July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin were strapped in the Apollo spacecraft atop the Saturn V rocket. In a matter of 11 minutes since their launch, they were propelled into outer space and on their way to the lunar surface. Four days after, Aldrin and Armstrong became known to earth as the first men on the moon.
All these facts have already been known to man and it has come down to every history book in the world. However, the Apollo 11 mission came with more than just those facts. Here are some of them in a list. Reading through will change the way people think about the Apollo 11 mission.
Fact 1: Saturn V, the rocket that propelled the Apollo 11 into space, is still the most powerful rocket created in the world. It stands at a height of more than 100m. At its launch, Saturn V burned roughly 20 tonnes of fuel a second before its launch. The propellant accounted for at least 85% of its total weight.
"I think we were all surprised at how truly strong that thing was," Frank Borman, an Apollo 8 astronaut, said back in an interview in 2011.
Another astronaut by the name of Charlie Duke has likened the feeling to that of stage separation when parts of the spacecraft were jettisoned into a massive "train crash".
Fact 2: Apollo 11 was the same size as that of a large SUV. Armtrong, Collins and Aldrins all travelled a million miles into space and back for eight days inside a space craft that is not larger than the regular SUV. All three astronauts were basically strapped in bend-clike "couches" during the launch and landing. The Command Module is roughly the size of 3.9 m the widest. Apollo 11 was rather small to house three astronauts. That is really no space for anyone with claustrophobia.
Fact 3: Several African-American women helped manage the track to the Moon. before the setting in of the digital age, NASA employed female mathematicians to perform "computer" tasks. Many of these women were actually African-Americans. Their worked included the processing of data and performing calculations, which both prove to help address the critical success of the space program.
Now that several considerations have been made, the plan to send back a team to the moon will become even more challenging, but it will be worth it.
