Why Did the Apollo Landers Look So Odd?

[@CuriousDroid]

Go to ground.news/droid to access data-driven information from around the world. Subscribe through my link to get 40% off the Vantage plan for unlimited access.

[@desertodavid]

Excellent video! I love how you ended it. One of our Marine Corps fighter/attack aircraft squadron's mottos was "Can Do Easy".👍

[@sspacegghost]

can you do a video on how - the 1969 apollo crew, are three inmates who 'disappeared' from alcatraz prison in june of 1962. Clarence and john anglin and frank morris. they had to hide the 1963 plasma reactor tech ripple tech (taught at MIT in 2021) so apollo was a propaganda program.

[@Tod_oMal]

How did they sleep inside the LEM?

[@furerorban1488]

Wikipedia • The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which succeeded in preparing and landing the first men on the Moon from 1968 to 1972. If zou denies it zou comitets though crime If you deny the American landing on the moon, you are committing a thought crime, which the authorities will retaliate with lobotomy, electric shocks, and shackling. Glory to Orbán! Salute to old Adderal Trump. If you deny the end of the world caused by the greedy capitalist speculant+66++ with global warming based on the poisoning well, anti-Semitic slander from the middle ages, you are committing a thought crime

[@BenjaminGoose]

@@furerorban1488 You have mental health issues that need addressing, see a therapist.

[@mjproebstle]

Best ad Volkswagen ever had for the Beetle…”It’s ugly, but it gets you there.” Caption was underneath a picture of the LEM.

[@perniciouspete4986]

"It's ugly, but it gets you there, and if it gets you back, so much the better."

[@RM-we7px]

It’s ugly,it’s cheap…

[@dddon513]

Lemon.

[@wrightmf]

Yes, I remember that same ad! I see some say it was a lemon but they were easily repairable. I knew many VW owners that also had the book "VW Repair Manual for the Complete Idiot."

[@Cinconegativoprimeiro]

The Boeing Starliner is much prettier but only offers a one-way ticket!

[@mikefochtman7164]

One documetary said the idea of standing was in answer to making smaller windows. The large windows just weren't working out but astronauts were like, "Yeah but we got to SEE where we're going." Then someone realized if you stand up real close to a small window, you have just as good a field of view as sitting back from a large window.

[@joevignolor4u949]

True. And as a bonus they got rid of the weight of the seats.

[@RCAvhstape]

@@joevignolor4u949 And made more space available for donning suits, and on later missions, sleeping in hammocks.

[@aemrt5745]

A funny part of Engineering Design (and human nature) is having that eurica moment on a concept that in hind sight is rather obvious!

[@Benjiesbeenbetter.]

After 50+ years, I've finally realised why the windows were tilted downwards. I'm a bit embarrassed that it didn't seem obvious.

[@silikon2]

Didn’t Armstrong also see out the window that the automated landing was taking them to a dangerous spot with boulders and such? He then took control and flew them to a safer landing spot. There’s also a small docking window on the LM. Anyway, yeah it would be horrible to go through a 6 day+ mission without any windows.

[@germansnowman]

I have always found it quite beautiful. No frills, just functional but also very iconic.

[@-danR]

I never found it beautiful. But as the Apollo program developed my thinking tracked the various design-ideas that developed with it, and one of those ideas was the lander. There were a few years of Walter Cronkite moving little models of the LEM and the Command Module around with his hands, turning them around, etc. The Lander was what it was.

[@dcrispin1]

I too found the LEM really cool! Pure function, no frills, no pizzaz. Perfect design for the mission it was made for. Definitely not a Star Trek shuttle craft!

[@mariop8576]

Agreed, it's hard to believe that this many years later and we have not been able to duplicate this feat.

[@SRMoore1178]

Now that I think about it, the lander looks like one of those little fuzzy jumping spiders.

[@DougVanDorn]

The one issue with the crush core shock absorbers was that, once stroked, the gear was permanently shortened. If you were coming straight down onto a level surface, that's not a problem, all the struts will stroke about the same. But on Apollo 15, for example, the LM landed with its rear and right (minus Z and plus Y) footpads over a smallish crater that was about 10 meters or so across. The front and left (plus Z and Minus Y) footpads were over level ground, while the right footpad was over an area about a meter within the small crater, with the back footpad about three meters into it. So, the back footpad was maybe 1.5 meters lower than the front, with the right footpad abut .75 meters below the front. The crater's rim ran directly under the engine bell. On this landing, Dave Scott had killed his sink rate to nearly zero, at about one foot per second (so about 0.3 mps), when the contact light came on. He was very quick at shutting down the descent engine, so that his LM, the heaviest flown to date, was allowed to basically free-fall from the largest height any LM dropped in from, about two meters, resulting in the fastest touchdown speed, about 5.4 feet per second, of any Apollo landing. The touchdown sequence was that the front and left footpads hit first, and their legs stroked as the weight of a hard-ish landing came through them. Then the vehicle tipped back and to the right, as those footpads kept going before hitting the ground. In the meantime, the descent engine bell, which was still expelling gas as part of the shutdown process, slammed into the crater rim, crumpling the bell and risking a descent engine explosion (you can see the soil of the crater rim shooting out at the bottom of the field of view, in the descent film, as the bell hit and burped soil all over). The rear and right pads hit with less force than the front and left pads, as much of the force of the landing had been attenuated by the two footpads and engine bell that already hit. So those stroked less than the other two struts. What was left was a LM resting almost entirely on three legs, with the plus Z (ladder strut) footpad actually sitting off of the ground. When Jim Irwin stepped down from the ladder when first going out onto the surface, the footpad swiveled on him and, had he not had a grip on the ladder, would have caused him to tip over backwards. I believe they got it more stable by pushing dust and some rocks under it, for continued operations. But the whole time they were on the Moon, their LM was tipped back and to the right at about a 20 degree angle.

[@lucaherman6227]

That is super interesting, thansk!

[@DougVanDorn]

@@lucaherman6227 Thank you! Yeah, there was a reason why, when the LM touched down hard and then fell back and to the right, again sort of hard, that Irwin's first word after touchdown was "Bam!" It's interesting, that the guy who had the lowest descent rate when he shut down the engine actually had his LM land the hardest. But if you think about it, if you're nearly hovering at two meters and then drop, you have farther to just fall than if you're coming down at about a meter per second and hit the shutdown switch when the contact probes hit, at two meters in height. Because it takes a moment to react. If you're nearly hovering, you don't drop much at all in that moment, and fall from the full two meters. But if you're going a meter a second, you've descended about a meter by the time you hit the switch. So, even though you were coming down faster, you don't shut down thrust until you're closer to the ground, so you don't have time or space to get going as fast. It seems contradictory, but the accelerometers proved that, if you wait until you touch down to shut the engine off, you land the softest. Armstrong and Shepard both let their LMs settle to the ground before they got their engines turned off, and had the softest landings. While Pete Conrad, on Apollo 12, cut his engine the moment the contact light flashed on, and even though he had a 1 mps sink rate, he still landed second hardest. He even commented, "I shut it down, and we DROPPED, didn't we!?"

[@worawatli8952]

I wondered if this incident got Nasa to design space hydraulic and jackstand. lol

[@daryllect6659]

@@lucaherman6227 You're welcoem.

[@jtbDDOepMNNVIpk]

HBO’s late 90s miniseries “from the Earth to the moon” episode five “spider“ is all about this. Those of you who have never seen this mini series - It is totally worth your time. It’s amazing…. my kids and I watch it once a year.

[@colormedubious4747]

That episode is one of my two favorites. The other is the geology episode.

[@jawharp1992]

I can second this. Watch the series if you haven't already.

[@jtbDDOepMNNVIpk]

@@colormedubious4747 I like spider and 1968. Wife likes the geology episode the best.

[@softdorothy]

That scene with the steel washer.... genius filmmaking right there.

[@michaelnash2138]

I really enjoy "Spider" and "Is that all there is?" (The one with Pete Conrad, Al Bean and Dick Gordon on Apollo 12.) The only ones I'm not fond of are "We have cleared the tower" and "We interrupt this program". Don't care for those as much.

[@SkulShurtugalTCG]

It's incredible to think that the LM only exists because one guy pushed really hard for Lunar Orbit Rendezvous when all of his superiors thought it was a stupid idea. If it wasn't for his persistence, we might never have landed on the Moon at all.

[@allangibson8494]

And that is also why the Apollo service module was ridiculously over powered - it was designed to launch back to Earth from the surface of the Moon. It never flew with a full fuel load.

[@mjfan653]

Yeah, looking back at it, knowing all the facts, it is such a genius idea. But for the people at the time, it must have been a lunatic idea. The people have been grown up with propeller aircraft and cigar rockets. And them takjng off in one piece. But it was a genius move, not taking to the moon the heavy re-entering heat shield and not taking to the moon the heavy aerodynamic main capsule was ultimately logic. We needed to revision our own point of view. On the moon no friction and 1/6 gravity. The lunar lander, and two part mothership+lander idea was genious. I can't even fathom what kind of futura it must have been for people who saw the portable tape player as futuristic (the apollo astronauts carried with them the first walkman precursors). And it is a testament to the genious of those engineers, that I would, with lots of people far smarter than me, still, in 2024 take the apollo+saturnV system to the moon today (as long as the oxygen tank stirrers were checked). And of course it is still the only piece of tech to take people to another astronomical body. And that is no small step, nor an easy choosing.

[@patricknorton5788]

​@@allangibson8494Interesting, I never knew that.

[@MrDaiseymay]

EVEN MORE INCREDIBLE, IS THAT SOME PEOPLE STILL BELEIVE IN THE MOON LANDING.

[@throwback19841]

lunar orbit rendezvous added a lot of complexity and smaller problems that had never been solved before. but it also removed one great big problem, which was how to build and launch a rocket even bigger than the Saturn 5

[@stevecastro1325]

Thank you so much for the deep dive on all the hundreds of thousands of procedures that had to be followed to the letter, to ensure that this was not a one-way trip I remember being woken up in the middle of the night to go to my grandmom‘s houseto see the Apollo 11 moon landing, because she had a color TV. It is still one of the highlights of my childhood memories.

[@tomconte2847]

My uncle worked on the LM at Grumman. He would give me cut-offs of extra length of wire and other scraps generated during its manufacturing. I understand that the same engineer that helped design the landing gear of Grumman's F4F Wildcat also designed the LM's landing gear too.

[@74360CUDA]

I wonder if your Uncle knew my Dad.

[@ThomasGilmore-fi6gb]

Or maybe he knew my Dad and his identical twin brother both at Grumman then (in shipping).

[@phpsoftwareengineering]

I wonder if you still have any of those scraps, and if so, what are they worth these days? 👾

[@NocturnalNews]

@@ThomasGilmore-fi6gb oh damn my uncle also worked there he was an Amazon driver back in the 60s

[@ThomasGilmore-fi6gb]

@@NocturnalNews OH damn, did your uncle know that you're a jackass?

[@frankintegrity7996]

Best channel on the tube mate.No shite unneeded backing track,no click bait nonsense.

[@joshuaford4460]

First time learning that Hexcel, known for their core material in composites, made the single use shock absorbers for the lander. Thanks for the video!

[@colormedubious4747]

They were famed for their skis. Back in the 70s, I never fell off of a finer pair of skis than Hexcel's.

[@jonmoceri]

@@colormedubious4747 My ski coach kept ripping the bindings out of his Hexcel's.

[@naughtiusmaximus830]

@@jonmoceriGuessing they were drilled out wrong.

[@colormedubious4747]

@@jonmoceri That's odd. Mine seemed to have a hair trigger. That "might" be because I was a TERRIBLE skier. 🤣

[@myleswillis]

11:01 I do the same thing with my toaster over the sink to get all the burned crumbs out. I give it a little shake as well.

[@owensmith7530]

I've never seen this done before, it was great to see footage of the LM toaster shaker.

[@newdefsys]

There should be a slide out tray on the bottom of your toaster. Unless you like shaking the toaster. I totally feel ya on that.

[@djangoleg]

I do the same with my tent before packing it

[@andyalder7910]

Wish I could do that with my car.

[@johnladuke6475]

And now you know, each time you do that your toaster becomes vacuum-rated.

[@paulyiustravelogue]

It is great to watch another episode of yours. For some reason, KZbin stops pushing your videos to me until today. It is great to “see” all is well, Paul. Great stuff 👍🏻

[@74360CUDA]

A very proud moment in 2nd grade for me when the Teacher brought the TV in for us to watch the crew of Apollo 17 walk and drive around on the Moon. I told everyone that my Dad had worked on the LEM and the Teacher backed me up. Everyone elses Dad had boring jobs like Firemen and Lawer and such. Good times

[@enisra_bowman]

one of the rare Moments when "Firefighter" is in the "boring job" categorie :D

[@Lemingtona-x5g]

it was hollywood set

[@billwendell6886]

My Uncle Cliffy was the head nightwatchman for United Technologies for their Apollo stuff. We got to watch 11 landing with him, he was so proud.

[@Lemingtona-x5g]

@@billwendell6886 how fake

[@PervertedThang]

@@Lemingtona-x5g No.

[@James00037]

This is what I like about your videos. Genuinely interesting stuff and no dumb jokes.

[@FosterZygote]

The Kapton film was deliberately wrinkled before applying it so as to minimize contact between layers and limit thermal conduction.

[@StuSaville]

"Whoopie man, that may have been a small one for Neil but it was a long one for me" You can take the astronaut out of the navy but you can't take the navy out of the astronaut...

[@johnbeauvais3159]

Every bit I read about Apollo 12 is hilarious, especially when juxtaposed to Apollo 11 and the weighty nature of everything, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins working together very proper. The Apollo 12 is like “Me and my navy buddies went to the Moon!”

[@Anvilshock]

Which is also why DSKY had to waste calculation cycles to convert Apollo's native metric into idiot. Not just so that even fifty years later murricans could still bleat the ole "durr, two types of countries" joke, but because they were all Navy folks (with very few exceptions) who wouldn't know what a meter was if they had to throw coins in it for parking.

[@Goku_in_Real_Life]

@@Anvilshock Cry more 😢

[@RCAvhstape]

@@Anvilshock Let's see, you wrote this on Wednesday. Maybe from now on, let's make Wednesday your "not dumb day" so you don't make posts like that, what do you say there, chief?

[@ZER0ZER0SE7EN]

I met Charles Conrad and he signed a comic for me that he helped do of the Apollo 12 mission.

[@AFNacapella]

all that material and procedure testing is such an underrated achievement of Apollo. there's a beauty to having to _really simulate_ for testing

[@aemrt5745]

Engineeing iceberg. We see the achievements on the surface but do not realize all the efforts under the surface.

[@meiketorkelson4437]

The detail about how worn the inside looked really blew me away. Made me realise how tried and tested those modules were. And I'm glad they didn't "retouch them" I know from sub misadventures that repainting/tidying up has incredible potential to introduce a defect.

[@jjohnston94]

Read Gene Cernan's memior, "Last Man on the Moon". He says that when word came that the program was cancelled and that 17 would be the last mission, they packed his lander with every possible experiment and instrument. He said the outside looked like the Beverly Hillbillies' truck, and the inside looked like Fibber McGee's closet. I had to look up Fibber McGee, but his description sounds right.

[@meiketorkelson4437]

@jjohnston94 oh wow. I will, and thanks for the recommend.

[@OogieWa]

Plus paint is weight, a precious commodity.

[@charlesballard5251]

That was informative. I had no idea how the shock absorbers functioned on the LEM. THANKS!!!!

[@bbartky]

I thought so as a kid back then and still think as an adult now that the Apollo Lunar Module is the most beautiful spacecraft ever built for human spaceflight.

[@rachelblack3816]

It's engineering was as 'pure' as engineering can possible be (back then, anyway). That's what still makes it so special, and amazing.

[@scottfw7169]

The landers don't 'Look So Odd', they look so 'Form Follows Function'.

[@iRossco]

Just like a Volvo car used too.

Agree. Dan Gelbart says "If something is 100% functional, it's 100% beautiful." I give you: the LEM.

[@yamchadragonball6983]

This is what prototypes and other gadgets look like of they arent intended for consumers

[@-danR]

I was going to write "form follows function"-the old saying-in an earlier comment above, and now I'm sure glad I nixed it.

[@jacksonmacd]

Great detail about the shock absorbers and the Mylar covering.

[@rdspam]

What happens when engineers are in charge. Does the job, doesn’t look good. Kinda what you want going to the moon.

[@2150dalek]

The LEM is a beautiful craft. Thank you for posting these amazing archived videos!! Those engineers & technicians created magic with slide rules & drafting tables.

[@fuzzblightyear145]

true. as an engineer i can appreciate the design. But on the other hand, we're so used to it that now I almost expect any new lander to look like it, because that's what a LEM looks like isn;t it? and watching those clips of it manoeuvring for docking is just pure ballet

[@peteredwards2318]

It doesn't look odd though. I've never understood the tendency of people to think it looks strange at all. It's a vehicle meant for exploring a rocky body with no atmosphere, so it doesn't need to be aerodynamic, like every other vehicle, flying or otherwise, that most people think of. It looks exactly like you would expect, with no thought given to form, and ALL thought given to function, as it should. That isn't odd. What would be odd, is if the people who designed the systems, got the weight down and nicely balanced, and then said "Hey, let's let someone with an arts degree draw up plans for an outer shell for this thing". That would be HELLA weird.

[@Luna-wg6ic]

The legs look like they're based on a spider's legs; designed for cushioning a landing.

[@evelghostrider]

The legs in the video brings into question just how did a camera film Neil down ladder when the angle of the legs does not match up the view we were given... and again in all the models no camera was ever displayed on these detailed models foe sale.

[@lucaherman6227]

​@@evelghostrideroh know models don't include a little tiny box. The whole thing must be fake!!

[@coweatsman]

The design makes sense. Much more stable than landing a pencil shaped vehicle backwards. Just try balancing a pencil on its end on a table. Discarding the descent stage with its legs makes so much sense serving no further purpose.

[@coweatsman]

@@evelghostrider I believe the camera was mounted in the side in a drop down compartment opened from the inside.

[@MrPinhead42]

I'm always (!) amazed how you find not that common footage that even I haven't seen yet. Please keep up this notch work!

[@tonywood3660]

There is nothing odd about the LM. It is the pinnacle of engineering excellence. It did the job as specified with no prior experience and it returned it's occupants back to earth without failure. That's called engineering done properly. As an 11 year old kid when this happened and as a just retired engineer, it would have to be the pinnacle of engineering full stop.

[@trueknowledgeispower]

Your career as an engineer is very flawed when it comes to this craft. Cardboard and amber scotch tape,......to the moon...... ...................................................................................................................................yep, that's what I thought, too.

[@aemrt5745]

@@tonywood3660 Agree (my previous comment is missing). There are lots of the original design and operations documents on line. Well worth reading. It really is a well done design with near perfect operational execution. Cheers from a fellow engineer (though younger).

[@mark2073]

The ingenuity is amazing how it could withstand 1000 mph rocket exhaust mere inches from the landing gear wrapped in tinfoil and scotch tape without leaving a mark on the ground nor a speck of dust anywhere.

[@aemrt5745]

@mark2073 I recommend taking a class in physics, heat transfer, and rocket nozzle design to understand that. Specifically how exhaust pressure from a converging diverging rocket nozzle works in a vacuum.

[@aemrt5745]

@mark2073 Also go study the over a dozen layers of the Kapton blanket used for thermal insulation on the LM structure. Fascinating Engineering, and not simply "tinfoil and tape".

[@perniciouspete4986]

I thought I knew a little about the LEM. I didn't know how little I knew.

[@UzayiKesfet]

you are trash pete

[@mcorvin9029]

One of the best, of many, memoirs about the Apollo program is Thomas J Kelley‘s “Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module”. He was the young, chief engineer at Grumman for the LM. 2 huge lessons are conveyed : the need for testing & being allowed to fail & learn. I highly recommend it if you want a great engineers story!!

[@MarsFKA]

It's one of the four books I have that define the early manned spaceflight programme, and the Moon landings.

[@BasilFawlty64]

I never thought they looked odd, given the mission and constraints.

[@tooltroll]

"You came in that thing?? You're braver than I thought!" 😉

[@Sekir80]

This line is interestingly familiar. I wonder where from. ;)

[@glennac]

I love the episode of “From the Earth to the Moon” that covered the design and construction of the Lunar Module. Some humorous moments and covering the debate over Direct Ascent vs Lunar Rendezvous. Great series produced by Tom Hanks among others. 👍🏼

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

"How much do these windows weigh?"

[@hookeaires6637]

In the 1970’s I build a detailed plastic model of the lander, complete with the foil insulation. I was the only kid in the neighborhood with one. Way before “Nerd” was a word but I’m sure I was one.

[@Bandit-u3u]

"You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like "

[@robotarchie100]

You mean what BS looks like.

[@drewthompson7457]

​@@robotarchie100: stay away from mirrors.

[@nathanwahl9224]

Even painting stuff over adds weight. Plus the surfaces were only very lightly painted to begin with. Weight was so important.

[@Bnio]

This is why the space shuttle's external fuel tank was white only for the first few missions; needless weight.

[@uss_04]

Never thought about the single use shock absorber. Really shows how every aspect needs to be considered lest a mission failure occurs

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

_Eagle_ landed so gently its shocks did not activate!

[@bobblum5973]

Excellent coverage of the "Bug"! I especially liked all of the film clips showing so many details.

[@nathansmith1085]

I always enjoy your videos, but I liked this one even more than the rest for some reason. You mentioned things I didn't even know about, and I thought I knew quite a bit about the lander. Thanks for this video!

[@nonenowherebye]

It's absolutely worth watching Episode 8 of "From the Earth to the Moon" entitled "Spider". It covers the development of the LM rather well.

[@sailordolly]

An interesting/odd visual aspect of the lander is how the Ascent stage has the fuel tank on the right-hand side of the hatch (as viewed from outside) extending out asymmetrically--there is no corresponding one on the opposite side. This was done because the hydrazine/UMDH fuel needed was lighter than the corresponding N2O4 oxidizer. Thus, placing the tanks for them symmetrically would have resulted in the weight distribution being unbalanced, and so the engineers solved this problem by having the fuel tank farther from the centerline, so that it would have a longer lever arm and thus balance better. This solution saved considerable weight in comparison to having ballast weights to balance it.

[@karlwest437]

I think the LEM looks fantastic, it's authentic and exactly what it needs to be

[@eilidh771]

Soooo authentic and real.

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

@@eilidh771 Yes. Problem?

[@mplsmark222]

Seems like if the whole thing was fake like those weirdos say it is, the LM would have looked like what science fiction and comic books depict. The worse part of the whole conspiracy thing is the attack on the character of all those hard working people that made the Apollo program a success.

[@spladam3845]

I learn new things with every video you make, thank you Paul.

[@steveburke7675]

I had Hexel "aluminum honeycomb" skis back in the late 70's.

[@chadportenga7858]

I remember Hexel skis from the 80s. Not long after that, all skis had some kind of honeycomb core, but I think they were the only ones made from aluminum.

[@sanfranciscobay]

They also made Water Skis.

[@ivanfedak4517]

AWSOME work of engineers and your channel...Thank you for your work❤

[@ginog5037]

The LEM is beautiful and amazing 👏 Ask the crew of Apollo 13...

[@OogieWa]

Temporary lifeboat!

[@ph11p3540]

It wasn't just odd looking. It was practically covered in tinfoil for skin. No need for a real skin in space except for controlling radiant heat buildup. Even blown up fine dust can damage the skin but it still held up and did it's job and that's all that counts.

[@thatfeeble-mindedboy]

Are you serious? Reflective Mylar was a brand new material in 1969, ‘tinfoil’ was replaced by aluminum foil decades ago, and wasn’t used on any part of this. Did you even watch the video? “No need for skin in space …” seriously?? Ever heard of solar radiation, (gamma rays, x-rays, etc.) or micrometeorites? “Radiant heat buildup”? C’mon man, did you hear him say that the sunny side reached 300 F while anything in shadow could drop to 274 below zero F? It also had to withstand depressurization so they could open the hatch, then re-pressurized so they could take their spacesuits off … that’s about 115 psi above absolute vacuum if I remember right … that’s about 3 times what you have to put in your car tires above average barometric pressure in order to inflate them. I think you’re practicing physics without a license, Hoss … the LEM’s outer skin was quite complex as described in the video … maybe you should watch it again… meanwhile, you can explore the Challenger Deep in your sand-rail dune buggy if you want, but I would strongly advise against it.

[@ytzpilot]

No atmosphere meant no wind to blow the tinfoil off, try landing the LM in earth the friction and drag would tear it apart

[@maksphoto78]

And the amazing Kapton tape.

[@okankyoto]

Well it does have a pressure vessel... but not much more beyond that!

[@stephenshoihet2590]

i've never considered it odd looking, it looked how it needed to look for what it was... but then i was never big into scifi so i never thought it needed to look like anything from the movies. Then you have Musk who wants his ship to be pointier because that's what's important right? 😆

[@dagger4146]

Aerodynamics mean nothing in the vacuum of space. Weight is everything. Period.

[@tomdumb6937]

Mass not weight

[@nonamecieso9506]

​@@tomdumb6937 weight is 90 important cuz than mass, the more mass the more weight. Lifting weight from earth to space is not easy

[@ronjones-6977]

@@tomdumb6937 pedant

[@iRossco]

​@@nonamecieso9506Sssh, sit down, you don't know what you're talking about. Mass is correct not weight. Weight is mass x acceleration due to gravity. Weight of 1kg mass on Earth is 1kgf. In space 0kgf but still 1kg mass. On the moon 1/6kgf but still 1kg mass.

[@robertschemonia5617]

It does not look odd! It is just unconventionally beautiful!

[@brianarbenz1329]

Yes, but odd too.

[@drewthompson7457]

Like my girlfriend.....

[@brianarbenz1329]

@@drewthompson7457 The LM was like my ex-girlfriend in that she landed, we took a few walks together, then she suddenly left.

[@74360CUDA]

I'd say you got all the best footage Paul!! It's hard to understand the lack of footage and pics during the era. Not including all of those horrible Hollywood style sets and simulator videos. If I were in charge of Grumman back then I would have guys in bunnysuits with cameras taking pics every day.

[@maxfan1591]

"If I were in charge of Grumman back then I would have guys in bunnysuits with cameras taking pics every day." As far as I'm aware, they did (not sure about the bunnysuits).

[@ChaJ67]

The thing with the argument of what to do with 1960's rocket tech comes down to the tyranny of the rocket equation. The Saturn V really is the most efficient manned rocket we have had, at least until SpaceX came along. Yeah, a lot more efficient than the Space Shuttle or anything the Soviets had. But yet with all of the best design decisions that could be made at the time, we went from a giant 10m wide flying skyscraper down to a tiny 2-man pod on the Moon and a second tiny capsule in orbit around the Moon, it never made it to the surface. So because of what rocket equations dictate and what they were able to do with the chemical rocket engine tech used, over 70% of the rocket mass wise was used up in each stage and then less than 30% of the rocket was left mass wise. So you use up the vast majority of the rocket to get above the atmosphere where you can then stage. You again use up the vast majority of what is left of the rocket to get up to orbital speed. Now you are already down to 2.5% of the starting mass left contained in the 3rd stage and above. The other 97.5% was used just to make LEO (Low Earth Orbit). So then you use up the 3rd stage to fly out towards the Moon. Now there is a fraction of a percent of the starting mass left. Getting kind of small, but because you started off so huge, you still have the service module, command module, and LEM with both stages. The delta-V (change in velocity) to get into orbit around the Moon and to fly back is significant. That will use up the whole service module if you discard the LEM in Lunar orbit or be impossible if you try to push around the LEM as well when leaving Lunar space. Then going to the surface of the Moon and then flying back uses up a fair amount of delta-V, so it makes sense to have a stage for each so that there is less empty fuel tank and less engine mass to get back into Lunar orbit. You break up the mission so part of what goes there stays in orbit and then flies back to Earth means there is a lot less work for that to do. Having a separate part go down to the lunar surface, means that is task focused on that job and doesn't need the resources and configuration to fly back to Earth and re-enter the atmosphere and such. Such different requirements and so much more dry mass to accelerate around. Remember the rocket used to initially move everything was gigantic only to be whittled down to almost nothing while discarding the unneeded engine and empty fuel tank mass of stage after stage to get to where it got. So while you may think "why don't we combine this all together" the reality is the rocket equations tell you this is what you can do and this is how much mass you will have left over after each stage burn. You try to lump a bunch of stuff together and well you end up with all of this dry mass in this big lump and you simply run out of fuel trying to push around that big lump of dry mass and never make it. However, you get all of this task focused stuff put together in a certain manner with piles of exponentially smaller stages until you get down to a couple of task focused tiny pods, and it turns out the rocket equations finally work out to where you can get to the Moon and back using chemical rocket engines designed and built in the 1960's. It just couldn't work any other way. The more dry mass you are pushing at the end of all of this, and really at the end of each burn, the less far you can make it. So the equations for just getting to the Moon and back dictated that you have to start with gigantic and exponentially whittle down to tiny with stage after stage with that chemical rocket tech or it just cannot work. Of course now with the SpaceX Raptor 3 engine, it is quite a bit better than anything they had before for the Saturn V, the Space Shuttle, and the SLS rocket that uses sad old Space Shuttle engine tech from the 1970's and even the same engines with basically meaningless but expensive tweaks made. The Space Shuttle engine tech made it actually much less efficient to orbit than 1960's rocket engine tech, so it was a step backwards, especially with all of that dry mass of the center stage going up to orbital speeds with its 1.5 stage to orbit design. Just ridiculous. So now what we could potentially do for a mission to the Moon is a great deal more using all chemical rocket engine tech as long as we use something like the SpaceX Raptor 3 engine. It is really the only chemical engine that makes any sense to go to the Moon with as each step of the way you have a lot more rocket left by default. And in the Saturn V program, they wanted to use an NTP (nuclear thermal propulsion) 3rd stage for later missions, but Nixon killed it. That would have made the upper part of the rocket flying out to the Moon far more efficient and thus a lot more could have been carried to the Moon. But anyways, this starts venturing into non-chemical rocket engine tech, the kind of stuff you really want to be thinking about to make space accessible by having exhaust velocities far greater than what chemical rocket engines can do.

[@MorzakEV]

Definitely worth checking out is the book Moon Lander by Thomas J Kelly. He was an engineer who spent most of his career at Grumman and his career progressed following the design, development, and implementation of the LEM. It’s so detailed and really interesting, and those guys went through hell trying not to fail the Apollo mission timelines whilst trying to produce something special. Highly recommended.

[@gregorylewis8471]

After the Apollo 11 mission, Volkswagen did a full page advertisement in newspapers across the US saluting the achievement. Volkswagen's standard ad slogan for the Volkswagen beetle at the time was "It's ugly, but it gets you there!" and it was that slogan in large type under a photo of the lunar lander in the advertisement! Brilliant! 😁

[@Skank_and_Gutterboy]

Part of the answer: the Apollo lander only had to function in a vacuum, so no design thought or work had to be put into aerodynamics. They could make it any shape they wanted and put things anywhere they want. Form follows function, so this is what they came up with.

[@aemrt5745]

Along those lines. We are spoiled by science fiction giving us streamlined spacecraft (I love SciFi incidentally). That being said, the Borg cube in Star Trek is probably an example of how spacecraft of that size would be designed.

[@Skank_and_Gutterboy]

@@aemrt5745 Absolutely. That's why I like the Eagle spacecraft on Space 1999 so much. You can see the exposed steel structure on the parts that are not occupied by crewmen. Why would you need aerodynamic skins on something that operates 100% in a vacuum? (Yeah, they took some creative license on the one or two times that it ever landed and took off from a planet/moon with an atmosphere, that's TV.) The Eagle looked so utilitarian and Apollo, the designer did damn good on that one! It's kinda sad that the guy who devised that was paid like a plumber and the actor gets a few million dollars just for showing up. If I were king, paychecks would be skewed a lot more toward the writers and designers and the actors would be paid like doctors instead of 3rd world dictators.

[@QPRTokyo]

SpaceX is the company that as a person growing up with the Apollo missions excites me. Thank goodness for SpaceX.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

An unusual amount of content beyond the usual treatment. Much appreciated.

[@oddmontsoddington8961]

Skinless Lunar lander is kind of terrifying...

[@throwback19841]

basically what the Soviet proposal was.

[@oddmontsoddington8961]

@@throwback19841 I agree, did you have a higher point

[@Boris_Chang]

HR Geiger could have done better at designing a lunar lander to look more “organic”.

[@owensmith7530]

@@throwback19841I've seen a Soviet lander at a London Science Museum exhibition. First time they'd ever been exhibited anywhere in the world, and quite possibly the last given current politics.

[@oddmontsoddington8961]

Oh no,

[@TXPAScot]

Simple - the LM was the first TRUE spacecraft. Never made for atmospheric flight, the design was truly "form follows function," within the limitations of weight and the confines of the Saturn V launch vehicle.

[@3DPrintHangar_RC]

It’s always a good day when you get home from work to a Curious Droid video 💪

[@neiljackson3133]

Nice one. I didn't know that about the shock absorbers. The test footage was something I hadn't seen before.

[@PieceofCraft]

It's honestly a slap in the face to all the brilliant minds behind the moon landings to consider it was faked. I like to think they're just projecting their own stupidity to the rest of humanity being so unwilling to believe humans could accomplish something so amazing

[@MattBorgardt]

Please keep up the great reporting and small documentaries... You are, without a doubt, one of the best...

[@terrylandess6072]

Who 'didn't' have the lander model or the smaller Saturn V model with the stages, lander and command ship as a kid in the 60's/70's. :)

[@poruatokin]

I had the Airfix Saturn V plus the LM on it's own little diorama

[@joevignolor4u949]

I have an old desk set up to look like my desk when I was about 10 years old. It has a model of the Saturn V and the LM on it.

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

Heller 1:100 CSM and LM!

[@OogieWa]

Yup. Wish I knew where that went.

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

Without having yet watched the video, WHY did the Lunar Modules look the way they did? BECAUSE THEY OPERATED IN A VACUUM SO THEY DID NOT HAVE TO BE AERODYNAMIC.

[@brianarbenz1329]

Wrong. As the video you are about to see explains, it was because they all got drunk at an office party and drew the plans as a joke. Then, still intoxicated, they accidentally sent it off to the NASA administrators instead of the serious design, but what the heck, it worked anyway!

[@snivla4]

Glad you bought up the clean room.. Some people just dont realise this is just one of the reasons JWST is so good at what it does. This is also the big reason semi conductors and lenses for cameras and CCD chips vary massively in price and say a small Earthquake or minor building issue in said facilities can even halt production of some of these components and even set back massively RND on the next products to market. First time ive watched one of your productions. Brilliant brilliant well done . Thanks for actually appearing on TV.

[@apolloskyfacer5842]

*EASIER TO GO TO THE MOON THAN TO FAKE IT* The logistics of trying to fake all SIX Apollo Moon Landing Missions is so impractical to not even be considered. Even trying to imitate the one sixth gravity of the Moon compared to the Earth's is impractical. And In terms of film footage, the Apollo missions recorded approximately 20 hours of video footage on the lunar surface. And then there's the spectacular 360 deg panoramas taken during Apollo's 15/16 and 17. Just looking at those clearly show that they far surpass what even the best film makers of today can produce with their science fiction movies. Back then in 1969/1972 ? Have a look at the moon visas in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. They're totally unrealistic compared to the real photos and films.

[@ginskimpivot753]

Sadly, the deniers continue to thrive - _'Apollo is fake because it all looks fake and I saw this video confirming it, but the Earth is flat because we have at least 9 different drawings of it!'_ They never debate their own opinions, because the vocabulary of the average Apollo denier is 28 characters...including spaces and punctuation.

[@apolloskyfacer5842]

@@ginskimpivot753 Exactly.

[@squiddy2688]

@@ginskimpivot753 I like to ask them exactly what was fake or when they began to fake it. Did they fake the Gemini missions? Did the Russians fake stuff? Were the robotic landers fake? They generally have no answer, and they don't know all that much about the missions.

[@MarsFKA]

@@ginskimpivot753 I no longer waste time or energy trying to dissuade the deniers. None of them were alive during the Moon landings. Not one has anything original to say. They are just parroting tired old denier crap that has been around for decades and which ran out of gas before it even reached the start line. I'm just grateful that those lamebrains are out there because they are a constant reassurance to me that no matter how dumb I might be there are others who are immeasurably more stupid.

[@OogieWa]

Yep, and for sure a Kubrick prop would never have looked anything like that!!!! Way way different than his style! And as a film buff, that's something you can't hide, either.

[@henrybrandt1057]

I highly recommend reading Tom Kelly's book, Moon Lander, to get an inside feel for how the design came to be. It was a remarkable time when NASA had true experts working closely, in partnership, with contractor Grumman. There was an incredible degree of trust in that relationship and the Grumman team put their hearts and souls into that fantastic machine.

[@1999Nickster]

Another great presentation 😊 My friend, you are so good that you could read out loud a phone book and we'd love it

[@demonorb8634]

I'll go out on a LEM and say we need to find that old style of doing a job right and stop putting shareholders' profits first!

[@chadportenga7858]

LOL Nice pun! I think a mix of the old way and new way is what we need. NASA had very deep pockets (thanks to us taxpayers), but not as much financial oversight, so budget constraints were often "suggestions" and cost overruns were commonplace. Today, private corporations answer to shareholders with tight budgets - sometimes so tight that better ways of doing things are either overlooked or shelved. Perhaps a good compromise between the two philosophies is a better way to get things done - assuming you can get the two sides to actually compromise and work together 😉

[@jjohnston94]

@@chadportenga7858 I don't know if you could. Those are directly competing goals.

[@DAWOL2025-fs1ve]

After all that cleanliness scrutiny, it just got the interior loaded with lunar dust getting into everything after the astronauts game back in from their lunar surface e.v.a. This is a good detailed video on the making of the L.E.M. and the design troubleshooting.

[@williamchamberlain2263]

727, 747, 737, 737-200, 737-300, 737-400, 737-500

[@DAWOL2025-fs1ve]

@@williamchamberlain2263 Boeing might have played a roll in manufacturing parts for Apollo

[@CathodeRayTube99]

As always, another excellent video from Curious Droid.

[@74360CUDA]

SO as I have mentioned before my Father worked at Grumman in electrical maintenance during the glory years so he worked all over the different plants in Bethpage NY. It was unique to wear the bunny suits in those days to work in the giant clean room. One time he brought a used up bunny suit home for us to check out. We took the pill hat and attached a plastic army man with fishing line and a couple of weights for an impromptu parachute. It was great to be a kid on Long Island back in the day.

[@moregrouchy]

My father was an electrical engineer for Grumman at that time, too. I accompanied him to the observation floor with glass windows above the huge clean room to see them completing the assembly of that LEM. Busy men in white suits and hats moving around the floor was very impressive to this little boy and Dad seemed proud of the work going on below.

[@74360CUDA]

@@moregrouchy Me too!! I don't remember it but I do remember the room over the F-14 plant. What a great place to work back then!!

[@moregrouchy]

@@74360CUDA Dang! I also got to watch an F14 Tomcat take off at Calverton when they were testing it. And now they are relics of history as time rolls on

[@salland12]

14:58 Destin from smarter everyday got a whole room full of nasa managers laughing when he showed the left picture within the context of keep it simple with redundancy.

[@DeathValleyDazed]

So much enjoyed this episode, thanks Paul 👏

[@SimonAmazingClarke]

An incredible piece of engineering. Absolute Icon.

[@poruatokin]

Even to this day, the LEM is the only true manned spacecraft - i.e. one that is exclusively intended for travel and operation in space.

[@paulgerrard9227]

Unlike the shuttle or dragon or....i would argue the lem was the only object intended to leave earth and land on a planetary body and safely return the occupants to earth...jfk said as much

[@Jester01]

@@paulgerrard9227 The LEM never returned from the Moon (except for Apollo 13 but even that was jettisoned before reentry). Both the shuttle and dragon come back to Earth and are therefore designed to operate in the atmosphere as well.

[@palmersperry]

It’s maybe stretching the definition of “manned spacecraft” past all previously known limits, but it could be argued that the Manned Maneuvering Unit is also a true manned spacecraft?

[@poruatokin]

@@paulgerrard9227 The LEM never returned any crew to earth, it was incapable of operating in Earth's atmosphere.

[@jk-76]

Space is the most fun subject! I grew up in the 80's watching the Space Shuttle program on TV and drooling over books about it at the library.

[@mcarleton]

I went to see the LM on display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island. The Uber driver who took me from the museum back to the train station was a moon landing denier and flat earther. I let him know that I know the earth is not flat due to the completely different stars I saw, with my own eyes, when I visited New Zealand. The web of lies needed to convince an engineer like me would be impossible. It would take engineers a standard deviation smarter than me. There were not enough people like that at the time. In addition, engineers are poor liars.

[@c1ph3rpunk]

Them: if I can’t understand it, it can’t be real. Engineer: if I can’t understand it, I need to sit down, develop a design, build it, test it and refine it until it’s real. Ask any of them to describe, at a technical level, how their mobile phone transmits invisible data. How does it get there? Magic? Sounds like a conspiracy. Oh wait, 5G…

[@enisra_bowman]

@@c1ph3rpunk worse, there some Idiots that are so hard in denial, they go to lenghts to move the Goalposts, even spend thousands of dollars for hightech equipment to prove them wrong ... which ofc. don't work as they want because well, earth isn't flat

[@eilidh771]

Hi mcarleton . No fooling you my friend.

[@iRossco]

Liars have to remember every detail of a lie, that's too much effort for us Engineers. We're only poor liars because we don't waste brain space on remembering shit when we have so much awesome truths & facts that we want to remember. FBI trip up liars by getting them to repeat chain of events backwards, harder to do if lying.

[@paulgerrard9227]

Stupidity isnt a medical condition.You cant put brains into statues

[@jouhannaudjeanfrancois891]

To me, the most beautiful spaceship ever made (well, Gemini is a serious contender). Both in it's weird look and treasure of engineering.

[@BedsitBob]

The idea of using a small spacecraft, for Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, was proposed by an aerospace engineer by the name of John Houbolt. The original concept was envisioned by Yuri Kondratyuk, as early as 1916.

[@AC-ih7jc]

I grew up about 1-2 miles away from Grumman, so a lot of the men in the archival footage seen here were probably the fathers of my classmates. Nearby, there used to be a little motel called the Astro Motor Inn. I found out years later that it got its name for being the place where the astronauts would stay when they came up to Long Island to visit Grumman for training and such. Had I known at the time, those poor astronauts would have frequently seen some goofy little kid camped outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of her heroes. ❤👨‍🚀❤👩‍🚀❤👨‍🚀❤👩‍🚀❤

[@AlbanyBrick]

I lived in Hicksville from 1965 until 1968. My dad worked on LEM drawings in Grumman's design office.

[@AC-ih7jc]

@@AlbanyBrickThat's so cool! I lived in Hicksville, too! My friend's dad worked on the LEM's legs.

[@rachelblack3816]

Back in the 70's and 80's I used to visit Titusville, FL, near Cape Kennedy. There was a small, non-descript motel there that had lots of astronaut-related memorable on the walls, and it was because many of the Mercury and Gemini astronauts had stayed there while training for their missions, or doing other related work at the Cape. That motel is gone now, and it's a damn shame.

[@RegebroRepairs]

If it was a stage prop, it would have looked like in the movies.

[@apolloskyfacer5842]

✔

[@Lemingtona-x5g]

it looked like tin foil bits from rosewell

[@RegebroRepairs]

@@Lemingtona-x5g no

[@Lemingtona-x5g]

@@RegebroRepairs im afriad it did , all staged as u know usa lies loads for eg covid iraq war etc

[@OogieWa]

Yep, Kubrick would have never made something like that for the big screen. Not even close to his style!!!

[@josephcope7637]

Volkswagen had a magazine ad showing pics of a VW "beetle" and the Apollo Lunar Module with the caption "It's ugly but it gets you there."

[@zam6877]

There was definitely many things I did not know before That gimbal to shake things out of the LM is both crazy and sensible 😳

[@74360CUDA]

The problem was a lot of crap fell out the first couple of times. So much for the clean room.

[@Grouuumpf]

À coworker of mine worked on the assembly line at Dassaut, and they do the same thing for the rafale You can take all the precautions in the world, there will always be some stuff falling where it shouldn't

[@rollinwithunclepete824]

Thanks, Paul! Very interesting video

[@RobertGraziose]

Grumman was chosen because they knew how to build light effective aircraft that could take a beating. The F6F Hellcat, the TBF ECT..... Thus their nick name, The Iron Works. My dad worked there. My brother worked directly on the LEM. We were very proud on July 20 1969.

[@racookster]

It doesn't occur to conspiracy theorists that the Mylar and Kapton blankets on the LM actually indicate that the landings were NOT faked. If they had been, special effects artists would have designed something that looked cool, and more like what a layperson would expect. They wouldn't have built ugly little bugs designed purely to function in a near-vacuum.

[@tomperone9338]

One of many points I've raised with deniers...if the landings were fake, why would they have faked something that looked like *that*?

[@evelghostrider]

I still await a logical answer as to how a camera was placed to where it showed Neil coming down a ladder... as from this video you can clearly see the angle of the video could not have come from the alleged " attached to lander leg " scenario... The view does not match up any where close...

[@RCAvhstape]

@@evelghostrider That's all been explained a million times. You might as well try arguing that water isn't wet.

[@bricc9964]

@@evelghostrider Iirc, the camera used to film Armstrong on the ladder was nowhere near the leg. It was in a compartment called the Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly, the side panel between the front and right legs. The whole panel would fold out before the moon walk. This would then have the camera facing towards the ladder, giving us the iconic “one small step” footage.

[@ginskimpivot753]

@@evelghostrider *_"I still await a logical answer as to how a camera was placed to where it showed Neil coming down a ladder."_* This gives the impression that the question is either difficult to determine from NASA mission data, or that you've found it gives Apollo proponents a problem when attempting to answer it. Of course, it may also indicate you really don't have a clue how to use your computer. The answer you seek is in LEM schematics, the flight plan, the mission timeline, the transcripts, the post-flight, and hundreds of sites talking about comms and AV technology developed by Westinghouse and used on Apollo. Nobody ever said the camera was attached to a lander leg. Engineers attached the camera upside down in a flap door in the MESA which tilted at an 11-degree angle at the door's fully open position. This was corrected in the signal processing on Earth, but to reprocess the signal for worldwide transmission to horizontal scanline formats there was a huge loss of quality. An engineer at Honeysuckle Creek filmed the first adjusted and processed TV transmission before it was reconverted for transmission to Houston via Sydney. Ed von Renouard's 8 mm film was thus far higher quality than anyone saw on a TV. _You're welcome._

[@fromnorway643]

Because they were based on reality, not the 1950s science fiction.

[@nemesisnick66]

Considering they're the first and only of they're kind i don't think they look odd they look like the standard

[@kjm-ch7jc]

Not odd, its functional and it worked.

[@101southsideboy]

1 minor correction. there was 3 windows not 2 . the 3rd widow was just above the CDR's head it was just used to help the CDR get line up with the CSM

[@glenhughes8013]

Very useful video to show flerfs and moon landing "skeptics"

[@MattyEngland]

Golf moon is a cult just like flat earth. Both as crazy and illogical as each other.

[@apolloskyfacer5842]

@@MattyEngland Wow ? You certainly have the 'goods' on the 'truth' that NASA is a fraudulent setup. Perhaps you could fire off a few letters to the mainstream News Papers and Broadcasters. Inform them of the dastardly deception. Present them with definitive proof of all the devious fakery. You'd be able to have Modern History rewritten ! You could be well rewarded with lots of money for your exposure of this deception. You could even become famous for this history changing information ! Just think about that !

[@drmantistoboggan2870]

​@@MattyEnglandyoure half right 🤡

[@jeffalvich9434]

Well said and presented!!!!!

[@craigw.scribner6490]

Thanks for another great video, Paul--one of your very best!

[@OogieWa]

Form follows function. That and keeping the mass down to an absolute minimum.

[@skyraider1656]

It’s amazing that the original Furbee had more computing power than the Lunar Landers. Those original astronauts really had their asses in both hands. Imagine, today with all of our technology we still can’t replicate what we accomplished in the late sixties early seventies, what we lack is the WILL!!!

[@UncleKennysPlace]

We could replicate that old technology, easily. We have working examples of much of it. But it's much cheaper to use an unmanned spacecraft, with a rover. We've done that. The public dropped its support for NASA after it got bored with the lunar missions; politics is everything.

[@jonesgang]

We are also lacking in courage and fortitude. People today are too afraid to try and fail, when it is best to try and fail then not to even try at all. Neil Armstrong went to moon with a bomb strapped to his ass as did all the Apollo astronauts. They new the risks were extremely high, but they did it anyways. People today just do not have what it takes to go far beyond ones capabilities and try to achieve something great. They all did, why can't we? The only way to fight fear is to face it.

[@ccoder4953]

We can replicate what they did. Sure, it would take a bit of R&D to spin things back up (all the old production lines are long since shut down and the facilities and equipment repurposed/dismantled), but the tech is still there. Now, we would certainly do it much differently than they did it then. For example, the F-1 engines that powered the Saturn V were all exquisitely hand built machining and engineering marvels. Oh and they're all at least a little unique because they made changes in the field during production and they were hand made. What we have now is an iterated version of that engine, called the F-1B. It's simpler (so should be more reliable), more powerful, cheaper (adjusted for inflation), and easier to build (thanks to 3D printing) than the original. Going back is really just a matter of budget. We don't have any pressing desire to have another manned moon mission, so we don't allocate enough budget to do it like they did. So we're reliant on technological progress to bring costs down and make it practical again. We'll be back, but this time, thanks to improved technology, it will be much more sustainable because the costs will be more reasonable.

[@desertodavid]

Well what would be the purpose in going back to the Moon be? Remember this was a space race during the Cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States

[@glennac]

@@desertodavid I’m sure the European government’s centuries ago could have rationalized the same argument - “Why bother exploring the unknown world?” Advancing as a society involves curiosity, exploration, & discovery.

[@davekent8193]

Very interesting and informative, well done Droid

[@RickyisHere]

Me as a mechanical engineer I have always wondered how they coordinated the lunar lander take off and rendezvous with the module in orbit, they only have seconds worth of power and once is shut off it cannot be turned back on…this maneuver is not well documented by video or photographs. It would be nice to see a video about this!

[@mikefochtman7164]

ISTR there was a contingency for the CM/SM to do a burn and go into a low eliptical orbit if it needed to, in order to 'meet' the ascent stage part way. Fortunately all LM's were able to ascend without a problem.

[@owensmith7530]

@@mikefochtman7164From Apollo 14 onwards the CSM did that anyway for both descent and ascent to give the LM more hover time.

[@aemrt5745]

Actually the LM ascent engine could restart. They had multiple burns to keep raising their orbit, and they could stay in a lower orbit to catch up with the CSM.

[@poruatokin]

You should try playing KSP (Kerbal Space Program). It will both teach you what you need to know, and give you even greater respect to the engineers that worked this all out on the fly with slide rules.

[@ronblack7870]

i remember an interview with the engineer in charge of designing the LM ascent engines. he made them pressurized hypergolic and only had 2 valves to make it simple in order to be as reliable as possible. just have the valves open and the fuel will instantly light up.

[@dennisfahey2379]

When you see the LEM and Gemini Capsule at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum you are humbled by the courage and faith in Engineering the astronauts had. They look tremendously poorly built to the uneducated eye.

[@iRossco]

As a kid here in Australia I vaguely remember the tour of the module & I think Gemini capsule and the thing that really struck me was how small & cramped gemini in particular was, iirc.

[@TheAlchaemist]

From the earth to the moon, The spider. GREAT episode.