Fifty years ago, Apollo 11 was a year of "Giant Bond"

One year before the first lunar landing of humanity, the moon had to be far away.

On July 20, 1968, the pieces for Apollo 11 began to gather, but the mission itself was still at six months an official announcement. Four missions were to be launched and successful before Apollo 11 could even attempt to meet the challenge launched by President John F. Kennedy seven years earlier.

"I believe this nation should commit to reaching this goal before the end of this decade," Kennedy said in May 1961. [Building Apollo: Photos from Moonshot History]

And Apollo 11 would accomplish this and more …

But 50 years ago this Friday (July 20th), the space agency was still recovering from the weather. a launchpad a fire that cost the lives of its first Apollo crew a year and a half earlier, and the rocket that NASA needed to send astronauts to the moon had serious problems, and the spacecraft that was going to deliver the crew to the lunar surface was facing delays

. It would take more than a giant step for Opollo to win the space race

Steps to the Moon

A year before the landing, the Apollo 11 launcher was in pieces.

By July 20, 1968, the mbadive Saturn V rocket had only been launched twice – both unmanned – and the second time did not go well. In April 1968, Apollo 6 took off and quickly developed the "pogo", a self-induced vibration that damaged the engines of the second and third floors

. As a result of the anomaly, Boeing orders a delay for the static test. – triggering of the first phase of Saturn V of Apollo 11, S-IC-6, until modifications preventing the pogo can be made. On July 16, 1968, a year before the launch of Apollo 11, the first stage propellant withdrawal tests were declared complete. [Watch NASA’s Apollo 11 Moonwalk Moments in This Archive Video]

"Two days later, NASA announced the findings of its investigations into the pogo problem," Alan Lawrie writes in "Saturn V: Manufacturing Records and test "(Apogee, 2005).

The solution, as implemented and tested on S-IC-6, was to add small gas reservoirs to the first stage liquid oxygen pre-valves, thereby changing the frequency of the system. propulsion. Meanwhile, the second leg of the Apollo 11 Saturn V, S-II-6, had been waiting since June 28 on the Mississippi Test Facility's A-2 test bench (now called the Stennis Space Center). ), in preparation for its first test, scheduled for September 1968.

The third phase, S-IVB-506N, was tested on July 17, 1968 at the Sacramento Test Operations. Facility of the Douglas Aircraft Co. in California. The only J-2 engine on the scene burned for 445.2 seconds, deleting it to send Apollo 11 to the moon. [Apollo 11’s Scariest Moments: Perils of the 1st Manned Moon Landing]

The Form of the Vessels

On July 10, 1968, NASA leaders meet in Houston, where they certify the command and service module " Block II "(CSM) for flight. The examination of the redesigned spacecraft took place 18 months after the dashboard light destroyed the Apollo 204 Block I (Apollo 1) control module, killing three astronauts and temporarily halting the pursuit. of the moon by the Apollo program.

The mission, which was to be launched in October 1968, was yet to prove the value of the flight of the vehicle into Earth orbit, but the work could now accelerate on the late spacecraft.

In July 1968, the CSM-107 of Apollo 11 still under construction at the North American Aviation Plant in Downey, California. The thermal shield of the control module had not yet been installed, and the service module and itself were subject to individual system checks

The CSM was still ready for six months to be shipped to the space center Kennedy in Florida

. The lunar module of Apollo 11, LM-5, would eventually beat CSM-107 at Cape a week ago, but a year after landing on the moon, it was still undergoing tests at the same time. Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. Plant in Bethpage, New York

Electrical engineer Salvatore Sarbello, writing in a construction log for LM-5, noted fluctuations in power levels as environmental control system tests continued on July 20 1968.

4 hours, it was necessary to install the panel 5 in the phase of ascension of the lunar module. The panel included the stop and start buttons to control the engines that would descend and elevate the vehicle to the lunar surface.

The CSM-107 and LM-5 would be much better known as "Columbia" and "Eagle". but these call signs will not be known publicly for almost another whole year

Moon men

From their landing on the moon, Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins were not the only ones to be on the moon. Apollo 11 crew.

On July 20, 1968, Armstrong and Aldrin served as alternate command and lunar module pilots, respectively, for the Apollo 8 Earth orbit mission. At that time, even the idea of ​​sending Apollo 8 encircling the moon, which would happen in December, was still in two weeks (and this mission change would not be announced to the public until November).

Collins, meanwhile, was in training as a pilot of the Apollo 8 command module, when, on July 22, 1968, NASA announced that he was going to undergo surgery "to remove a bone spur growth that had developed in his cervical spine. "

affect Collins' mission as a senior command module pilot for the third inhabited Apollo mission will not be known before surgery, when the time required for recovery can be established, "said the agency At the time

the situation became clear: Collins had undergone the surgery without complications, but he would need three to six months to recover, which requires that he be replaced in Apollo 8 crew. Jim Lovell went from the rescue team to the main crew of Apollo 8 (which allowed Aldrin to become a pilot module of backup command)

Armstrong would not be approached to command the first lunar landing until Apollo 8 enters lunar orbit. </ p> <p> He, Aldrin and Collins will not be announced to the public as a & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; Apollo 11 crew before 9 January 1969.

[194] 59015] Robert Pearlman is a writer collaborator of Space.com and the publisher of collectSPACE.com, a space. com partner site and the main publication of spatial news. Follow collectSPACE on Facebook and Twitter at @ collectSPACE . Follow us on @Spacedotcom Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com