 50 Years Ago This Week

The Sun Also Rises Radio Show ^ | 15 July 2019

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[unixfox]

C’mon, everybody knows it was a Hollywood produced movie.

[GingisK]

I was privileged to grow up in the time to witness the space program unfold. It was thrilling, and had a great deal to do with my choice of career. I will never forget sitting in the TV room of my dorm watching the moon landing.

[Thistooshallpass9]

Even though the lighting to bathe a movie set in such fey luminescence wasn’t extant in 69?

[Thistooshallpass9]

It seems to me like the most exciting chapter in history, so I agree that you were privileged to have lived through it. I asked my dad if he remembered watching it and he doesn’t, which is bizarre. I think he was too bitter from having just been drafted to care much about it.

[broken_arrow1]

I live in north Houston area, and take visitors to NASA mainly to see the Saturn V display. Even by today’s standards, it is an amazing display of engineering mastery! Truly an incredible accomplishment.

[ßuddaßudd]

♪ Oh my starry eyed surprise, sundown to sunrise ♫

[GingisK]

The Saturn V is still the most powerful machine built by man. It you don't know this already, consider that if the F1 stage could be laid horizontally on wheels on a railroad track, it could out push 2,200 diesel-electric locomotives!

The Apollo Program is so very important, and the achievements are flabbergasting.

[Honorary Serb]

And they did it all with computers that were primitive by today’s standards!!!! (And some—but by no means all—of their “computers” were women, not machines!!!!)

https://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/historic/Human_Computers

[infool7]

Bill Whittle Now - Back to the Moon:Rebooting NASA

Apollo 11 +50 years starts July 16th

7

[bitt]

p

[pfflier]

But this accomplishment was the result of a massive team of people laboring for a decade on an effort unlike anything that came before it.

And they did it with sliderules...

[ASOC]

Going to the moon?

I thought that was a ploy by JFK et al to divert attention away from a growing racial problem.

*We will go to the moon* speech - given @ Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962.

On Sept 30 of the same year, the Ol Miss riots broke out. So, maybe not too effective.

[kosciusko51]

I live in north Houston area, and take visitors to NASA mainly to see the Saturn V display

I do the same with my visitors here in the Huntsville, AL area. The Space and Rocket Center has an vertical Saturn V outside, and a horizontal one inside.

[minnesota_bound]

and the democrats blocked further flights and other exploration.

[Rockingham]

I grew up in the Orlando area, which was close enough to see the manned boosters climbing upwards when launched. For Mercury and Gemini, one saw a bright point on a column of smoke, but the Saturn V was large enough that even in Orlando, one could see the rocket itself on launch and could even see the first stage detach dozens of miles downrange.

Astonishingly, NASA originally planned on even larger boosters, with competing designs known as Nova and the Saturn C-8 that were to be capable of supporting a direct landing on the Moon. The most likely designs had eight F-1 engines in the first stage, as compared to the five in the Saturn V. NASA dropped development of such models though after recognizing the advantages of Lunar Orbit Rendevous, which made it possible to use the smaller Saturn V. This likely shaved a couple of years or more off the schedule for the Apollo landing.

[catnipman]

and keep in mind that all of the engineering and navigation was done with slide rules ... the onboard flight computer had less computing power than your toaster ...

[Bob Ireland]

I vas dere, Charley! ...at the news staging area, just outside the Vehicle Assembly Building. :^D I still have some of my credentials.

[ealgeone]

Back when people could think.