13 Minutes To The Moon

Carrying on from my podcast series, I was recommended this by a DJ on our national radio saying he was on the edge of his seat during the whole thing. This podcast is from the BBC World Service. Again it's free and it is also available on Spotify which is great. It features 12 episodes each around 45 minutes long and it delves into the last 13 minutes of the descent from the astronauts that first landed on the moon.
The podcast also go through the various problems and the mammoth task that the astronauts and mission control had to overcome to get to the moon.
Now I am an 80's baby and I do know about when the moon landings were. I knew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and the other guy that stayed in the spacecraft while the other two walked on the moon. But I never really went into the moon landings in any detail. I was absolutely bricking myself listening to these podcasts. I knew they made it of course but the amount of things that was happening over the loop on the way down was crazy. My summary is simple. Neil Armstrong had a some pair of balls on him. He was absolutely calm the whole way down. Test pilots have nerves of steel so that's why NASA recruited them.

It all starts when Apollo 11 successfully went into the moons orbit. That was done already by Apollo 8. This time however they had the Lunar Module to get to the moon.

This was a weird looking thing a bit like a giant insect that Armstrong and Aldrin had to land on the moon. Most of it was auto pilot but I did not know that Armstrong took control of it 16 seconds from landing because they overshot the landing spot. So Neil put her into manual and hovered around trying to find a nice spot to land. They had 8 seconds of fuel remaining when he landed the Lunar Module. Mother of Christ. The guy was like steel. While I found Michael Collins was the funny guy in the crew.


Throughout the podcast they split the sections up into different areas and give you tit bits of the 13 minutes. At the end of the pod at the 11th episode they play the entire 13 minutes of powered decent to the moon.
The podcast also explains the previous Apollo missions that prepared for the moon landings and what they learned from them. One guy in Apollo 8 had diarrhea and bad sickness for two days in Apollo 8 and it just floated all over the cabin. Imagine that.

For The Naysayers

Everyone knows there are conspiracy theories about the moon landing saying they were all filmed in a Hollywood hangar. But in my opinion something like this was just too big for keep a lid on. Thousands of people were involved at Kennedy Space center, Mission Control, the astronauts and their wife's. If they were fake someone would of lifted a lid at this stage. Listening to the 13 minute transmission and hearing the shaky voices from the two astronauts. It just felt real to me. I just don't believe this is a conspiracy. I know 99.9% of Steemians are conspiracy theorists but I do not believe these were fake.

Anyway listen for yourselfs here The BBC do a great job on this. They interviewed people of mission control in this. The average age was 27 years of age. Kids in charge of the critical systems to get the three men to the moon. Absolutely mental. Some of the guys walked in off the streets and asked for a job. 5 years later they were head of a department. But the best thing is that they did it. This is a thrilling listen. And it really does educate anyone that was too young to live through the moon landings.