MENASHA, WI (WTAQ) – “That’s one small step for man…”
The entire moon landing and iconic words spoken by Commander Neil Armstrong have been etched into the American psyche for decades, but it’s the lesser-known obstacles that the Apollo 11 mission faced that continue to amaze aviation and aerospace experts today.
America’s introductory period to space flight was nerve-wracking to watch from the safety of a living room, let alone to be a part of the process.
“Alan Shepard said it best once,” explains Alan Peche, director of the Barlow Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin – Fox Valley. “He said, ‘Great, I’m riding on something that was built by the lowest bidder.’”
According to Peche, it’s not the iconic landing on the moon that he remembers best about the Apollo 11 mission, rather, it’s the work it took to get to that point.
He says everything needed to be perfectly calculated, including, the position of the sun.
“If the sun would have been directly overhead, everything would have been lit so directly that he [Armstrong] wouldn’t be able to see contours on the ground,” he explains.
Important to note, considering that there were boulders on the lunar surface the size of a VW van.
In terms of packing, there wasn’t much allowed.
“Lets put it this way, seats weighed too much,” says Peche. “They weren’t allowed to have seats, so they were bungee-corded in.”
Separating the crew from the vast unknown of space was, not much.
“The walls were so thin that it’d be easy to take a screwdriver and go right through the wall,” explains Peche.
Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface when the crew safely landed on July 20, 1969.
One of the members of the crew, command module pilot Michael Collins, will be in Oshkosh next Friday speaking at EAA AirVenture.
