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.
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