Apollo Guidance Computer programmer Don Eyles analyzes the program alarms that could have aborted the landing:<p><a href="http://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer</a>
You can read and listen along manually to every lunar surface operation at <a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.html</a>. This is dozens of hours of audio (unfortunately in 12ish-minute segments). The transcript is annotated with helpful things, too - interviews with the astronauts in question to gain more understanding of what was happening, technical explanations and photos to explain what a particular device is, etc. There are a scattered few video clips as well for the most visually interesting moments.<p>The companion Apollo Flight Journal covers the rest of the missions - but doesn't contain audio, and is missing 13, 14, and 17 (but has 7-10, which of course aren't in the surface journal). It's still full of interesting annotations though.
This is absolutely fantastic, but isn't it interesting that when submitted 159 days ago (in the interests of full disclosure - yes, by me) it got one comment and just 4 upvotes.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710201" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710201</a><p>Clearly this is an item of interest to the HN community, and equally clearly last time it was missed by <i>so</i> many people. So:<p>* Does this mean that HN is in some sense sub-optimal?<p>* Is this a problem?<p>* Is this a problem worth fixing?
Oh, wow. That was stunning. Heart in my mouth the entire time, I cannot imagine what it was like to watch that in real time.<p><a href="http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html" rel="nofollow">http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html</a><p>Always worth a read for more context and 'Moonshot' is pretty good for Apollo 11.
If you can't get enough of this, let me recommend:<p>A Man on the Moon - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Man-Moon-Voyages-Apollo-Astronauts/dp/014311235X" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Man-Moon-Voyages-Apollo-Astronauts/dp/...</a><p>And the HBO series based on it:<p>From the Earth to the Moon - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/From-Earth-Moon-Collectors-Edition/dp/0783114222" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/From-Earth-Moon-Collectors-Edition/dp/...</a>
At first I thought this was going to be some sort of flash game, That was incredible.<p>My main thought is the amount of stuff the astronauts had to deal with while the moon is looking mighty big in the windows.<p>It appears to be the very definition of a high stress environment.
OK. <i>That</i> website made it feel like I live in The Future. I grew up in The Space Age (Project Mercury onward) and I still get chills whenever I see TV programs or movies about it. Now this site too.
As someone not old enough to have seen this take place live, I did appreciate this presentation so much. Now one can only wonder when will our generation bare witness to us landing on Mars?
I recently read "Failure is not an option" by Gene Kranz (FLIGHT on Apollo 11) so I thought this was pretty cool. Great book too: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/dp/1439148813/ref=la_B001H9RCYU_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365300383&sr=1-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/dp/...</a>
Finally! Conclusive proof that the moon landings were faked! It can be done on a computer!<p>edit: clearly sarcasm. I wonder, they've gone all the way till the Eagle has landed, why not go further and include Neil Armstrong's small step for man recording?
A lot of great links shared in these comments... I'd like to mention a very interesting article on the near-disaster of Apollo 13: "Apollo 13, We Have a Solution" - <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/apollo-13-we-have-a-solution" rel="nofollow">http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/apollo-13-we...</a>
Awesome. And I think a lot of you will enjoy this Neil deGrasse Tyson keynote:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLzKjxglNyE" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLzKjxglNyE</a>