Happy 50th, Apollo 11 moon landing!

Fake News!

There's apparently all these people who claim the moon-landing never happened. Do they really think all the thousands of people directly involved in the moon landing project would be able to keep their mouths shut if it were fake? Why do people want to deny their amazing achievement? Seems so churlish, as well as stupid.

There weren't "thousands" involved.

Fake News!

That Mitchell and Webb Look - Moon Landing Sketch

As for the hottest among the Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong definitely had an attractive dorkiness about him

r3, of course there were thousands involved. Each Nasa executive had a secretary, for example. Both the executive and the secretary would have families who knew. As would every engineer, every scientist, every construction-worker. Even if the people directly working on the project was a couple of hundred, their staff and families bring those who knew about the project as it was being done was easily a thousand or two thousand.

Michael Collins daughter was Kate Collins, an actress on All My Children. She played Natalie twice and then, later on, Janet Green.

50 years ago, I was 12 years old. These three guys were everywhere you looked and I thought they were all sex bombs. Neil Armstrong was the blandest and the cutest and, therefore, was the most approachable sexually for a 12 year old. He won my heart and a central role in all my pre-adolescent sex fantasies.

Buzz had BDF!

The moon belongs to everyone

The best things in life they’re free

The stars belong to everyone

They cling there for you and for me

[quote]There's apparently all these people who claim the moon-landing never happened.

Americans love conspiracy theories, no matter how flimsy and illogical.

R3 - While you’re obviously joking I was surprised to read today that 400,000 people worked directly on the Apollo project in one capacity or another. Along with D-Day It truly was one of our Country’s most awe inspiring achievements. Too bad we peaked 50 years ago.

I remember watching the moon landing. I was 14 years old. My family and I were on vacation at Cape Cod. Everyone was watching. It was thrilling. I remember vividly to this day.

I was 5, and had the biggest crush on Neil Armstrong; I even named my grey longhaired tabby cat after him (my red tabby was Bobby [Kennedy]).

My middle sister liked Michael Collins, while my oldest sister was obsessed with Wally Schirra, go figure. In our World Book Encyclopedia entry on Astronauts, Schirra's face is completely obliterated by wet kisses. Yuck.

One of the few things on which my South Carolina grandma and my Louisiana grandma agreed was their belief the moon landing was faked somewhere in the Arizona, NM, or Nevada desert.

The other thing was South Louisiana was Hell on Earth because of the pre-EPA petrochemical plants and their constant flares.

Well, a lot of people believe the earth is 6,000 years mold, too. Stupid is contagious.

Oops; old, not exactly mold. Although your grandmothers brains may have been full of both.

R15 And I guess the moon rocks, dust, minerals brought back are fake too, as is the ability to see the flags and astronaut footsteps left on the moon.

Why can't we recreate going to the moon?

NASA says we can't get past the radiation belts now that were easily gone through 50 years ago.

Link, r19?

[quote]Why did a NASA engineer admit that they can't get past the Van Allen radiation belts? Isn’t this the smoking gun of a cover-up?

[quote]In a way yes it is. When asked about the Apollo missions years after they took place NASA told the world that they were able to go through the belts with technology that they destroyed after the last moon mission. When asked if they can just build another one they responded “it takes a long time to figure these things out.” Billions of tax dollars went towards this and they destroyed it without keeping blueprints? 1st red flag. Also, when the freedom of information act was passed NASA was asked for the original tapes from the moon landing. They admitted that when they were budgeting money, they wanted to save some on magnetic film strips and they accidently taped over the greatest achievement of mankind.....the only copy. A space shuttle in the 90s was able to make it 500 miles BELOW the belts before they had radiation flashes in their vision, even with eyes closed. This shuttle was shielded as well. The Apollo missions were not. Ultimately, the choice is based on your own logic. If you haven't done so yet, watch the first russian spacewalk and the first american spacewalk. Do they look real to you? Or like shitty 60s era stop frame animation?

Muriel is blocking links left and right now.

My Dad went to high school with Buzz.

They had to fill out a customs report when they landed. They claimed moon rock. Departure from moon. All three signed.

Buzz Aldrin (stars and stripes tie) and Michael Collins in the Oval with Trump yesterday.

My aunt went to high school with Michael Collins, who was part of the first team of men on the moon.

NA was a hot piece of ass

If you think about it, it’s pretty impressive that they could televise that first moonwalk live given how primitive technology was in the late 60s. The first telecommunications satellite wasn’t launched until 1962 and they barely had computers back then either.

Buzz shoulda punched Hair Furor!

The live televised feed on 7/20/1969 was quite crappy. But the filmed images that they brought back and are part of the Apollo 11 documentary are stunning.

Yeah it was crappy, R29 - but it was live. From the moon.

I always was kinda partial to Robinson Crusoe on Mars....

But seriously, of the 12 men who actually walked on the Moon, John Young was quite the looker in his heyday.

To me this image of the earth from the Apollo 8 mission in Dec. 1968 is much more arresting than anything from Apollo 11.

Yes, John Young; DILF!

Oh, they were ALL notorious pussy hounds.

Billy Bragg, The Space Race Is Over. Unofficial video to Billy's great nostalgic song, with some very poignant images.

Charlie Duke. Impish cutie pie who flew on Apollo16. He was the youngest to walk on the moon but his voice is the more famous aspect of him as he was Capcom when the Eagle landed. That’s him saying, “Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.“

R35 are you joking or serious? Any more deets?

tl;dw in1969, they did not have the technology to fake the moon landing, and they did have the technology to go to the moon.

As far as the radiation is concerned, they got lucky. They could have been fried, but were not.

We lost two shuttle crews on live TV. There was at least one other crew that died. I think it was a Mercury crew.

One of man’s greatest accomplishments.

R31 if you knew how many times I jerked off to that movie....

[quote]There was at least one other crew that died. I think it was a Mercury crew.

That was the crew of Apollo 1, in 1967. They were doing a dry run of the launch when a fire broke out in the cockpit and all 3 men were burned alive. Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. NASA claimed they died instantly but that’s not true. There’s a recording of them saying “Hey, there’s a fire in the cockpit” followed a few seconds later shouting “We got a real big fire in the cockpit” and “Help us” then screaming “HELP US!”

The cockpit door was designed to open inward but the gases from the fire made it impossible for them to open it. They were trapped.

My mom went to high school with Roger Chaffee and I went to grade school with his children

The three who died, Ed White in the middle was a total hottie with BDF.

This is an NPR story on an awful Soviet space flight:

[quote]Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth 'Crying In Rage'

R44 Ed White’s wife committed suicide several years after this happened.

Neil Armstrong was from Wapakoneta, Ohio. He ended up teaching at the University of Cincinnati. By all accounts, he was very professional, dedicated, but private and reserved. His students spoke highly of him.

Thanks, OP.

CBS Sunday Morning had a segment about the making of the spacesuits.

R46 Buzz Aldrin’s mother also committed suicide after the moon landing.

R45 Jesus. Why would they have an open casket?

Sorry, but Ed White was not all that hot.

Roger Chaffee was the one who had it really going on.

Roger Chaffee has matinee idol looks.

R50 the story I've been told is that Kamarov knew the technology/equipment of the space capsule was faulty, and so he realized that he was being made to take on what was essentially a suicide mission. He arranged an open casket funeral for himself so that the people who put him on the spacecraft would be forced to look at what they did to him

R49 - and her maiden name was Marion Moon! You could not make it up.

It's a little weird that cutie Neil Armstrong was married to a dowdy, plain Frau who looked like she could be his mother. They ended up divorcing after nearly 40 years of marriage.

The Americans were great, but you’ve got to admit Yuri Gagarin had a certain Datalounge je ne sais quoi.

Je ne sais quoi?

I think it's fairly clear.

How could we forget Gus Grissom (left) ?! Major BDF, here with Ed White(center) and Roger Chafee.

All killed in the Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967. Sad and too often forgotten space studs.

[quote] R50: [R45] Jesus. Why would they have an open casket?

That’s often asked for by the family to shame the politicians or public. But I don’t know in this case.

[quote][R15] And I guess the moon rocks, dust, minerals brought back are fake too, as is the ability to see the flags and astronaut footsteps left on the moon.

R17, my grandmothers were born in 1902 and 1889, respectively. Grandma 1889 was the daughter of slaves, and was whipped by the lady of the plantation house for reading on the job. Grandma 1902's big brother was lynched, and her family terrorized by the KKK.

So please forgive them for not being up on the latest scientific advances.

The astronauts left mirrors on the moon. We still direct lasers at them. The time it takes to hit them and reflect back tells us the moon is moving away from us about an inch a year, IIRC. So, it’s willful ignorance for this and other reasons to think the landing was faked.

Oh, the USSR would have loved to expose a fake USA landing.

Buzz Aldrin's mother killed herself in 1968, a year before the mission, after she learned her son was chosen to be one of the first on the moon. She felt she wouldn’t be able handle all of the attention her son would receive.

Buzz Aldrin sank into a deep depression after returning from that Apollo 11 mission (it ran in his family, both his mother and grandfather committed suicide) and began drinking heavily. He became broke and resorted to working at a car dealership for awhile. He went to Rehab and eventually cleaned up after joining AA. He married his third wife in 1988 after his final stint in rehab but they divorced after he discovered she was stealing his money.

He’s single now and is about to turn 90 years old. His adult children went to court trying to get him declared mentally incompetent last year - he sued them right back. He drives a red sports car and wears a lot of jewelry and goes through close to $70,000/month according to the children.

He’s a war hero, a jet fighter pilot and a M.I.T. rocket scientist (has a Ph.D in aeronautics) besides being an astronaut. He hasn’t had a drink in more than 30 years. An interesting and colorful guy.

R64 article

(R50) It's referenced a little bit in the article that you linked but the story was that Komarov was protective of Gagarin and thought of him as a little brother. Gagarin was his back-up and he knew that if he refused the mission it would be Gagarin who would instead be sent on the suicide mission. Apparently amateur radio buffs picked up Komarov berating and swearing at Russian ground control on his descent when it became clear that his parachute (and back-up) were not deploying properly and he was going to die on impact. Awful story but it outlines the risks and bravery of these men who willingly put themselves in harm's way to advance exploration. That makes these stories of 'moon hoaxes' a little more hard to take.

R66, I did read the article before I posted but I didn't see anything about why they would have had an open casket although R54 answered it for me.

"In my post, the grisly picture of the molten remains in the coffin, appear to be part of public funeral. As James Oberg points out, the photograph records a private ceremony: the men looking at the casket in a morgue, he says, are members of the Soviet space elite." Following other links it appears the story might not be what it seems

Fifty years ago, wow. I remember the day well. I had a bad acid trip that weekend. My friends dropped me off at my mother's house. She was all dressed up to go to the party celebrating the moon landing because her husband (my stepfather) was part of the team that built the LEM out at Grumman on Long Island. She dropped me off at my hippie father's house instead and he and I ended up watching it together on TV while I came down from the acid. It's hard to believe that Kennedy said in '61 that we would go to the moon within a decade . . . and we did it. Amazing.

I just watched Michael Collines (he's 88) give a lengthy interview on PBS. He is incredibly humble, funny and apparently a Democrat. Really good interview.

R70 It really is amazing that some of these are still alive.

Chuck Yeager, the first test pilot the preceded all the astronauts, are survived against all odds, is still alive at 96.

R58 Yuri was cute in the face but sadly he was a midget (5'2").

I remember being thrilled to get an Apollo 11 model that was about 3 foot tall. I was age 10 and it took me about 3 weekends to complete it. Later on I added on the lunar module. I was proud went they were both done and I had them displayed on a shelf in my bedroom for several years.

I still have my G.I. Joe Apollo capsule and astronaut Joe!

It's striking to think that 50 years before the moon landing, the year 1919, the great achievement was the end of World War I.

R76, and it's striking to think we are as far today from 1969 as the people of 1969 (including pre-teen me!) were from 1919.

And its striking to think how primitive laptops were in the year I was born and that you had to DIAL up an internet connection.

With a pencil, R78.