Apollo-11 "One Small Step" -- fight inaccurate media portrayels, for Neil

As we celebrate another anniversary of the first footstep on the Moon, the first without the actual stepper, in honor of the actual event let's make sure news/internet coverage gets the 'small step' correct -- and NOT report it like the jump down from the ladder, as so many later books and documentaries [including by NASA] inaccurately showed. One small step, left foot off the footpad and onto the moon. Giant leap!!!!

The way it was [but no dust puff, that's artistic license]
www.rmg.co.uk...

Simulated actual configuration:
www.apollomissionphotos.com...

galaxywire.net... [but has Earth in wrong point in sky]

upload.wikimedia.org...

Originally posted by JimOberg
The way it was [but no dust puff, that's artistic license]
www.rmg.co.uk...

There wouldn't be any stars either, if it were a real photo. So many media and enterntainment sources are eager to put stars on every space background, disregarding the fact that stars are very dim and would require a long exposure or dark adaptation for eyes to see them.

Cheers for the thread, I didn't know that it was a small step off the pad.

Originally posted by JimOberg
As we celebrate another anniversary of the first footstep on the Moon, the first without the actual stepper, in honor of the actual event let's make sure news/internet coverage gets the 'small step' correct -- and NOT report it like the jump down from the ladder, as so many later books and documentaries [including by NASA] inaccurately showed. One small step, left foot off the footpad and onto the moon. Giant leap!!!!

To get from the ladder to the footpad, Armstrong stepped (and not jumped) down the first time --albeit it was a long reach -- but then went back up the last rung of the ladder to verify that it could easily be done, and THEN jumped down to the footpad the second time (see after the :35 mark in the below video for the first "reach" down the ladder onto the footpad)

Granted, this wasn't the first step on the Moon, but the first step onto the footpad. Perhaps this is where history is taking a bit of license:



Buzz Aldrin, on the other hand, jumped down to the footpad on his first time (around to :20 mark in this video):



But, yeah. I get your point that the first step onto the Moon were not a jump, but rather a little side-step off of the footpad.

Bumping this because I miss seeing these types of threads and you JO

There must have been a video camera and transmission provided
for the ladder decent. Not sure if the transmission was that clear
as we see now. Integrated circuits must have been used to save
weight for the video cameras.

What would you like to say about "Apollo 18"?

Originally posted by HiddenSecrets
What would you like to say about "Apollo 18"?

edit on 28-8-2013 by HiddenSecrets because: (no reason given)

The movie, or the cancelled mission?

reply to post by wildespace


Both, was that mission really cancelled?

reply to post by HiddenSecrets


I think the movie was rubbish. I downloaded it for free, watched some, but didn't bother watching the rest.

The real mission, along with Apollo 19 and 20, got cancelled while the program was still underway.

About the time of the first landing in 1969, it was decided to use an existing Saturn V to launch the Skylab orbital laboratory pre-built on the ground, replacing the original plan to construct it in orbit from several Saturn IB launches; this eliminated Apollo 20. NASA's yearly budget also began to shrink in light of the successful landing, and NASA also had to make funds available for the development of the upcoming Space Shuttle. By 1971, the decision was made to also cancel missions 18 and 19.

en.wikipedia.org...

So the cancellation of Apollo 18 happened in the year Apollo 15 flew, and Apollo 16 and 17 were already known to be the last two missions. What's remarkable is that in August 1971, President Richard Nixon proposed to cancel even those, but was persuaded by his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Deputy Director Caspar Weinberger to keep those missions. en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by wildespace


Our recent technology is good so no one need to go to moon to setup anything, right? That is why no one went to moon after this,right?

Originally posted by HiddenSecrets
reply to post by wildespace

 

Our recent technology is good so no one need to go to moon to setup anything, right?

Wrong. Robots can do some things as well as men, such as take pictures and gather radiation & some environmental data. These days they could no doubt set-up a Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector (LRRR) with better accuracy than the Soviet rovers could in the '70s.

However, many of the Apollo experiments were conceived, designed & flown because scientists & engineers knew that only a man could set them up. Among these are the Heat Flow Experiment, which required drilling several holes 9-feet deep emplacing lines of thermisters in each and plugging them into the surface station. Others included the soil mechanics experiment, the geophone array, the portable magnetometer and many more (Read Taking Science to the Moon for more details). We don't have robots today that can do these things.

Then there's the matter of sample-collection: It's taken 10 years for the Opportunity rover on Mars to cover the same distance the later Apollo crews traveled in 3 days. Along the way, it has used a little grinder and three sensors to measure a couple-hundred of the countless rocks it has passed along the way. By contrast, the geology-trained astronauts could look out over fields of rocks and select a cross-section of samples to determine the geologic history of an area. They took core-samples of regolith, collected smaller rocks, broke chips off of larger rocks and dug underneath boulders to get samples that had been shielded for eons. No robot can do these things.

The one great advantage of robotic space exploration is that it is cheaper than sending men. In the current budget environment, this crucial fact - the price tag - makes the difference between what is possible and what is forever "in the future".

Originally posted by HiddenSecrets
That is why no one went to moon after this,right?

Wrong. The decision to stop going was purely political. It had no basis in engineering, technology, capability or long-range planning. Again and again on ATS I am astonished that people actually expect political decisions to make sense. Give up. Politicians do not understand engineering, technology, or long-range planning - They only care about what will give them political advantage and/or favorable press in the next few days, weeks or months. We had the technology to fly people to the Moon... and Nixon threw it away so that headlines would say he was "focusing on problems closer to home".

I could rant-on, but this post is already much longer than I had intended. In short, the decision to stop manned exploration was short-sighted, tragic, and damn-near inevitable.

Our recent technology is good so no one need to go to moon to setup anything, right? That is why no one went to moon after this,right?

Technically, no-one knows why we never continued to go to the Moon. Some say it was budget cuts and some say it was 'cos we were 'warned off'. Each person believes what they think is plausible.

In my mind it makes so much sense to have a base on the Moon.

reply to post by qmantoo


Let's face it, if we kept going to the Moon, there would be no Skylab, no Space Shuttle, and no ISS. Apollo missions were draining the budget, and there would be no money, time, or resources left for anything else. Perhaps Apollo missions were far ahead of their time; we still needed decades of low-earth orbit flight, building space stations, developing new technologies, and basically learning to live in space.

I think we could have gone back there sooner than later, but the world powers seem to be more obsessed with geopolitical matters, oil, influence, military presence, spying, sponsoring regime changes, etc.

reply to post by Saint Exupery


Thanks dude, nice explanation.But because of politics we're not able to discover more?

reply to post by JimOberg


Trying to catch the sequence of the first moon step. Was Neil Armstrong still on the foot pad when he said "Here's one small step for (a) man" and then stepped off to complete "One giant leap for mankind?", or did he say the entire phrase while having one, then two, feet off of the footpad? Thanks.

To be technical, Aldrin's "Contact light" were the first words said while man was attached to something which was "on" the moon (the lead-out for the contact, which then initiated the four-foot drop to the moon, touched the surface and then Aldrin said that).

Aleister
reply to post by JimOberg

 

Trying to catch the sequence of the first moon step. Was Neil Armstrong still on the foot pad when he said "Here's one small step for (a) man" and then stepped off to complete "One giant leap for mankind?", or did he say the entire phrase while having one, then two, feet off of the footpad? Thanks.

To be technical, Aldrin's "Contact light" were the first words said while man was attached to something which was "on" the moon (the lead-out for the contact, which then initiated the four-foot drop to the moon, touched the surface and then Aldrin said that).

Watching that again it looks to me as though there is a definite change in his position after he says "I'm going to step off the LEM now". I think only when he's sure he doesn't have to make a quick exit back on to it does he make his statement.

reply to post by onebigmonkey


Nice. Thank you.

So to be even more accurate about it, the first sound a man made while stepping his spacesuit onto the moon was "tha" with a short-a sound.

Depends on your ears As an aside, I was searching through online copies of Australian newspapers here

trove.nla.gov.au...

for references to the mission, and came across this angry letter from the Canberra Times 23/07/69.

Sir
Journalists need to unclog their ears and brush up their semantics. What Neil Armstrong said as he stepped on to the moon was, "This is a small step for a man, a great leap for mankind". Omission of the indefinite article before "man", as reported in all the newspapers, renders his comment almost meaningless.

Seems Don Laycock, at least, heard the 'a', even if he misheard the rest of it

That online resource is great fun, even if you only read the adverts. There is a good article in one of the editions about how the TV signal was received by Australia and re-distributed globally.

reply to post by onebigmonkey


If the woman who heard "a" had everything else wrong about the first sentence, I would place my bet on her not hearing the "a" either.

Armstrong probably just forgot saying it in the weight of the moment (he knew his words would immediately enter an iconic level and have life throughout human history), and I always thought the line was better without the "a".

"That's one small step for man," has a poetry to it, bringing the entire human race along with him for that one step, whereas adding the "a" makes it mundane. He did it perfectly, even if it was a mistake.

I still like the first sound that primates made on the moon: "Tha" (short vowel accent). Should be reverently carved into statues of the event.

reply to post by Aleister


Indeed - and the point made in the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal on the subject is perfectly correct: it doesn't matter if he said it, everyone knew what he meant.

I think my interpretation of the sequence (he steps down, then he says it) is consistent with what we know about him: measured, careful, waiting until he's sure before he says anything and saying just enough. The words he spoke were perfect.