Saturday, 19 October 2019

7 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE MOON LANDING





This year it’s 50 years since Neil Armstrong, during the mission Apollo 11, became the first man to walk on the moon. In honor of the 50th anniversary I decided to list a few pieces of information you might not know about one of the biggest achievement of Mankind.


    1.    Nasa had no idea how to go to the moon

When the president of the USA, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, announced to the world that America would send the first man to the moon by the end of the 60s, Nasa, the American space administration, had no idea how to send a man to the moon. It was something that had never happened before so they weren’t ready at all. Moreover, the training of the astronauts hadn’t started yet and the American engineers didn’t even have the right rocket. After the moon landing an engineer that worked on the mission Apollo 11 proudly said: ”We did the impossible”.


     2.    The most powerful machine ever built by mankind

The rocket used by the astronaut to reach the moon was Saturn V. It still is the largest, biggest and the most powerful rocket ever built. It was 111 metres tall – 18 metres taller than the Statue of Liberty- and it weighed around 2.8 kilograms- the weight of 400 elephants. It was a beast but it was very expensive: it cost 6.4 billion dollars per launch.


     3.    400,000 people worked on the Apollo 11 mission

The triumph of the moon landing doesn’t fully belong to the astronauts. It also comprised 400,000 people that supported and worked on the mission across the country. A considerable number of people!



    4.    Neil Armstrong made a promise to his grandmother

Armstrong’s grandmother thought the moon landing would be dangerous to her grandson, so he promised that he wouldn’t step out if it was dangerous. But we all know how it ended…

     5.    No one knows where the Apollo 11 lunar module is now

The lunar module is the “spacecraft” that the astronauts used to land on the moon. The modules of the previous missions had been destroyed by the sun or they exploded due to the heat or they just crushed during the landing. The module of the Apollo 11 crushed, but no one knows where…



     6.    Did the astronauts leave anything on the moon?

Yes, they did. The Apollo 11 astronauts left a few things on the moon surface: both Armstrong and Aldrin put the American flag on the ground, they left a card with “July 1969. We came in peace for all mankind” written on. An astronaut of Apollo 17, the last mission, left a picture of his daughter revealing “it was her dream”.

     7.    How much did the mission cost?

The rocket itself cost 6 billion dollars, but the Apollo programme was estimated to cost 8 billion then the budged had been expanded to 20 billion dollars, but the final amount came to 25 billion dollars!

So as Neil Armstrong said, his small step on the moon was a giant leap for Mankind. Now it’s all about us: we have to decide whether to continue on their footsteps or not.

Maria 

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