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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Skyman, post: 3616220, member: 28299&quot;]50 years ago today, July 21, 1969, the Apollo 11 crew worked on the second part of President Kennedy&#039;s goal, &quot;To land a man on the Moon, and return him safely to Earth...&quot;.&nbsp; July 21 was a very busy day.</p><p><br /></p><p>The LM has two main parts called the descent stage and the ascent stage.&nbsp; The descent stage has one engine that produced roughly 10,000 pounds of thrust.&nbsp; After landing on the Moon, the descent stage also functioned as the &quot;launch pad&quot; for the ascent stage.&nbsp; The ascent stage had one main engine for liftoff, that produced roughly 3,500 pounds of thrust.&nbsp; The ascent stage also had 4 quads (e.g. 16 total engines) that were used for attitude control, e.g. pitch, roll and yaw.&nbsp; Each of these engines produced 100 pounds of thrust.&nbsp; The main engine for the ascent stage had to work or the astronauts would be marooned on the Moon&#039;s surface.&nbsp; Because of this it used a simple combustion system, where all that was necessary, in essence, was to open two valves to allow two fuels to mix together.&nbsp; These fuels were hypergolic, which means that when they mix they immediately explode.&nbsp; There is NO need to have the equivalent of a spark plug, or anything of that sort.</p><p><br /></p><p>One thing that most people don&#039;t realize is how close to the <i>Eagle</i> Armstrong and Aldrin stayed during their walk.&nbsp; If you put the <i>Eagle</i> a little offset from the 50 yard line, all of the walks of the astronauts would fit inside a football field.&nbsp; When Armstrong and Aldrin planted the American flag it was quite close to the LM.&nbsp; When the ascent stage lifted smoothly away from the Moon&#039;s surface it blew over the first American flag planted on the Moon&#039;s surface.</p><p><br /></p><p>The <i>Eagle</i> rendezvoused with the <i>Columbia</i> in orbit.&nbsp; Armstrong and Aldrin transferred back into <i>Columbia</i>, along with assorted items, most notably the Moon rocks.&nbsp; Roughly 2 hours later <i>Eagle&#039;s</i> ascent stage was jettisoned.&nbsp; Roughly 5 hours after that, <i>Columbia</i> fired it&#039;s 20,500 pounds of thrust engine (which also used hypergolic fuels), and Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were on their way home.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here are two pieces from my collection.&nbsp; The first is a picture of the CSM, <i>Columbia</i> taken from the LM <i>Eagle</i> (by Aldrin I believe).&nbsp; There were 6 successful Moon landing missions, and each of them had one CMP who stayed in lunar orbit while his two companions went down to the Moon&#039;s surface.&nbsp; I&#039;ve had this picture signed by 3 of the CMPs.&nbsp; First off is Michael Collins, Apollo XI.&nbsp; The second is Dick Gordon of Apollo XII.&nbsp; He was the Commander of Apollo 18, but unfortunately for him, while he was training for the mission, Apollo 18 got canceled.&nbsp; Dick wrote, &quot;A view that I have not had the pleasure of viewing&quot;.&nbsp; The third astronaut is Al Worden of Apollo 15.&nbsp; He had three days alone in the CSM.&nbsp; He wrote, &quot;This photograph shows the best time I had during my flight&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>One thing I found particularly amusing when getting this signed was Dick could not remember what the white antenna(?) was that extends from the spacecraft at roughly the 10 o&#039;clock position.&nbsp; At the table next to him was Collins.&nbsp; Dick leaned over and asked Mike what it was, and Collins couldn&#039;t remember either.&nbsp; It was fun to listen to them try and figure it out (which they didn&#039;t).</p><p>[ATTACH=full]968851[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Yours truly with Michael Collins.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]968852[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The second piece is a picture taken by Collins of the ascent stage of the <i>Eagle</i> as it comes in for rendezvous.&nbsp; The Earth is in the background.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]968853[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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