10 Crazy Facts About The Apollo Program | Answers With Joe

When you say that modern technology has vastly more power than the instrumentation used by NASA in the Apollo program, I agree completely... COMPUTER power. But the mechanical tech was really advanced. They had inertial guidance systems and rocket vectoring and all kinds of various chemical/hydraulic/non-computer-electronic technology at their disposal. Honestly, you can do anything you want with just about no computer assistance, but having a powerful CPU makes almost every task fast more efficient. So, from a mechanical engineering point of view, we had highly advanced, sophisticated technology. It was just all manual.

Decades after the landing, it still blows my mind that humans have done something like this. To walk on a celestial body that for thousands of years was just a distant light in the sky... just incredible. I wish I will live to see humans land on Mars, or perhaps some other moons.

As a young man in the 1980's, I worked with an engineer who worked on the Apollo program. He told us that when they would send a technician into one of the modules with a piece of equipment to be installed, they weighed all of the equipment, hardware, instructions, and tools needed for the installation, AND THE TECHNICIAN. After the technician returned, they were weighed again, along with all of the tools and instructions. This was to ensure that nothing was left or removed from the module without being accounted for, as every gram counted when it came to the fuel burn calculations. They also conducted a vibration test at the end of assembly, and he said that there was always a handful of loose hardware found at the bottom of the modules afterwards.

One little bit of trivia I love: the landing legs of the lunar lander were built in Montreal. So the first "feet" on the moon were Canadian.

From what I read, Armstrong really did bungle the line, you can even hear him making a weird pause after that, as if in embarassment. NASA later tried covering it by saying the signal cut out for a split second.

And you know what? I actually like that and think it's a beautiful representation of humanity: an ape achieving such a momentous goal, something seemingly impossible, a legendary feat of ingenuity and determination and yet still so fragile and prone to error. It just adds another layer of meaning to the whole thing and makes the legend that much more relatable.

My grandfather was one of those thousands of unknown people who helped made the Apollo missions happen. He was a mechanical engineer who worked for NASA for a good while in the '60s. I want to say 6 or 7 years? I don't remember precisely.

Another thing that wasn't brought up. During Gemini Buzz was the genius that brought in scuba diving to replicate weightlessness so NASA built that huge pool that they use to this day to practice EVAs. Also Buzz was a mathematician whiz on rendezvous. We've met several times over the years and he is a cool guy.

I always understood its meaning as "one small step for "A" man, one giant leap for mankind", even though I didn't hear the "A" I got what he was saying. Great line

I got a chance to see a mock-up of John Glenn’s Mercury capsule up close once - the fact that they actually trusted their lives to those dinky shells, with technology that looked like it belonged more in a transistor radio than a spacecraft, made me respect those dudes all the more. I really agree we had no business being in space at that time, which makes their feats all the more awe inspiring.

Fun fact that absolutely nobody asked for or cares about my wife’s step grandad help develop the steps that Neil walked down

I love the Customs Declaration form. But also seek out Buzz Aldrin's Travel Expenses report. Travel was from Houston to Cape Kennedy, Moon, Pacific Ocean (USS Hornet), Hawaii and return to Houston... the claim was for $33.31. As someone who has filled out his fair share of travel expense reports, I love that moon walkers had to share that pain.

Great video. Hit the mark pretty well.

I love your show. I love your sense of humor. This one was special to me. I grew up with a father who was big on the space program. He would wake us up at 3 or 4 in the morning so We watched everything when it happened. Watching this one today brought back so many childhood memory's. Thank you so much.

Thanks Joe. I met David Clark when I was a teen. He married my aunt. His company made the Gemini suits and the metal fittings for the Apollo suits. They were also involved with the transparent helmet the astronauts wore on the moon. I’ll never forget watching them step out onto the moon on our grainy black and white tv, on a hot humid afternoon in Montreal.

Joe is a natural comedian, has me crying laughing at his antics.

As I recall, the astronauts got around the lack of computing capability by bringing slide rules along (also known as slip-sticks). I learned to use one in my teens (late 60s, early 70s).

Maybe we weren’t ready to go to the moon from a computer processing standpoint but damn the preparation nasa put those astronauts through was insane. I really doubt any other humans in history had so much training for one mission.... and the amount of money spent on the training 🤯

Great video Joe. The part about the size of the LM was really interesting. It makes you wonder about the crew of Apollo 13 who had to live in the LM for days while returning to Earth .

No, I don't think that we were "ready" but mostly as prepared as we could be for something so monumental as the moon shot. The fact that we were technologically in our infancy when it came to space, and still put men on our only satellite planet, it is a testament to human resolve to touch the unknown, ready or not. Love your content and your humor! Keep up the great work!

I just can't believe your videos are still getting better, I thought you had already reached max entertainment and educational value.

PS: 18:59 It wasn't a solid joke, it was a gaseous one.

The Apollo program is my absolute favourite era in human history and I say that as a non-american. The ingenuity, the risk-taking and the solutions they came up with given available technology is probably the highlight of human achievement. I strongly suggest to listen to the BBC's wonderful podcast series "13 minutes to the moon", which has interviews and incredible detail on the Apollo 11 mission, including a detail recount of the you guessed it last 13 minutes from separation to power descent to landing.