Just days before Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon The Engineer took a detailed look at the technology that would get him and his fellow astronauts safely there and back again
How do you mark the most significant achievement in the history of mankind? The Apollo landings of the late 60s and early 70s are still seen as the high water mark of humanity, and as The Engineer pointed out, much of the millions of words of press coverage of the first mission to land, Apollo 11, was concerned with the human stories of the three astronauts on board.
READ OUR ARCHIVE COVERAGE OF APOLLO 11 HERE
Admirably sticking to its remit, The Engineer decided it would be apt to focus instead upon the machinery that would be taking our first extraplanetary pioneers a quarter of a million miles from the Earth’s surface to the moon’s, and back again in safety.
In a special issue entitled “The Mightiest Machine in the World”, the magazine explained this decision. “Not surprisingly the stage has been dominated by the three astronauts who will land on the moon. We join with all men of goodwill in wishing them success. But the welter of publicity focused on the astronauts casts a long shadow which tends to obscure the extraordinary achievements of the thousands of specialists whose technical accomplishments have made the moon landing feasible.” One notable quirk of the coverage is that with typical British formality, the issue consistently refuses to use the name Buzz Aldrin, instead referring to him always by his given name of Edwin.
Over the subsequent pages, The Engineer not only went into detail about the technical specifications of the Saturn 5 launcher, Apollo Command Module, Service Module and Lunar Excursion Module, it also attempted to place the mission in the context of the United States economy and of its effect on industry. The cost of the Apollo mission exceeded $15 billion, and the greatest economic significance of this was in “the growth of national industrial strength that has occurred in response to the opportunity and challenges of the space programme”.
For example, it notes that NASA’s work on space communications systems led directly to the establishment of the Communications Satellite Corporation, and to a subsequent “many-fold increase in the ability to communicate, a major decrease in the cost of communication, and an international expansion of communications facilities”. Benefits had included unprecedented televisation of the Olympic Games, but even more significant was a 25% drop in the cost of a long-distance telephone call: “a permanent benefit to every citizen”.
The development of precision manufacturing techniques was also credited to the rigours of space exploration, as was the development of new products and new techniques. It’s now a cliche to mention nonstick pans in the context of the Apollo missions, but the Journal avoided this, instead mentioning “a 24 ounce battery-operated TV camera , bearings coated with a ceramic-banded dry lubricant for use at high temperatures, and the technique for polishing metal masters to shape elliptical glass mirrors”; it also mentions the transfer of successful management techniques from the industrial side of the programme to universities, government agencies and industrial corporations. The total spin-off from Apollo in economic terms have been cautiously estimated to be £1 billion a year, the engineer adds; “their value to a better environment and may be immeasurable”.
READ OUR ARCHIVE COVERAGE OF APOLLO 11 HERE
In an optimistic note, the article even suggests (remarkably for 1969) that as astronomy had led to the harnessing of nuclear energy, space sciences were suggesting “regimes of power” that could free mankind from reliance on diminishing or expensive fuels.
The issue is lavishly illustrated with photos of Saturn 5 and the Apollo vehicles, and it details the stages in which the launcher in particular was developed. This included proving the concept of clustered rocket engines, development of the guidance system, and experience in handling liquid hydrogen fuel, which was used in preference to liquid oxygen and kerosene for the second and third states of the rocket because the higher energetic value of oxygen and hydrogen. But remaining consistent with the stated goal, there are absolutely no pictures of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, or Michael Collins to be seen anywhere.
Do recall very well positioning my 2 year old son on my knee as we watched the launch together: telling him that we were watching history. In fact we still have the Philadelphia Enquirer newspaper for the entire weeks of the that time: and on re-reading such recently, noted a small item describing a crash of a car, apparently driven by a Kennedy in which a young lady sadly drowned. This was definitely overshadowed by the full impetus of the main story! My immediate boss who was a keen astronomer did allow me to actually see the tiny image of the Apollo capsule and LEM (Lunar excursion module?) (simply a ‘dot’) beside the main image we could see of the moon itself through his telescope: which if memory serves was called a Questar: made in New Hope, Pennsylvania, not 20 miles from where we lived. These were inspiring days.
Whilst I only witnessed Apollo 11 from the TV I later in 1972 went to Witness the launch of Apollo 17 with my own eyes the tour of NASA was extraordinary for a recently indentured aircraft apprentice I could relate to the science and the engineering of it all but still be awarestruck by its scale
There was a large sign in NASA which said “if you can dream it we can do it “ Goodness we need some of that spirit in Britain today as so much of today is the media saying what can’t be done
We need a new breed of politician that can actually believe in what British engineers can achieve and push back the negativity of current politicos to take us to a prosperous future
I have been working for 55 years but can still take a positive view
Sorry to be pedantic but the photo you show entitled ‘The first stage of the Saturn 5 launch vehicle’ is actually the first stage of the smaller Saturn 1.
It would be interesting to make an in-depth article on the equipment and devices that allowed the live transmission of the images from the moon to the tv-sets in the family home. What was involved, what was used along the transmission chain of the images, how was the tv transmission engineered using the technology of the time?
Re: Apollo 11 mission
I wonder if anyone recently has been able to make use of the Laser Retroreflector on the surface of the moon after astronauts in the Apollo 11 mission of 1969 placed an array of 100 individual corner cubes (each 4 cm in dia.) reflectors on the lunar surface?
Light takes 2.5 seconds to travel from the earth and back again, the 4cm diameter corner cube reflector causes the reflected beam to be 16km in diameter by the time it returns to earth.
It would be interesting to know as a concept, if any properties of the Laser retroreflector could also be used to accurately measure the temperature of the moon. Perhaps this could be realised by measuring the diameter of the reflected beam at the time it returns to earth.
[ref: Lasers & Their Applications, M.J. Beesley, 2nd Edition, 1976., Pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd. ISBN 0 85066 045 9]
Mel I agree with your sentiments regarding positivity. The media is not very good on this topic.