Moon photos

A lot of the photos are repetitive, out of focus, or of little interest. But hey, these guys went to the Moon! And shooting with film cameras, all they could do was keep taking pictures and hope that some of them would be spectacular - which they are.

Here's one from Apollo 10, echoing the famous Earthrise photo taken by William Anders on Apollo 8. No credit at Flickr for the photographer.



Many of the photos at Flickr are poorly scanned, and I corrected the levels on this one in Photoshop to show what it really looks like. Here's the original:
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5664/21762770539_4d85a9366a_c.jpg

 

I just stumbled upon this video of a saturn rocket taking off to get those apollo guys to the moon. A high speed film camera mounted mere feet from the massive engines on the launch pad is slowed down (with descriptive narration) to give one an amazing insight as to just how much is going on in those first :30 secs.

 

That's great footage! When you see the immense size of the Saturn V on display at the Space Center, it's amazing that it could ever get off the ground. Here's a photo that shows the scale:

 

I've never seen this before. It's absolutely amazing. Thank you.

 

I went there when I was a kid: it was incredible to see how big it was.

I saw something on TV recently - it might have been a Brian Cox thing - which amazed me. The peak power output of a Saturn V was 60GW. In the late 60s, that was the same as the peak power output of Britain's electricity network. All of it. So while it was launching, Apollo XI was putting as much power as Britain.

 

Brilliant. Thank you.

I'll be sitting my daughter down to look at this thread when she gets home from school. She loves this kind of thing.

 

Here's another one I did a little cleanup on:


It's the Apollo 17 ascent stage, on its way back from the Moon and about to rendezvous with the Command Module ready for the voyage home.

All the Lunar Modules, of which this is the top stage, were built by Grumman on Long Island, just a few miles from here. Ten minutes away is the Cradle of Aviation Museum, about a mile from where Lindbergh took off for France in 1927, and they have the LM for Apollo 18, one of the three remaining LMs that were left over when the Apollo program was cancelled.
Grumman Lunar Module LM-13 at the Cradle of Aviation Museum

I never get tired of looking at it - up close, it's quite a bit bigger than I expected.

 

On the Moon with Apollo 12:

 

You mean the landing wasn't faked??!!

That's the #1 reason that I'm rooting for the PRC to land some folks on the moon - or at least send up a rover!!
You still have the Chuck Noorey types out there that swear that NASA faked the whole thing......