July 20th, 2019 : Moon Walk

[xoxoxoBruce]

Lot of press about Moon landing of late because of the anniversary. I certainly remember watching on TV while my wife was
at a baby shower... which was a blessing. But you know we spent a lot of man hours(and woman hours) to put those guys up
there and they didn't do much. They didn't go far, didn't look for the Moon Maidens or nothin'.

With the 50th anniversary of the first crewed landing on the Moon fast approaching, I thought I’d share one of my favorite views of the Moon walk, a map of where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, superimposed over a baseball field. The Lunar Module is parked on the pitcher’s mound and you can see where the two astronauts walked, set up cameras, collected samples, and did experiments.

This map easily illustrates something you don’t get from watching video of the Moon walk: just how close the astronauts stayed to the LM and how small an area they covered during their 2 and 1/2 hours on the surface. The crew had spent 75+ hours flying 234,000 miles to the Moon and when they finally got out onto the surface, they barely left the infield! On his longest walk, Armstrong ventured into center field about 200 feet from the mound, not even far enough to reach the warning track in most major league parks. In fact, the length of Armstrong’s walk fell far short of the 363-foot length of the Saturn V rocket that carried him to the Moon and all of their activity could fit neatly into a soccer pitch.

Astronauts on subsequent missions ventured much further. The Apollo 12 crew ventured 600 feet from the LM on their second walk of the mission. The Apollo 14 crew walked almost a mile. After the Lunar Rover entered the mix, excursions up to 7 miles during EVAs that lasted for more than 7 hours at a time became common.

link

[Diaphone Jim]

They were on a tight schedule, sort on a constant hair trigger zip the f out of there at the least threat.
I always felt the most for Michael Collins, who was by himself further from other humans than anyone had ever been.

And of course since they didn't look for Moon Maidens, there was no reason to visit home plate.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, getting them back off the Moon was of prime importance. If something went wrong on the trip home it would have been a bummer, but that's always a possibility. However getting off the Moon and hooking up with the orbiter was unproven, and they had minimum fuel. Now 10 had come close to landing, at a matter of fact Houston was biting their nails for fear they would land against orders and blow the orchestrated production a month or so later. So the take off leaving half the lander behind had yet to be proven.