50 Years ago today...Apollo 11 blasted off to put the first man on the moon...

[OKSTATE1]

I was 7 going on 8, I still look upon early days of NASA very fondly, watched everything I could.

Our great country is still the only country that has put a man on the moon, it also demonstrated that our principles of freedom and capitalism, was the only environment in which such an achievement was possible.

It is the US Flag on the moon, was extremely proud of that as a boy, and still proud of it today.

MAGA

 

[GunsOfFrankEaton]

Our country's founding fathers would have been beyond proud that day. Those are the kinds of accomplishments this country was set up for.

 

[AC_Exotic]

Wa Po says it was a heartless exercise of white privilege.

 

[Soonersincefitty]

I was 18, made me believe anything was possible.
Found out it wasn't.

A great accomplishment for the USA at any rate.

 

[Ostatedchi]

When I was a kid my father worked at the FAA aeronautical center in OKC. He worked with the 2 smartest men I ever met. They both worked for NASA before then. One of them designed and programmed the lunar escape module and built the training craft for the astronauts.

 

[Ostatedchi]

Cool stories. Both men were named Bob. Big Bob and Little Bob.

Big Bob was one of the guys in the room during the Apollo 13 scene where they dumped the contents of the LEM on the table and said make the CO2 scrubbers fit.

Big Bob had the programming punch cards in his garage that they used to program the LEM. He used them as scrap notes.

We went to Little Bob's house and he was in his garage soldiering the traces on a blank green circuit board. He designed all the traces on the board, constructed it, and put all the various components on the board. Then wrote the operating system directly in machine language (hexadecimal). It all booted up the first time it powered it.

Little Bob memorized his multiplication tables to 50 x 50. In binary, octa, and base10 and 16.

Big Bob got pissed off when they started scrambling C band satellite. So he broke the code in just under 4 months and started building us descrambling devices. The code was the same that the US military used in the cold war that wasn't (to our knowledge) broken by the Russians. We all loved it until the FBI knocked on our doors. They said they wouldn't press any charges if we gave up our descramblers and if he told them how he did it. They tracked it down by the parts he was buying at Radio Shack.

They were all HAM radio operators and back then you had to know morse code. They wrote a translation program so you could type in what you wanted to send and the computer would dit and dah it out for you. You could turn up the rate. They started sending to Little Bob in morse. Started at 30 words per minute. Bob answered at 30 words a minute. They replied at 50 wpm. He responded at 50 wpm. They kept upping the speed till it was 120 wpm. He finally asked how they were doing it because he knew they weren't that proficient. But he never missed a word either listening at over 100 wpm or sending at over 100 wpm.

 

[NeekReevers]

There’s a great podcast right now by the BBC called 13 Minutes to the Moon. It has a lot of interviews with Mission Control guys. The thing that stood out to me was how young a lot of those guys were, many in their 20s.

 

[poke2001]

“Allegedly”.

 

[Soonersincefitty]

There’s a great podcast right now by the BBC called 13 Minutes to the Moon. It has a lot of interviews with Mission Control guys. The thing that stood out to me was how young a lot of those guys were, many in their 20s.

Yep, if you were 29 or 30, you were a senior.

 

[Ostatedchi]

“Allegedly”.

Damn that rustled me.

 

[JimmyBob]

Damn, I was 23 and killing every Viet Cong that came near the Acey/Deucey Club on
NAS Norfolk, which just happened to be less than a minute walk from my office.......

 

[Soonersincefitty]

Damn, I was 23 and killing every Viet Cong that came near the Acey/Deucey Club on
NAS Norfolk, which just happened to be less than a minute walk from my office.......

23?

Shoot...you pup.

 

[OKSTATE1]

Wa Po says it was a heartless exercise of white privilege.

John Kennedy exhibit A, he was racist too you know.

 

[iasooner1]

And a sexual predator (along with his family)

 

[GunsOfFrankEaton]

Cool stories. Both men were named Bob. Big Bob and Little Bob.

Big Bob was one of the guys in the room during the Apollo 13 scene where they dumped the contents of the LEM on the table and said make the CO2 scrubbers fit.

Big Bob had the programming punch cards in his garage that they used to program the LEM. He used them as scrap notes.

We went to Little Bob's house and he was in his garage soldiering the traces on a blank green circuit board. He designed all the traces on the board, constructed it, and put all the various components on the board. Then wrote the operating system directly in machine language (hexadecimal). It all booted up the first time it powered it.

Little Bob memorized his multiplication tables to 50 x 50. In binary, octa, and base10 and 16.

Big Bob got pissed off when they started scrambling C band satellite. So he broke the code in just under 4 months and started building us descrambling devices. The code was the same that the US military used in the cold war that wasn't (to our knowledge) broken by the Russians. We all loved it until the FBI knocked on our doors. They said they wouldn't press any charges if we gave up our descramblers and if he told them how he did it. They tracked it down by the parts he was buying at Radio Shack.

They were all HAM radio operators and back then you had to know morse code. They wrote a translation program so you could type in what you wanted to send and the computer would dit and dah it out for you. You could turn up the rate. They started sending to Little Bob in morse. Started at 30 words per minute. Bob answered at 30 words a minute. They replied at 50 wpm. He responded at 50 wpm. They kept upping the speed till it was 120 wpm. He finally asked how they were doing it because he knew they weren't that proficient. But he never missed a word either listening at over 100 wpm or sending at over 100 wpm.

Great stuff!

 

[100TonsofOrangeFury]

And here I was last Saturday rolling into the JFK Space Complex at Cape Canaveral, not knowing the momentous anniversary around the corner. If you haven't been, HIGHLY recommended. It's several thousand acres of swamp and orange groves that the US government bought in the 50's, now with about 6-8 launch pads, the biggest building in the world (by volume) where they assemble rockets, and just a bunch of the coolest, most unique stuff anywhere. You're looking at the real control rooms for Mercury, Apollo, and Space Shuttle eras, all the rockets as they evolved over the years, moon rocks, the Atlantis shuttle on display, Apollo re-entry pods recovered from the ocean, etc. All kinds of movies and interactive things to see, plus of course the currently active SpaceX pads and rockets, one of which was delayed after schedule to shoot last Friday.

One of the movies was about the new rocket program designed to launch all the Mars-bound components in the next few decades. They're planning a space station of sorts to orbit Mars and deploy vehicles, equipment and eventually astronauts to the surface of Mars. It's a lot more detailed and methodical than the stuff you see on TV or movies. Hope they can pull it off before I get as old as 57 or southern.

The whole thing was Disney quality, which astounded me the most. Just really, really well done. Best $57 I've spent in a long time.

 

[OKSTATE1]

And here I was last Saturday rolling into the JFK Space Complex at Cape Canaveral, not knowing the momentous anniversary around the corner. If you haven't been, HIGHLY recommended. It's several thousand acres of swamp and orange groves that the US government bought in the 50's, now with about 6-8 launch pads, the biggest building in the world (by volume) where they assemble rockets, and just a bunch of the coolest, most unique stuff anywhere. You're looking at the real control rooms for Mercury, Apollo, and Space Shuttle eras, all the rockets as they evolved over the years, moon rocks, the Atlantis shuttle on display, Apollo re-entry pods recovered from the ocean, etc. All kinds of movies and interactive things to see, plus of course the currently active SpaceX pads and rockets, one of which was delayed after schedule to shoot last Friday.

One of the movies was about the new rocket program designed to launch all the Mars-bound components in the next few decades. They're planning a space station of sorts to orbit Mars and deploy vehicles, equipment and eventually astronauts to the surface of Mars. It's a lot more detailed and methodical than the stuff you see on TV or movies. Hope they can pull it off before I get as old as 57 or southern.

The whole thing was Disney quality, which astounded me the most. Just really, really well done. Best $57 I've spent in a long time.

I went to the JFK Complex during my honeymoon in Florida, this was 1991. Sounds like the complex has come a long ways. They had an entire Apollo Saturn rocket on its side with each stage split, they had the huge vehicle they used to move the rockets to the launch pad that went as slow as a turtle, they had several other rockets, etc... We did not get to go in the Vehicle Assembly Building (biggest building in the world) because they were prepping a shuttle for launch. I always wanted to see them launch one of those shuttles and never did. From everything I have heard and read they have really stepped up their game in terms of making it a place you have to go visit. they had no videos when I went, etc..When I went back then they were more about actual launches then promoting NASA and their accomplishments. I am sure as funding was cut and the shuttle program killed, they figured they needed to promote themselves much better and get the public excited about funding the space program. Educating the public and entertaining the public was low on their list when I went. I did think it was cool to see the exact launch pad Apollo 11 and all of the Apollo rockets were launched from, it was immediately recognizable.

If I could go back in time and be a witness to 2 events, one would be Dallas when JFK was shot (thought being to know what REALLY happened, I would want to see the actual truth), and the other would be the launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969, just as a spectator.

 

[COWBOYintheUK]

Apollo 11 was IMO the greatest achievement of the Human species. IMO the greatest moment in Human history will be when the first human is born on Mars ( most likely Mars) that will be the moment when Humanity changes forever into an interplanetary species, and then hopefully on into an interstellar species ( a long ways down the road).......Had we maintained our momentum of Apollo , the birth on Mars probably would have occurred in the 1980s, but, we put everything into the Shuttle program. As Apollo was being cancelled so was another program, that IMO was even more important ......the Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NERVA)........NERVA had passed the final tests needed before actual in Space test flights........NASA just announced they are restarting the NTR program, and along with the DFD (Direct Fusion Drive, scheduled for flight test in 2028)we should take another tremendous leap in space exploration ....both systems would cut the transit time to Mars from around 11 months to under 3 months

 

[Ostatedchi]

Apollo 11 was IMO the greatest achievement of the Human species. IMO the greatest moment in Human history will be when the first human is born on Mars ( most likely Mars) that will be the moment when Humanity changes forever into an interplanetary species, and then hopefully on into an interstellar species ( a long ways down the road).......Had we maintained our momentum of Apollo , the birth on Mars probably would have occurred in the 1980s, but, we put everything into the Shuttle program. As Apollo was being cancelled so was another program, that IMO was even more important ......the Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NERVA)........NERVA had passed the final tests needed before actual in Space test flights........NASA just announced they are restarting the NTR program, and along with the DFD (Direct Fusion Drive, scheduled for flight test in 2028)we should take another tremendous leap in space exploration ....both systems would cut the transit time to Mars from around 11 months to under 3 months

Space Force. Heck yeah!