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1st Moon Landing 39th Anniversary


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Wed, 07/23/2008 - 20:08 — frednet

July 20 1969, a man from Earth stepped onto the surface of the Moon.

- - -
The first manned spacecraft landing on the Moon was at 3:17 p.m. EST on July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, the Eagle, landed in Mare Tranquillitatis, located at 0°4'5"N latitude, 23°42'28"E longitude. The Eagle landed approximately 50 kilometers from the closest highland material and approximately 400 meters west of a sharp-rimmed blocky crater about 180 meters in diameter.

from: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/

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Comments

Sat, 07/26/2008 - 09:47 — Mike Langford

Maybe Failure is an option, if you correct it quickly enough.

Maybe I figured it out.

Let's put it this way: I vivdly recall it being 4:17 pm Eastern Time when Apollo 11 landed. But those sneaks at the Big Bad Lunar and Planetary Institute list the time as "3:17 pm EST" [Eastern Standard Time], which would translate into 4:17 pm EDT, which is the actual clocktime that essentially everyone was using in the eastern United States at the time. But then I wasn't totally sure we were using Eastern Daylight Time in 1969, but a quick check of the Wonderful Worldwide Web, which we certainly didn't have in 1969, seems to confirm that it came into general use in 1966.

OK. Maybe I should quote Albert Einstein, who after a lengthy adoring introduction, sheepishly confessed, "Yes, but my socks don't match."

Sat, 07/26/2008 - 09:14 — Mike Langford

First Landing was actually 4:17, NOT 3:17 pm EST.

Greetings and Best of Luck, Frednet!

Thanks for commemorating with great precision (it would seem), as no other team apparently saw fit to do, the anniversary of our first manned lunar landing. I do appreciate and applaud your respect for those incredible men of Apollo!

And I truly hate to sound like a "know-it-all", but it so happens that the impressive, authoritative-looking website from which you quoted your data, The Lunar and Planetary Institute, appears to have the time of the landing off by one hour. Yeah, I am absolutely certain it was 4:17, NOT 3:17 pm EST. How can I be so sure? I remember watching and waiting and counting the minutes and writing down the official time, in numbers an inch high, at the bottom of my own poster-sized drawing of the Lunar Module Eagle. I will also contact the Lunar and Planetary Institute's webmaster. Why am I nit-picking? Maybe because Precision is important in landing on the Moon, and paying Very close attention to exactly how it was done the first time would seem to be a Very good starting point. Remember Gene Kranz? "Failure Is Not An Option!"

Allow me to bore you a bit more. I was what you might call a student of Moon 1.0. About a dozen of my high school buddies and I initiated our own project in 1971 with our county school sysytem and Atlanta's Fernbank Science Center to simulate Apollo 16 and 17 in real-time. KSC donated an Apollo Command Module mock-up. The Smithsonian sent us three simulated spacesuits. Rockwell sent controls and displays, and three NASA astronauts sent us a small library of flight plans, checklist, systems handbooks, etc. I was student coordinator for the whole project, in addition to doing my best to simulate the real-time mission activities of Charlie Duke, Apollo 16 LMP. It was a blast, but I hope a few million kids get twice the inspiration from The Google Lunar X PRIZE!