Date: July 13, 2011

Title: Apollo 11: Flight to the Moon

Podcaster: Thomas Hofstätter and Leon Dombroski

Organization: :: The Hidden Space Project ::

Link: http://hidden-space.at.tf

Description: This is the third audio of five about the mission of Apollo 11. In this audio, the excitement generated in the media and in the public by the Apollo 11 flight to the Moon is discussed, as well as highlighting the astronaut’s trip to the Moon.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions to the podcast, feel free to write me an email to hidden-space (at) gmx (dot) at or visit me at my website at www.hidden-space.at.tf!

Bio: Born in 1993 near Vienna, Austria, Europe. Upper High School with focus on Computer Science.Interested in extreme small and extreme big, devious and uninvestigated things. My main aim is to bring astronomy to public and to establish secular interest in astronomy, physics and mathematics. Host of :: The Hidden Space Project :: at http://hidden-space.at.tf.

Sponsor: This episode of 365 Days of Astronomy is sponsored by midnightmartian.com: 3D apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to this episode of 365 Days of Astronomy. My name is Thomas Hofstätter and I am the hoster of :: The Hidden Space Project :: at www.hidden-space.at.tf.

[Leon:] And I’m Leon Dombroski from the state of Connecticut in the United States.

[Leon:] The launch of Apollo 11 was a huge event including 35,000 cars, 2,000 private
aircrafts and a huge number of boats in the bay. Even a week before
launch, it was impossible to get a room and people had to sleep on the
beach. It is said that the estimated 1,000,000 caused the worst traffic
havoc in Florida’s history. While the astronauts’ families mostly staid
at home watching the event on television, according to [Har07, page 121]
there were the following VIPs present at launch:

[I do the following part]

• Former President Lyndon B. Johnson
• Vice President Spiro T. Agnew
• 4 cabinet ministers
• 33 senators
• 200 congressmen
• 19 state governors
• 40 city mayors
• several hundred ambassadors and foreign ministers
• Former NASA Administrator James E.Webb and several other NASA employees

[Leon:] Moreover there were 3,500 journalists but none from the USSR or the
PRC.Walter Cronkite of the television network CBS described the event
with the words:

We knew darned good and well that this was real history
in the making. […] this was the date that was going to
be in all the history books […] everything else that has
happened in our time is going to be an asterisk.

[Leon:] The Apollo 11 crew was at Johnson Space Center nearly the whole week.
They were woken up at 4.15 (local) on July 16, 1969 by Deke Slayton
and had breakfast at 5.00. They had orange juice, toast, scrambled eggs
and steak. Then they went for suiting at 5.30. On 6.20, the crew had
finished suiting and went outside to the media and the transfer vehicles to
launch pad 39A which is located eight miles away. During that time, they
had to carry their ventilators with the live support system like suitcases.
They arrived at 6.37 and took the elevator to the top of the Saturn V
rocket. It took about 1.5 hours to go through a checklist including 400
items. At 7.52 the crew was finished in the capsule and the atmosphere
was adapted to 40 per cent nitrogen and 60 per cent oxygen.

Note that previous missions had an atmosphere of pure oxygen. This was adapted after the fire in Apollo 1 where all three crew members died in the capsule.

The Saturn V rocket lifted off on 9:32:00 EDT on July 16, 1969. From this
instant of time on, the Ground Elapsed Time (GET) started to count. The
astronauts had pulses Armstrong 110, Collins 99 and Aldrin 88.Collins
described the first T+15 seconds later:

[Leon:] It was, I thought, quite a rough ride in the first 15 seconds
or so. I don’t mean the engines were rough, and I
don’t mean it was noisy, but it was very busy – that’s the
best word for it; it was steering like crazy.

About 12 minutes after launch, the Saturn V rocket reached parking
orbit at about 185km above ground where they were able to take
off their helmets. Since three Soviet Cosmonauts died when their capsule got a lack, all space travellers have to wear space suits to prevent death of lack of Oxygen or heat during the reentry.

[Leon:] They communicated with Houston via the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN). At their second orbit, they prepared for Translunar Injection (TLI). TLI means the exit of earth orbit and flying toward the moon. Direct flight from earth to the moon would have cost much more fuel.

The advantages of orbits is that if there is an error, it is quite easy to
abort and return to earth and that there is less fuel necessary to begin
the flight to the moon.

[Leon:] The burn for TLI began 2h44min14sec after launch and lasted for about
5min53sec. Shortly after the TLI, the CSM began to rotate with 2–
degrees–per–second to avoid irregular heating of the skin. That meant
that there was no zero–gravity any more because of centrifugal force.
When Collins began separation from the third Saturn V station, they
were about 5,550km away from earth and had doubled their altitude
within ten minutes. Armstrong reported to Houston at that time:

Houston, you might be interested that out of my left–
hand window right now, I can observe the entire continent
of North America, Alaska and over the pole, down to
the Yucatán peninsula, Cuba, the northern part of South
America […]

[Leon:] Because also former missions had proved that you can observe the earth
quite well from space, it was an aim of the US and the USSR to send
reconnaissance satellites into orbit. That’s the reason why we have such
high quality maps of earth today.

On their third day of flight, Apollo 11 crossed the first Lagrangian
Point where they were the first humans to move on from earth’s gravitational
influence. The Lagrange Points are areas where there is no gravity because several masses neutralize each other. The first Lagrange Point lies between earth and the moon. Today, space probes for observing the space often are parked in these points due to the saving of energy.

[Leon:] After 75h49min of flight, Apollo 11 began it’s Lunar
Orbit Insertion (LOI) in which the engines fired over 6 minutes to get
the capsule into orbit.There was another boost to precise the orbit at
80h11min of flight in which the engines fired over 17 seconds. Their orbit
then was 113.0 by 100.0km which meant that they were flying at an
altitute of 100.0 to 113.0km.

In orbit, the crew realized that the moon was not gray, but – as reported
from prior crews – had a brownish color.

[Leon:] On flight day 5, the crew members prepared themselves for undocking
the LM from the orbiter. Therefore they put on their space suits and
Armstrong and Aldrin went into the LM. Collins had to stay in the orbiter.
100h12min after launch, the LM separated from the CSM and the LM
began descent.

That’s it for today. I hope, you enjoyed it. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, write me an email to hidden-space (at) gmx (dot) at or visit me at my website at www.hidden-space.at.tf.

Thanks for listening and clear-skies!
[Leon:] Good bye for now!

New stories are to come soon!

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
=====================
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