Do yourself a favor and look up moon landing 4k on youtube. There’s some amazing immersive stuff now: <a href="https://youtu.be/boFZ3cAws20" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/boFZ3cAws20</a><p>There’s also a few amazing first person videos from space walks on the ISS: <a href="https://youtu.be/AmrrSfiMxGA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/AmrrSfiMxGA</a><p>The footage from Artemis is gonna be incredible.<p>Also highly recommend this “are we going?” Talk on engineering issues in Artemis: <a href="https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU</a>
Which is where I learned about this report from NASA called “What Made Apollo a Success”: <a href="https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19720005243/downloads/19720005243.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19720005243/downloads/19...</a>
Another chance to recommend a book that I learnt about from HN: I highly recommend the book, Sunburst and Luminary; <a href="http://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html</a><p>A technical pleasure and also very good glimpse into the Apollo team - working together, to land on the moon. It is a fun easy read, written by the fellow in charge of programming the guidance computer on the lunar lander. It is also a great snapshot of that time in history, the excitement of Apollo, and with the frustration of the Vietnam war going on, some protests, etc. Just a hint - the main programmer, was an English major, and his use of the right words, were a key factor in the success of of creating an efficient and effective computer language
Along with this, take time and listen to the BBC Series "13 minutes to the moon" <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p083t547" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p083t547</a> which goes into detail behind everything that happened during those 13 minutes. I was truly amazed by the backstory and the youth of everybody in the control room. As I recall, Gene Kranz (in his mid 30s in 1969) was the <i>oldest</i> person in the room.
Awesome to see this. One of my favorite songs to listen to that can get a pumped up feeling is Go! by Public Service Broadcasting where they use the voices from here in the song. I knew the source was Apollo landing, and it's cool to listen to the words from their origination.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIo6qwJarI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIo6qwJarI</a>
I love the calm communications. The feeling of everything possible thought out.<p>Regarding moon landing videos, I also enjoyed the "story" of the computer on board which is told in this great presentation [1]: Light Years Ahead | The 1969 Apollo Guidance Computer by Robert Wills. Definitely worth a watch if you fancy the moon landing.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1J2RMorJXM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1J2RMorJXM</a>
I love it... that's a great way to present it.<p>Man, those folks were impressive to be juggling all that information and have the communications processes in place manage it all... and calmly. (Steely-eyed missile men, indeed.)<p>I was born a month after they landed, and while growing up, the Apollo program was <i>the</i> inspiration for becoming an engineer.
This is such an amazing engineering achievement, especially if you consider the technology available at the time (computers!) — I'm worried that we are unable to produce such wonderful work anymore. And that most of the effort seems to get invested into useless crap like adtech.
On a related note, Nvidia virtually recreated the Apollo 11 lunar landing site [1]. They wanted to show that the illumination of Buzz Aldrin in a photo of him exiting the moon lander was indeed as expected and not a hoax. The reason Aldrin appeared so perfectly illuminated was not a studio light but the space suit of Neil Armstrong, who took the photo!<p>[1] <a href="https://www.cnet.com/science/nvidias-new-gpu-sinks-moon-landing-hoax-using-virtual-light/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnet.com/science/nvidias-new-gpu-sinks-moon-land...</a>
Nice.<p>I was a little kid back when all this happened and like many other kids I was totally caught up in the space and moon missions. I remember watching a lot of launches and seeing the updates on the evening news with my parents.<p>We tuned to the nightly news regularly back then. Special reports following events in the space program were important so we tuned in to catch them. Some days this type of news felt like the only good news on the TV broadcast since we had the war in Vietnam, anti-war protests all over the country, racial issues, assassinations of various political leaders, etc. I could feel the effects of these events on my parents and other adults. I had good parents and so the lessons I took from this period have served me well in how I work with other people. Maybe it's like Willie Nelson sang when he said to "Remember the good times. They're smaller in number and easier to recall. Don't spend so much time on the bad times, their staggering numbers will be heavy as lead on your mind."<p>I still remember the excitement and dread of watching this unfold, not knowing whether they could stick the landing and the immense joy when they confirmed that they were on the moon. My parents made sure to gather all of us so we could watch things like this as they unfolded. Somewhere in a box I have a recording of some events like this - the moon landing and moon walk, Nixon's resignation, etc.<p>I'm glad these guys took the time to sync all of this dialog with the video feed. That brings it all back.<p>I'm a bit older now though I still felt the excitement of watching the first men land on the moon and hearing the confirmation that they made it.
It's a great multimedia experience, there have been other discussions [0] on it in the past as well.<p>I'd nominate 9/11 in Realtime [1] as another exemplary project.<p>0: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503225">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503225</a><p>1: <a href="https://911realtime.org/" rel="nofollow">https://911realtime.org/</a>
Excuse me, but if you're ever called upon to enumerate badass solid individuals, remember Gene Kranz.<p>Do you put him ahead of Neil Armstrong? History does, and always will, but I'm not sure that's a clear choice.<p>Edit: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz</a>
With Apollo 11 source code publicly available, maybe someone will add a "debugger" panel that steps through each line of code during landing?
See also Apollo in Real Time.<p><a href="https://apolloinrealtime.org/" rel="nofollow">https://apolloinrealtime.org/</a><p>They have the entire Apollo 11, 13, and 17 mission recordings from each of the stations in Mission Control, and the comm loops for the service and landing modules, from hours before liftoff to splashdown, interspersed with videos from parts of the mission.
A chance to describe the unexpected visceral gut punch that was the first ten minutes of For All Mankind (tv series). I wouldn't have thought the US being first to the moon was that important to me, but when I saw it the other way...man was I affected.
The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing was really a great movie. It's nice to enjoy it in a way that's close how they people of that time got to enjoy it. J/k