Unknown Apollo 11 Fact

[karatekicker271]

I got this story from a local radio station's news.

THE FIRST MEN ON THE MOON BROKE THEIR LUNAR MODULE. . . AND FIXED IT WITH A BALLPOINT PEN

We've seen lately how hard it is to get space shuttles ready to go into orbit. . . so, back in 1969, when we sent the first astronauts up to the Moon, it was basically like they were flying inside of a giant, galactic Geo Metro.

A new documentary about NEIL ARMSTRONG, BUZZ ALDRIN and MICHAEL COLLINS, the first men on the moon, called "Apollo 11: The Untold Story", debuted on British TV last night. . . and revealed just how RICKETY their equipment was.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left Apollo 11 in their lunar module, which transported them from the ship to the surface of the Moon, they found that one of the circuit breakers was broken.

They didn't have tools or backups available to fix it. . . the technology wasn't there yet. Without fixing it, the lunar module couldn't go back to the shuttle. . . they would've been STUCK on the surface of the Moon.

So Aldrin grabbed what he had: A BALLPOINT PEN. And he says, "We used that to push the circuit breaker in." That actually WORKED. . . and the module started working again.

BUT. . . back on Earth, the government was in contact with NASA, getting ready to alert the public that the astronauts were STRANDED. PRESIDENT NIXON even prepared an address to the nation about their deaths. ("Apollo 11: The Untold Story")

 

[TeenRocketNerd]

Originally posted by karatekicker271
I got this story from a local radio station's news.

THE FIRST MEN ON THE MOON BROKE THEIR LUNAR MODULE. . . AND FIXED IT WITH A BALLPOINT PEN

I seen that on a show the History Channel showed a while back; thank god for yankee ingenuity!

 

[DeanHFox]

The actual text was written by William Safire and Nixon was prepared to read it.

Nice article, which includes the text, at this link:

https://cassandra2004.blogspot.com/2006/07/apollo-11-moon-landing-anniversary-ayn.html

Scroll down to the "Disaster Never Came" section.

Glad they never had to use it!

 

[brianc]

Originally posted by karatekicker271
Without fixing it, the lunar module couldn't go back to the shuttle. . . they would've been STUCK on the surface of the Moon.

Um, that would be the Command Module, not the Shuttle... Sheesh, young'uns!

 

[Bigander]

ONe mission. Not Apollo possibly gemini or mercury. The CO2 was too high. They jury rigged together a filtering device and brought down the CO2 levels.

 

[Nerull]

Originally posted by Bigander
ONe mission. Not Apollo possibly gemini or mercury. The CO2 was too high. They jury rigged together a filtering device and brought down the CO2 levels.

Erm, that was Apollo 13.

At least as far as I know, there were no other problems with CO2 levels. Some other close calls, though. Armstrong had to save one of the Gemini missions too. We came pretty close to losing him before Apollo.

 

[jflis]

Originally posted by Nerull
Erm, that was Apollo 13.

At least as far as I know, there were no other problems with CO2 levels. Some other close calls, though. Armstrong had to save one of the Gemini missions too. We came pretty close to losing him before Apollo.

Yep, that was during one of the docking missions. Once docked with the test probe (can recall the name - agena??), the thrusters began to go nuts and Armstrong couldn't gain control until after he broke off the dock and was free from the test prob. (or something along those lines - too tired to look it all up )

as for "thank god for yankee ingenuity!"... ...that makes me think of all the money we (NASA) spent coming up with the Zero Gravity Pen as a regular pen wouldn't work in orbit and it was a real problem for them....

...Cosmonauts used pencils....

 

[DeanHFox]

Originally posted by jflis Yep, that was during one of the docking missions. Once docked with the test probe (can recall the name - agena??), the thrusters began to go nuts and Armstrong couldn't gain control until after he broke off the dock and was free from the test prob. (or something along those lines - too tired to look it all up )

Yep, Jim, it was Gemini 8. Right after Armstrong and Scott docked with the Agena target vehicle, the paired spacecraft started rolling (spinning along the long axis of the two vehicles).

Convinced that the problem was with the Agena, they undocked...at which point the **** really hit the fan. The problem was actually a stuck roll thruster ON THE GEMINI, which was causing them to spin faster and faster (the max roll rate reached a full rev per second!)

Faced with blacking out from the centrifgual effects of the roll, they turned off the reaction control system, and got control back by using the re-entry control system thrusters...but mission rules called for "soonest return to earth" once the re-entry RCS system was tapped, so home they came soon after.

Pretty doggone close thing...but they were well trained, they figured it out, and made it home.

 

[karatekicker271]

Originally posted by brianc
Um, that would be the Command Module, not the Shuttle... Sheesh, young'uns!

I didnt write it Discuss that with the news reader on the morning show

 

[denverdoc]

Was a great show, and flashed back to the publicly available commentary at the time and thought holy s. Probably will react to the shuttle commentary, once released, in 20 years in much the same way. We've already had previews cuz of disasters and shake-ups in the corp, but there is still a huge untold story here I suspect.
Bits and pieces re the o-ring story, likewise with the failure to use good cameras cuz of 911priorities/resourcing issues before reentry, etc.
When will we get off the pot and give NASA the budget it deserves. If we can afford .4 tril on defense, seems like nasa should get say 1/8 of that. Theres our only real and permanant defense--ad astrum.
John S

 

[adrian]

Originally posted by jflis
as for "thank god for yankee ingenuity!"... ...that makes me think of all the money we (NASA) spent coming up with the Zero Gravity Pen as a regular pen wouldn't work in orbit and it was a real problem for them....

...Cosmonauts used pencils....

This turns out not to be the case.

From the article on www.snopes.com:

Here's how Fisher themselves described it:

NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils, but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating in the [capsule's] atmosphere where there was no gravity. They could float into an eye or nose or cause a short in an electrical device. In addition, both the lead and the wood of the pencil could burn rapidly in the pure oxygen atmosphere. Paul Fisher realized the astronauts needed a safer and more dependable writing instrument, so in July 1965 he developed the pressurized ball pen, with its ink enclosed in a sealed, pressurized ink cartridge. Fisher sent the first samples to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Director of the Houston Space Center. The pens were all metal except for the ink, which had a flash point above 200°C. The sample Space Pens were thoroughly tested by NASA. They passed all the tests and have been used ever since on all manned space flights, American and Russian. All research and developement costs were paid by Paul Fisher. No development costs have ever been charged to the government.

The whole article is here.

 

[jflis]

Originally posted by adrian
This turns out not to be the case.

From the article on www.snopes.com:


The whole article is here.

oh man!

That ruins one of my most enjoyable space-race stories that I would tell the kids...

bummer...

LOL

 

[10fttall]

likewise with the failure to use good cameras cuz of 911priorities

Before the Columbia disaster, were there actually requests made for better cameras? Were they denied due to budget? And did management really, truely want to grant them, or was the budget used as an excuse for continuing to use the observation cameras that has always done the job previously?

Not trying to be smart, just asking because I don't know.

 

[JRThro]

Originally posted by Bigander
ONe mission. Not Apollo possibly gemini or mercury. The CO2 was too high. They jury rigged together a filtering device and brought down the CO2 levels.

Again, sheesh, young 'uns.

Yep, it was Apollo 13, as Nerull said in his post. Because they used the Lunar Module as a lifeboat, and because the life support system in the LM was only designed for 2 men instead of 3, and for a shorter time than they had to use it, the CO2 levels got dangerously high until they jury rigged a way to use the filter cartridges from the Command Module in the Lunar Module.

Someone *please* correct me if I made any errors in that description.

 

[Nuke Rocketeer]

Originally posted by adrian
This turns out not to be the case.

From the article on www.snopes.com:


The whole article is here.

Ya beat me to it!!

Joe W

 

[skan 32]

the documentry was shown here on ch 5,
and to be blunt i thoaght it was rubbish,most of the program was sensationalist, pointing out the obvious dangers,
rather than being a realy safe thing to do...it was actualy quite dangerous and no one at nasa seemed to realise this fact !
the only new thing i found out was that the escape system wouldn't work until 2m30s as it had a 2 second activation time,if they'd have blown an engine on the pad and the saturn 5 had exploded, the capsule would'v been caught up in the blast before the escape tower would'v been comanded to fire,
the thing about the pen being used to fix the curuit braker is an old one (even ive heard buzz mention it before)
but overall it was one of those documentarys that just had me yelling at the tv again

i gotta get out more

JJ..(JJ-UK)

 

[JJI]

Another little known Apollo 11 fact - google "Good Luck Mr. Gorsky"

 

[Nerull]

Originally posted by JJI
Another little known Apollo 11 fact - google "Good Luck Mr. Gorsky"

Its little known because its not true.

https://www.snopes.com/quotes/mrgorsky.htm

 

[adrian]

From there you can get to the NASA transcript of the landing.

On the other hand, both sources yield the even less well known fact, which really is a fact, that Neil Armstrong fluffed his famous line. It was supposed to be "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind". But he missed out the "a".

If you're willing to download a 6MB MPG file, you can see for yourself:
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11v_1092338.mpg

 

[denverdoc]

Originally posted by 10fttall
Before the Columbia disaster, were there actually requests made for better cameras? Were they denied due to budget? And did management really, truely want to grant them, or was the budget used as an excuse for continuing to use the observation cameras that has always done the job previously?

Not trying to be smart, just asking because I don't know.

Absolutely, because of concern raised from radar data, 3 separate requests were made while Columbia was in orbit for DoD photo's. May be many reasons why it wasn't done, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_disaster

John S

 

[Chr$]

Originally posted by brianc
Um, that would be the Command Module, not the Shuttle... Sheesh, young'uns!

He Musta've gotten them confused, the CM was the Columbia, you know.

 

[ben]

Originally posted by JRThro
Again, sheesh, young 'uns.

Yep, it was Apollo 13, as Nerull said in his post. Because they used the Lunar Module as a lifeboat, and because the life support system in the LM was only designed for 2 men instead of 3, and for a shorter time than they had to use it, the CO2 levels got dangerously high until they jury rigged a way to use the filter cartridges from the Command Module in the Lunar Module.

Someone *please* correct me if I made any errors in that description.

another things since I have seen the Appollo 13 mov1e 15 times in school in Imax and in video at the time they only had the square CO2 cartridges for the command modle and the Lem used round cartridges. so they used a plastic bag a piece of duct tape and a sock, 2 1/2 seconds before the passing out "stage" to make a CO2 filter.

thanx, Ben

 

[Chilly]

At the risk of sounding like a total snoot, I strongly suggest checking some authoritative books on the subject instead of sensationalistic TV shows. For instance, the recent "Space Race" show got a lot wrong...Mercury Control was never in Houston for one thing. And Nixon's dead-astronaut speech was prepared well ahead of the mission, not in response to a circuit-breaker glitch.

Try these out:

"Lost Moon" by Jim Lovell (Apollo 13 cdr, this book was the basis for the movie)

"A Man on the Moon" by Andrew Chaikin. *The* must-read history of the Apollo program, and the basis for the HBO miniseries.

"First Man", authorized biography of Neil Armstrong. Exhaustive research, and it dispels a lot of popular mythology.

They're all very good reading, especially "Lost Moon".

 

[denverdoc]

good tip, but I wouldn't characterize the show as quite "sensationalist". Told in the first person for the most part by the players themselves.
Books are usually better researched, not disagreeing with that one bit, and plan to ckeck a couple out,
John S

 

[DeanHFox]

I'd add "Carrying the Fire" by Michael Collins to that list...easily one of the best astronaut bios I've ever read. He has a very easygoing style, and you get a good perspective on both a Gemini rendezvous/spacewalk mission AND, of course, Apollo 11...from a guy who was there!

 

[thomasrau]

Originally posted by denverdoc
Absolutely, because of concern raised from radar data, 3 separate requests were made while Columbia was in orbit for DoD photo's. May be many reasons why it wasn't done, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_disaster

John S

Thats because the requests were never made by NASA, true some people lower down wanted the pictures, one even pulled strings to try and talk directly to the Air Force, but the NASA hierarchy declined.

See "Comm Check ... The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia" by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood. A great read.

 

[denverdoc]

Hmmm, when you say lower down, within NASA or just some joe off the street, the wikepedia article suggests they were turned down by the DoD which is what I recall hearing in the aftermath, but have no citation. I will check out this read, and recommend another to readers which addresses the utter stupidity of large scale orgs, whether private or governmental, in making the right decisions on cutting edge stuff. Deja vu all over again re the o rings, guys on the line who know the rocket, aministrators above dancing on the strings of many puppeteers..
Skunk Works is the book I'm thinking of--small group working independently of the mother corporation--did remarkable things. Lets hope the next 20 years brings many fledgling aerospace corps into the arena!

John S