Abstract
An eagle was chosen as the mission emblem, as shown in the Apollo 11 badge or patch, highlighting that it was American. The patch was also unusual in omitting the names of the astronauts (the only Apollo mission patch to do so), apparently at the suggestion of Collins, who wanted the credit to be shared with the thousands of people whose work had made it a success.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Their Latin mare names are Serenitatis, Imbrium, Crisium, Nectaris, Humorum and Orientale, respectively.
- 3.
My team at TRW Systems in Houston was one of several that spent much of 1968 trying out various mathematical models for the Moon’s gravity and various durations of radar data to try to find a mix that accurately predicted the CSM orbit two hours ahead, but without success.
- 4.
There are at least three different weights that are pronounced “ton”. For brevity, I use the word “ton” to signify a weight of 1,000 kg (about 2,205 lbs) instead of “tonne” or “metric ton”. Note that in the United States and Canada, “ton” usually means 2,000 lbs, while in the rest of the world it usually means 2,240 lbs.
- 5.
Rumors of the explosion including the incorrect report of large numbers of human casualties were published in the West a few months later.
- 6.
It is thought to have been gradually pulled in towards the surface by the Moon’s irregular gravity and to have crashed within a few months. The crash site has never been found. Later Apollo missions fired the engines to drive the empty ascent stage into the surface at a pre-selected time and place so that its impact could be measured by the seismic instruments left behind on the surface by the astronauts.
- 7.
The coating was made of phenolyic epoxy resin and was applied to a brazed stainless steel honeycomb structure.
- 8.
This happened on about half of the Apollo re-entries. On Apollo 8 Ed Anders recalled “hanging upside down in the ocean with all the garbage falling on us” until the three flotation balloons righted the capsule while his Commander Frank Borman was “sick as a dog from seasickness” during the 43 minute wait in the 10’ (3m) swell until frogmen arrived. The most serious incident was the re-entry of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz joint mission with the USSR, caused on this occasion by failure of one of the three parachutes to open. Toxic gas from the fuel tanks seeped into the cabin during the descent, incapacitating the crew, and the upside down position led to some delay in getting them out. Vance Brand had to be resuscitated by his two astronaut colleagues, Tom Stafford and Deke Slayton, before the hatch was opened. All three were put in intensive care but soon recovered.
- 9.
One local assignment for Armstrong before he left Houston was to hand out Apollo Individual Achievement Awards to several of my TRW colleagues and me at our office just outside Mission Control – in my case for the work my team had performed to provide the correct longitudes of a third of NASA’s ground stations that had been shown during Apollo 8 to be seriously in error.
References
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Norris, P. (2019). The Eagle’s Journey. In: Returning People to the Moon After Apollo. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14915-4_4
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