How Going to the Moon Works

Fifty years ago, the first humans stepped onto the moon. After going back a few more times, humanity lost its taste for moon travel. But it’s being revived again. NASA is planning to send humans back to the moon by 2024 and build a moon base by 2028. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody comes see us, because we're coming to see you. Specifically,
if you live in Chicago. On July, we're gonna be
at the Harris Theater, and the following night we're going
to be at the Dan Fourth Music Hall in Toronto.
And that's just the beginning, that's right. We're also going
to our beloved Wilbur Theater, which we own in Boston
on October twenty nine, and then our first visit to Portland,

(00:21):
Maine at the State Theater in August. YEP. That's going
to be followed in October. We're gonna take a little
break because that's a lot of touring in October. On
the ninth we're going to be at the Plaza Live
in Orlando, and then on October ten, we're gonna be
at the Civic Theater in New Orleans, that's right. And
in October we're gonna round it all out at the
Bellhouse in Brooklyn for three shows October YEP. So go

(00:46):
to s y s K live dot com for tickets
and information, and we will see you starting this July
in Chicago. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production
of I Heart Radios. How Stuff Works, Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck,

(01:08):
Brian over there, and there's Jerry over there, and this
is coming up on the fiftieth anniversary Chuck of the
first time humans ever set foot on the Moon. One
small step for podcasts. Oh wow, giant or podcasting. That's

(01:30):
a that's a really good nail, Arnce Sean, Oh boy,
that was dumb. I liked it though. I think this
serves as a companion piece to our June two, thou
fourteen episode on the Space Race. Yeah, and was the
moon landing of hoax? We did that one too, Cheez,
did we do that silliness so long ago? Two? That
sounds about right. I think we landed on it not

(01:52):
being a hoax if I remember correctly, that's right. Yeah,
this is a good companion of the Space Race one.
I went back and watch the uh, the full CBS
broadcast of this. It's like two minutes long. Huh. It's
really cool. Yeah, I mean Cronkite is kind of crying.
It's easy. Well, he was a big cry baby. Everyone
knows that about cron cut He cried the drop of

(02:14):
the hat. Yeah, basically you should have seen him when
Princess die got married. Good lord, oh boy. So um,
there's nothing wrong with crying, Walter. No, so, Chuck, I
was reading about that, that transmission and the the it's
pretty amazing that the world got to see Neil Armstrong

(02:35):
and Buzz Aldrin bouncing around on the moon in the sixties. Yes,
in the sixties, at the end of the sixties. But
still this was far and away the first time anybody
had ever done anything like this. But what I did
not know until this very day is that the guy
who invented basically the the the whole setup for this
for Westinghouse, that that carried this out. Um, when he

(02:59):
saw that that that transmission come through, he was he
almost had a heart attack. It was way way worse
visually than it was supposed to be. Okay, so he
was upset at the picture quality. Yes, he I know,
That's what I'm saying to Like, you see this and
you're like, wow, that's really good. No, this apparently he

(03:19):
had not factored in the compression that had to take
place from the signal, Like if you see the raw signal,
like it was just crisp and clear um or you
imagine it would be. It turns out NASA lost the
magnetic tapes that have the original raw signal on it um,
but when it was compressed for TV, it kind of

(03:40):
messed it up a little bit. But he he apparently
went with it and was like, that's still good. We're
still broadcasting live from the Moon, yeah, which is beaming
it down, then back up, then back down. Like what
what does he expect? I guess he was a bit
for perfectionist. So he had a heart attack dramatic. Well,
I said he had a heartest. Oh, I thought he
literally had a hard No, no, no, no, no, It's

(04:03):
like sure beats cron Kite. He just fell right over.
You know, it's funny as cron Kite missed the second
half of the quote he said, he said, that's one
small step for man. I didn't catch that second part.
And then a couple of minutes later, when Neil Armstrong
is talking about the the so he quickly goes in
you know, he has a great quote then kidding, No,

(04:25):
I'm serious. Uh So when Armstrong he says that great
quote and then he quickly kind of goes into work
mode and he's just talking about the surface of the Moon,
how it looks like charcoal us basically, and uh cron
Kite interrupts him basically and talks over him. He's like, okay,
we have the second part. Apparently he said one giant

(04:46):
leap for man kind. Okay. It's like, all right, well,
I have never seen that broadcast. It's kind of cool.
They have a simulation going, uh so you can you know,
a really kind of corny looking sixties simulation of the
lunar odile landing and then it picks up with the
live feed. Does it look like that mountain climber on
the prices right? It was an unlike that. So, for

(05:11):
those of you who haven't called on yet, we're talking
about the Apollo eleven moon landing, which happened on July
nineteen sixty nine. Um, and there was a lot of
work that went up to that. We didn't just happen overnight,
you know, and it actually all started. Um. A lot
of people trace it back to that speech that John

(05:33):
Kennedy gave at Rice University in Houston, Texas in nineteen
sixty one I believe, yeah, of ninety one. Yeah, where
he said that he basically challenged the United States to
go to the Moon to put a man on the
moon before the end of the decade, right, he said,

(05:55):
he said, we go to the moon not because it's easy,
but because it's up there mocking us when we sleep.
He was quite insane. And I'm told it's made of cheese.
They bring me some of that cheese. He turned into
Steinbrenner George Steimerer. So, yeah, this this is what really

(06:17):
I mean, the space race had been going on, and
like I said, we did a pretty good show on
that uh and on June five, two fourteen. But you know,
most of the nineteen fifties were consumed with the Russians
and the United States or the Soviets rather um just
sort of well we were in second place, but just

(06:37):
one after the other, like oh, they're doing this, and
we gotta do this, and they're doing this, and we
gotta do this, um and or or both pursuing the
same goal and the Soviets beating us to it almost
every time by three months, which is enough for the
world to be like, but boy, we got the last laugh.
We did. But that's what Kennedy went bankrupts. That's what
Kennedy was doing. Well, you can thank Reagan for that. Yeah,

(06:58):
that's what Kennedy was doing is he was upping the anties, like,
all right, enough of this tip fitat stuff. We're gonna
really stick it to him. And he said, we're going
to the Moon. We're gonna put a person on the moon,
a man on the moon. But you know, if it
were today, say human, yeah, and I think you know, well,
we'll talk more about what's actually gained by a manned

(07:20):
like sending a person to the moon. But beyond that,
it was very much a symbolic thing to do this
and to beat the Soviets there and to plant that
American flag firmly in that lunar soil. But that's one
one big reason why it was televised live from the moon.
Number one, we were showing we might say the moon world.

(07:43):
It was broadcasting around the world, but to it documented
it as proof that we were up there. To most people,
it was documented as proof. But then also there was
a certain amount of bravado in the fact that we
were broadcasting from the Moon live. So not only did
we accomplish this one feat of somebody people to the Moon,
we broadcasted at live, which is another feat as well.

(08:04):
So we had the US Ranger program from six to
sixty five, and these are things that all you know,
Like you said, it was a long process, Yeah, building
up to actually putting people there, And it's easy to
overlook that that, like every every mission that was carried
out was a test or. They were trying to just
build it by step by stair, including like full on
dress rehearsals. Uh So, the Ranger program for four years

(08:26):
sent nine missions. They're collecting data basically two say here's
how we can do this. UM In sixty two, Ranger
four reached the surface but crashed. But then two years
after that, Ranger seven UM sent back more than four
thousand photographs. Not bad. Rangers six made it, but the

(08:47):
camera failed. But get this, Ranger three and five missed.
It was like, oh I can't. I mean, it's amazing
that we were able to put people on the Moon
and bring them back safely in a very short time.
Like when you imagine all of the things that can
go wrong and what year it was, it's just it's
nuts to think about. Yeah, so you said, Rangers seven

(09:08):
landed in nineteen sixty four and sent America back its
own first images of the Moon. Five years later, we
put humans on the moon that's a very short amount
of time. Yeah. Yeah, the Soviets were the first to um,
so you know these rangers, they were basically like take pictures,
take pictures, take pictures, crash right, right, But the Soviets

(09:30):
were the first ones who actually land gently land a
spacecraft on the Moon without just crashing into it. They
were also the first to the very first step with
lunar orbit. The second one was crashing on the Moon,
and then the third step was landing softly on the Moon.
And the Soviets beat us every step of the way,
that's right. Which so it was a kind of um,

(09:51):
gutsy for Kennedy to be like, we're going to be
the first of the Moon because we've been we've been
behind every step of the way. I bet the Moon
was like WTF, Like what's going on? I've been up
here for a long time and now there's just a
lot of activity getting on pock mark. People are crashing
stuff on me. Here's a dude, he's coming at me.

(10:12):
He's about to jump on me. That was the Moon's quote. Okay,
so all this led up to obviously, um, these these
tests pre flight test on the ground, which uh some
ended in tragedy. Notably in n a fire swept through

(10:33):
the Apollo command module and killed Gus grissom Ed White,
and Roger Chaffee. And that was um They dined with asphyxiation,
And after reading up on it, there was like there
were so many things wrong, Like their space suits were flammable,
they had a hatch door that opened in and like
took a long time to open. Well, the the UM

(10:54):
fire itself created a vacuum that made it impossible for
the hatch to open, Like there was it was impossible
where that hatched. It was a really really sad accident,
but it might have been one that was like like
I wish there weren't people involved, but it might have
been something necessary to you know, get everything right. It
definitely changed the mentality of the space program and that
safety became even more important. And I think Gus Grisson

(11:17):
was the first of the Mercury seven to die. Oh yeah,
very sad. Yeah forty one years old? Was he just
forty one? He looked way It's crazy, like what forty one?
What age that was back then? I think everyone that
was like the thirty to sixty look the same pretty much,
you know. I can't deliverate pretty much. So we've we've
gone to lunar orbit, we've crashed landed on the Moon.

(11:39):
There's a there's a bunch of steps that we were
taking in that made up the space race. One of
the next one was to get somebody outside of Earth's
orbit and into lunar orbit. Big deal. The Soviets beat
us there too, but just very shortly after that, UM,
I think it was Apollo seven. Uh, spent a bunch

(12:02):
of time orbiting the Earth. I think they made it too. Oh,
I know the big the big thing about Apollo seven.
So we've gone We've gone from like Pioneer Ranger and
Pioneer Ranger and surveyor into now these are crude missions
the Apollo program. UM Apollo one and it in tragedy. Uh.
And then Apollo seven is where, um, it really starts

(12:24):
to become significant, where things are really picking up by
leaps and bounce. This is less than a year before
we would land on the Moon, and Apollo sevens big
one is that this is the first time that we're
testing the command module that we would use to send um,
Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins up to the Moon. Yeah,

(12:46):
so they ordered or orbited the Earth a hundred and
sixty three times, spent almost eleven days in space. So
that was a big success. This was Walter Shiara Jr. Uh,
Don Eassel and Walter Cunningham from Old him Uh. And
then Apollo eight was a big deal. Um. It was
happening so fast. That was seven was in October a

(13:08):
Polo eight was in December of the same year. UM.
And this was the first one to use h the
Saturn rocket, which was a big, big deal. Yeah, the
Saturn rocket is. Um. You can actually see one on
its side and walk right under it at Kennedy Space
Center the museum right and UM, it's bigger than I
think a thirty six story building. It's just this enormously

(13:29):
powerful rocket. And UM. When they started testing the Saturn,
this was this was like when the Saturn showed that
it would work, we people started to realize like we're
actually we might do this because we'd already tested out
the command module and UM. Now the Saturn was up
and the Saturn came in three stages. There was the

(13:50):
the first stage that produced like seven point seven million
pounds of thrust, which is a lot more than you
know you produce when you jump up in the air.
I looked, I looked for an analogy. I couldn't find
any good comparison. It's just a lot of thrust. Yeah,
So this was the thrust that got that. This is
the launch thrust. Yeah, it got you out of Earth's

(14:11):
gravity or the bulk of the gravity. And then so
that first big old stage would fall away, and then
the second stage got you all the way out of
Earth's gravity, and then the third stage of that second
stage you fall away. Then the third stage would propel
you to the moon. So it's a three stage rocket.
And by the time that third stage had had fired

(14:31):
and got you up to top speed, you were going
something like twenty five thousand miles per hour in a
little capsule at the top of a rocket. It was.
It was a very amazing rocket. UM. And this test,
it was I will go to my grave saying that.
And this test of the Apollo A mission showed that
it would work. Yeah. So Apollo nine follows just two

(14:54):
and a half months, three months later, And this one
was a big deal because actually UM practice a very
important procedure, which was the docking between the command module
and the lunar module. So you've got this Saturn rocket
that's providing the juice. Then you have the command module,
which is where essentially where you're you know, you're you're

(15:16):
flying what you would think of as the spaceship. It's
like the crew quarters. Yeah, yeah, that's where the crew
is, is is where they're flying. It's where they're eating and
pooping and sleeping. Uh. And then you actually need to
land on the Moon, and you don't do that in
the command module. You do that in the lunar module.
But those two guys have to connect, right, So the
command module and the lunar module for launch are facing

(15:38):
the same direction. But once they get out into a
lunar trajectory, I and I could not find why they
designed it like this. You couldn't either. But the the
lunar module, that thing that you've seen laying on the
Moon that looked just totally ungangly ungainly um had to
blast off and it was tethered m It blasted off,

(16:02):
turned around, and then redocked with the command module. Knows
to know. I don't think I'm surprised that there had
to be something they just couldn't figure out a work around. Four.
I would love to know anybody who knows, please write
in because I was looking all over for but consider this, Chuck.
You had two pieces of equipment that we're facing the
same direction and you had to turn one around and

(16:24):
face the other one in space at twenty five thousand
miles per hour. So that's pretty impressive that they were
able to do in the sixties, right, So this was
this was Apollo nine was the first to show this
is this is working, like this is going to work.
So they did that, and then Apollo ten was the one.
This was the last one in the dress rehearsal. The

(16:46):
Apollo ten astronauts you could call them um understudies, I guess,
so just really took it for the team. I mean
they did everything but touchdown on the Moon. Yeah, they
brought that. So they did this whole docking procedure where
the the lunar module was blasted off and turned around
and nose the nose connected to the command module, and

(17:07):
then they did the lunar landing thing where they blasted
off the lunar module, brought it down within fifty feet
of the moon surface, and then took it back up
and redoct again. I wonder if they were like, it's
right there, maybe we should just I wonder too. Surely
they joked at least, yeah, probably, but there's probably a
lot of humor going on. I would hope so. But

(17:28):
the whole mission, though, is you've got this this command
module and the lunar module and the command module. When
the lunar module goes down to the Moon and then
back up, the command modules just flying around in a
lunar orbit waiting to rendezvous again. So they did everything
but touchdown and then they came back. And when they
came back, they said, we're ready. This is it that

(17:48):
we're ready? Yeah, hint hint uh. And that was like
two months before A followed eleven left it off. Should
we take a break? I think so? All right, let's
take a break and talk about the stars of the show,
Polo eleven. I also want to shout out Apollo ten,

(18:33):
by the way. Um, So, with Apollo eleven, the command
module was named Colombia and the lunar module was famously
named Eagle. In Apollo ten, the command module was Charlie
Brown and the lunar module was Snoopy, which I love.
That's pretty sweet. Yeah, so everyone knows the three human
beings that we sent up in Apollo eleven Commander Neil Armstrong,

(18:57):
Lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and the other guy, I know,
poor Michael Collins. Yeah, Command module pilot, Michael Collins, and
you really like we want to sing his praises because
it stinks to be known as the other guy. I
would imagine everyone remembers those other two names. Ask Roger Daltry.
They got what they got to, uh, walk around on

(19:20):
the moon while Michael Collins essentially babysat the command module
in the command module eating ho hoes, waiting for them
to come back. That's that's unselfish, extremely and I'm sure
they were assigned these roles because of their you know
what they had trained for. But to be the guy
that's like, yeah, you know what, that's okay, Yeah, I'll

(19:40):
be number three. That's what he did, though. He sat
up there with the command module and made sure it's
stayed in orbit and that's right, just waited for the
dudes to come back. So hats off to you, Michael Collins. Alright,
So July in the morning, I'm so excited Apollo eleven
lists off from JF Case Base Center at Cape Canaveral.

(20:01):
It's no, no coincidence there. He said, our go get
him and name it after me. So it was a
it was a huge moment um for the sort of
the end of the space race, you know, if it
all went well, if it all went well. So remember
we practiced everything up to the actual landing. We'll get

(20:24):
to the landing in a second, but um buzz Aldern
later said that he was the most worried about the
landing because they were the most unknowns, the most questions remaining,
because it was the one thing that hadn't been studied
and practiced and done before, and it was up to
these guys. This is the last thing, the last part
of this whole thing, and no one had done it.

(20:45):
And so when they took off at two they went through.
Everything just went perfectly. The first stage fired fine, second
stage fired fine. The third stage got him into a
lunar trajectory. And I think they traveled this two and
thirty eight thousand miles uh over about two and a
half days before they started to reach lunar orbit. Yeah,
so on July nineteenth is when they enter that orbit.

(21:07):
They spent about a day there. Um sort of, you know,
there's a lot of checking on things you don't just
you know, like plow ahead with her your plan. You
take a day once you get up there to make
sure everything's working there, checking the communication systems, and basically
preparing for the big uh, the big show to come,

(21:29):
convincing Michael Collins that he couldn't come. Sorry, still drawing
straws up there in the orbit. So here was the
kind of cool thing that I think, maybe if you
don't know this full story that's really pretty remarkable is
the lunar module was supposed to basically land on autopilot,
but they saw where they were headed. Uh they didn't

(21:50):
you know, the Moon doesn't have atmosphere. They had never
really done this, so they didn't know exactly how to
calculate their altitude and air speed and realize in short
order they were ahead toward a crater with very steep,
sharp rims, and landing either on those rims or down
in that crater was no good. So Neil Armstrong said,

(22:11):
screw it, I'm gonna fly this baby down. He did.
He wasn't even the lunar module pilot. He just took over,
I guess as commander because if they were going to
crash it was gonna be on him. I need to
see this movie. Have you seen it? No, not yet.
And there's another documentary I think just called Apollo eleven
that's coming out. Oh, it'll have been out because we're
releasing this around the anniversary. So I think it came

(22:34):
out in late June, maybe on CNN or something, right, Yeah, So, um,
so Armstrong had to take over the controls and again,
no one had ever done this before. And this guy
is landing a lunar module basically manually, and this was unscheduled.
He had to make the thing travel further away from
the spot I was going to land. And so when

(22:54):
they finally landed, um, they had something like thirty seconds
of fuel left nuts and it was a little hairy.
And there was a very famous quote that came out
of the eagle. Lander said Houston, this is Tranquility Base.
The Eagle has landed and Tranquility or Houston said, thank goodness. Yeah,

(23:15):
Houston actually said, you got a bunch of guys about
to turn blue. We're breathing again. Uh. And funny enough,
that was Charlie Duke who wasn't he was the capcom
on the ground in Houston, but he would later be
up in the air and Apollo sixteen pretty neat, and
I'll bet he was wearing a tie with short sleeve

(23:35):
dress button shirt, probably so that all those guys bore. Yeah,
the problem back then was you could never tell car
salesman apart from regular people, right from an engineer, a teacher.
I bet your dad rocked that look. Oh well into
the nineties with the old pocket protector. So they landed
and uh, they were gonna abort their mission right there

(23:59):
and go right back up. Well, no, they set it
up so that they could abort at the drop of
a head if they had to. I think it was
part of the Okay, I thought they were going to abort. No, No,
I think they they The first thing they did was
prepare for an abort the chase something went wrong, they
wouldn't have to prepare to abort, ex press the button
and take off, all right. I thought. I got down

(24:20):
there was like, let's go back up. I'm having second
thoughts about being the first person to walk on the moon.
Well that that actually doesn't make a lot more sense
in because what they were supposed to do was take
a four hour rest um for safety. But they were
all itching to go, so they were like, no, we're
gonna work through this. It still took about four hours
just to get out onto the Moon, but they were

(24:42):
hard at work the whole time. They weren't taking a snooze. Yeah,
which I guess men it would have taken them eight
hours had they taken that snooze, but they did take
a snooze later on. Yeah, that's that's something that I
didn't realize about the moon laning. They spend a total
of twenty one hours on the Moon, and only two
and a half hours of it out walking round on
the Moon. The rest of the time they were in

(25:02):
the lunar module, including uh, seven and a half hours
of sleep. I guess. I mean they needed it. So
I was like, how did they sleep? And I thought,
I've got it. Drugs. I'll bet they took drugs. They
did not. They had sixteen tablets of seeking all on them.
They took zero, although later um later lunar landers would

(25:25):
would take a significant amount of seeking all, but Buzz
Aldrin and um Neil Armstrong didn't take any seeking, although
they did take decks of dream tablets during the mission,
so they were pepped up, which is hilarious, which means
they probably crashed. I guess so, but they were not
in any shape to sleep, but they still slept for
seven and a half hours. I bet that's some of

(25:46):
the quiet as sleep. I don't know. I just I
would be too excited. But yeah, I guess so. Maybe
just being there and having already gone and walked out
on the moon when you come back in ready for
a rest. Yeah. So six undred fifty million people watched this.
It's about a fifth of the world's population at the time. Um.
Armstrong spent about twenty minutes out there by himself, which

(26:07):
I imagine was something else. It's not like Aldrin crashed
his party on but twenty minutes out on the moon
by himself. Like, it's just it's hard to even fathom
what that was was like or it would be like
now even Um. Then Aldrin follows him down and his
description of the lunar surface was magnificent desolation. I never

(26:29):
knew that before, did you. Yeah, i'd heard that. That's
pretty cool. And um they started working. They started collecting
samples surface material, moon rocks, uh, basically taking note notations
on like what the gravity was like, because it wasn't
no gravity. It was one six of the Earth's gravity,

(26:50):
so you know they they were able to hop around
and jump around. Have you have here in a swimming
pool kind of Yeah? Have you seen that footage of
Jack Schmidt from a Polo seventeen. He keeps falling down.
He like had a collection backers putting stuff in and
he'd like drop it and he bent over and get
it and like kind of come back up and then

(27:10):
like based almost summersault like he was having a really
hard time. And they figured out, like pretty quickly, you
can't just walk on the moon, especially in these space suits.
You have to hop, right, you have to hop but
I think even hopping is not just like innate. Sure,
so you can fall over, but learning curve right. But
I did not see that Buzz Aldrin or Neil Armstrong

(27:32):
fell down? Me, no fall down? Who was at the
fell Jack Schmidt from Apolo seventeen, Cletzy Jack that was
his name. Yeah, just like up astronaut falls down on
the Moon and it's pretty fun to watch, especially if
you listen to Yakety Sacks and another tab. So he
mentioned that American flag, that iconic flag drop um or

(27:53):
flag stick or flag rays what would you call that, uh,
all of the above, I don't know. Me poke. Uh,
that's a great drink too. By the way, So the
pole went in um the first like six inches or
so very easily, and they're like, oh, this is a breeze.

(28:13):
And then it hit something super hard and I guess
they're like, oh, it's not so easy. So they had
to lean the flag back. Uh well yeah, they kind of, Oh,
just wriggled it back and forth. Thank you, because I
realized people can't see what I was doing. But yeah,
and in doing this, this is really important. In doing that,
they created ripples in this flag, and that's the that's

(28:38):
what moon hookes people point to there's no wind on
the moon. Yeah, they're like, how is their wind? You idiots?
Obviously this is here on Earth and that is the
That is the explanation that when they were wriggling it
back and forth created ripples, and that you can see
in footage the astronauts moving around the flag and the
flags ripples remain static. So no, there's not any wind

(29:02):
on the moon. But that's not when that did that
to the flag on the moon. Yeah, and I saw
about six years ago they I feel pretty good that
most of those flags, what are their seven and all
six six I believe are still there. They should still
be there. I don't know how they would fall off
the moon, well, not fall off, but just the temperature

(29:24):
swings on the moon. There was a lot of surmising
that they wouldn't have survived this stuff. Um but really yeah,
and the solar radiation and everything. We'll we'll get to
all that stuff. But it did. Um. It did say
that they took a lot of pictures of the various
times of day and they think they have found I
don't think they found Apollo eleven, but you know, it's

(29:47):
not like they can get it from the surface. So
these are all aerial shots. So they're comparing like shadows
basically and saying, oh, well, it looks to me like
this is the flags. Really yeah, are they still standing
up to They think, well, I don't think you can tell, okay,
but if it's casting a shadow, it must be oh yeah,
I guess that right. Yeah, very you need a job
at NASA, Jack, come in and be like, the shadow

(30:09):
proves its standing. But in all for Apollo eleven, they
collected about fifty pounds of lunar material, took a bunch
of pictures, took two court tube samples, and um, like
you said, spent what two and a half hours out
there just romping around, having a good time, having a
good time in twenty one hours total on the on

(30:31):
the lunar surface. And then they after well after about
twenty one hours, the lunar module went which no one realizes,
but that's the sound that it makes in space. And
it went up in rende vood with the the then
command module in a very uh passive, aggressively hostile Michael Collins.

(30:56):
He was very quiet for the rest of the trip.
But they docked a again. They docked like they the
docking procedure and after launch it, when it rendezvoused, it
docked with it. They got out and then they said,
so long Eagle, thanks for everything. Blasted it off again
and just send it on a crash course to the
Moon's surface. And where it's crash site is no one knows.

(31:18):
It's an unknown site. Um, but it's on there somewhere.
But that's what they did, they said. They used the
Eagle to go down, come back up, and then they
sent it back to Mama. So what happens on the
way back it's is it. There's two scenarios. It's either
those two guys can't stop talking about it and Michael
Collins is just like yeah, yeah, or Michael Collins is like,

(31:41):
what was it like? Guys, what was it like? And
they're like, you wouldn't understand. Yeah, we could, we could,
we could describe it, but it wouldn't make sense to
your brain. Yeah, those are people like the solar eclipse.
Either one of these. That's a bad right. Yeah, you
really had to see totally, and you know, if you didn't,
then just forget it. That's a that's a bad outcome
for Michael Collins either way. Pretty bad um, but it's

(32:03):
amazing that they were able to not only read doc,
but they were able to splash down in Hawaii alive. Yeah,
there was one other part. So the command module technically
had another part, the service module, that had like the
oxygen in the water and all that stuff, and they
they they scuttled that on the way back in and
then the just the command module made its entry back

(32:26):
into the Earth's atmosphere, going again about twenty five thousand
miles per hour UM and heating up to something like
five thousand degrees fahrenheit and they had created this heat
shield that they knew worked because they tested it on
former or other Apollo missions. But I mean still, every
time you've got three guys in a little tiny capsule

(32:48):
going twenty five thousand miles an hour hurtling towards Earth
with the outside temperature of five thousand degrees, it's kind
of hairy. So yeah, when they splashed down off the
coast of Hawaii, it was a big, big deal. Like
it had been. It had been successful and actually the
the stated primary objective, the primary mission of Apollo eleven

(33:09):
was to send a human into space, land them on
the Moon, and bring them back safely, the thing that
Kennedy challenged the United States to do. And when they
splashed down and they were all safe and sound, Apollo
eleven was successful. Yeah. I think that, Uh, for all
these Apollo missions, the re entry is always the biggest Well,
I mean there's tons of concerns, but re entry is

(33:31):
just so tough. And that they made this, uh they
made a basically a covering that was meant to be destroyed. Um,
it's pretty ingenious sacrificial lamb. Yeah, it's like it's supposed
to burn and everything inside should be okay, right, should be?
I can't imagine that feeling, man, I can't either. And

(33:52):
the fear, like, I'm sure it is fearful, but I
wonder also, I feel like once you hit the atmosphere,
I'll bet you can starting to feel the speed you're going,
just just shaking, you know, out in space. I don't
believe you can feel any speed at all, but because
of the air pressure from the atmosphere, I mean, that's
how you feel that stuff. Right, Yeah, I met they
could not have felt anything else, but like we were

(34:15):
probably going to die here any second now, right Bob,
butther is at least one or two yeehawk, you think, yeah,
should we take another break? All right, we'll talk about
some some of the other Apollo landings and then what's
going on today? Right after this? So Charles, as we

(35:02):
were researching this, um, I went and looked. I was like,
surely Michael Collins got another shot up in space. No? No,
well they made a movie about him. They did as
an Irish revolutionary. It was an anachronism. So they went
on his name sounded up familiar. They wanted to do
Apollo twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen and seventeen, uh, and

(35:26):
all of them. You know, after eleven it was like
the mission is now too. I mean they got stuff
done on eleven, but each mission after that had very
specific goals that wasn't just just go up to the
moon and come back. Of those six, five of them
were successful, very famously. Apollo thirteen was not successful. It
was an aboarded mission that didn't land on the Moon,

(35:48):
but the other five did. And yeah, they were basically
really fun scientific journeys. Yeah, should we hit some of
these highlights? Yeah, I think Apollo fourteen is known for
and Shepherd hitting golf balls. It's funny all the work
they did, and that's like the iconic scene as him
hitting golf balls. Yeah, and and some of the stuff

(36:09):
that they're doing too. I mean, like that's NASA saying, like,
go find out how how easy it is to move
around in these suits. Right, So Shepherd's like, we'll hit
some golf balls up or like a golf course might
be nice up there one day, right, Yeah, he's gonna
carry Apolo fifteen was the first one where they used
that cool, super cool looking roving vehicle, the Lunar rover.

(36:32):
That was really neat tore it up. Yeah, remember that
that cartoon doom Buggy. It was like Scooby Doo, but
the instead of being a dog, Scooby Doo is a
doom Buggy. I don't remember that. You're not something wonder Bug?
Are you? Okay? I think it was doom Buggy. Yeah,
I remember wonder Bug. Wonder Bug was a doom Buggy.
I could see there being more than one of these cartoons,

(36:53):
somebody ripping off somebody else. Doom Buggies were big in
the seventies, remember seeing those around? Oh yeah, I bet
you could buy and buggy today for speed Buggy, Speed Buggy,
Speed Buggy. All right, Yeah, it was a It was
a cartoon from the sixties. Wonderbug was live action for
the seventies. I'm sorry. Was it was? Did the did

(37:13):
the doom Buggy talk or something like that? Or wonder Bug?
Are you thinking of my mother the car? Maybe? I am? Okay?
Let me see Apollo seventeen. I think is noted for
more lunar roving um. And then a very famous uh
famous quote as the last one? Who was it? Gean Sernin?

(37:37):
We leave as we came and God willing as we
shall return with peace and hope for all mankind. Yeah,
that was something that like, you know, the moon landings
were part of this space race that grew out of
this adversarial relationship of Cold War USSR and United States.

(37:58):
But I do have to say that America did it
pretty classy when we got there, Like there were all
sorts of like, um, talk about peace for human kind
and that you know, this is one small step for
a man, one giant leap for mankind. It wasn't like
you safe or anything like that from the Moon. Yeah. Um,

(38:19):
So I I'm really heartened by the fact that that
that's how it was done. It was meant to be
a mission to the Moon for human kind. I think
there was a lot of camaraderie with cosmonauts and astronauts
themselves somewhat. There was a lot of um, there's a
lot of commemorative material up there commemorating cosmonauts both alive

(38:41):
and dead, that American astronauts took up with them. Yeah.
I mean, let's talk about the stuff, uh that we
brought back and left um from all these missions and
by the way, that last mission that's been back sense
no human has left lower Earth orbit. I bel eves.
Since then, it's hard to believe. You'd think someone like

(39:04):
we would have done it for some reason. No, people,
I mean, we'll talk about it, but people just lost interest.
It just became like whatever part of it was the
Vietnam War for sure, but but I think it was
also just kind of like, Okay, we've done that a
few times. How many rock samples do you guys gonna
go get right? Wound me some other way? Well, and

(39:26):
it was expensive, and maybe the public sentimenting like how
how much money are we going to pour into getting
moon rocks probably a lot to do with it. So
all end, they carded back moon rocks now just samples
two pounds of moon rocks, core samples, pebbles, dust, sand um.
And they you know, it helped them determine how old

(39:48):
the moon was. That's not bad. No, They figured something
like four point five three billion years or something like that.
And they also came up with the current um hypothesis
for how the Moon was formed that an object named
THEA about the size of Mars, collided with Earth early
on in Earth's formation and merged but also calved off

(40:11):
the Moon. So the Moon was born from the Earth. Yes,
that's pretty neat. Yep. So we left a lot of
stuff though. Yeah, it's kind of like they didn't listen
to Sierra Club. Yeah, four thousand pounds of stuff that's
up there, and a lot of it is just gear equipment.
I mean they seventies space vehicles. Yeah, but we just

(40:34):
left or junk up there basically. Yeah, there's a lot
of junk up there. And they said that they did
that on purpose to to see what it would do,
see what happened to it. A lot of it. Some
of it was also um that they were It just
made sense to displace stuff. We didn't need to make
room for the weight from these samples in moon rocks.

(40:56):
And it was also the sixties when you would just
go do a family picnic just like leave. Yeah, exactly,
there's a big um. There was a debate and it
was finally put to rest. But for a while there
somebody came across some some detail that there's nineties six
Emesa's bags up there on the moon, and Amesa's bag

(41:19):
is what you pee, poop or vomit into if you're
an astronaut, and so somebody said, oh my god, there's
nineties six bags of poop and urine and vomit sitting
up on the moon. That's disgusting. And that was that
that's what everybody thought for a very long time. And
then uh NASA Lunar archivist said no, absolutely not. Um,

(41:42):
nobody's puked on the moon. For one, only three guys
have puked in space, and none of them were on
the moon. Um. Not only did uh Aldrin and Armstrong
not poop, they actually took a drug to keep them
from pooping while they were on their lunar mission, emodium.
Aldrin did p but there's no evidence that he left

(42:03):
his bag behind. So they think that these nineties six
and mesas bags are all empty bags. That were like,
we didn't need this because we don't vomit. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
that makes sense. But that was a that's a that's
an urban legend, right, Ripley's Ripley's believe it or not.
Websites steered me wrong at first, and then I got
steered right by I think slate somebody look good for them. Uh.

(42:28):
There are some commemorative items. Besides just the flags, there
are plaques kind of all over the place. Aldrin and
Armstrong left one that said we came in peace for
all mankind. A little on the nose, but still a
nice sentiment. Um a disc with seventy three messages from
countries all over the world micro etched. Yeah, just to

(42:49):
show off more technology of the sixties. Like you said earlier,
they honored their Rushiman Russian cosmonaut Um counterparts I guess
with metals uh. And then a symbol of the U. S.
Eagle carrying an olive branch yep. And then you know,
they all left stuff when they went up there, including
Charlie Douke who I talked about from Apollo sixteen. He

(43:11):
took a picture of his family and left it behind.
So what are you gonna do, NASA administrators? Nothing? Yeah,
so he left behind they think, now that's probably blank though.
That's sad from the solar radiation. Yeah, and his family
subsequently disappeared. Yeah, they come back to the future, right,
Their souls are trapped on the Moon forever. Something else
was smuggled too, though, right, Um that one of a

(43:34):
commemorative plaque was smuggled PAULA fifteen. David Scott smuggled an
aluminum plaque. Why would he have to smuggle that? I
don't know. They just had it was off the charter
or whatever. I guess. I don't know why. I know
one guy smuggled the sandwich points really, yeah, one of
him did. I can't remember. My brother Rose Beef, my

(43:55):
brother at one time smuggled the PBNJ into a Dark
Straits concert. Yeah did he really? Yeah, it's kind of
We still laugh about it. One of the nerdiest things
ever was like three songs in when he's like, you
want a sandwich, he just starts unwrapping it. That's hilarious.
It's great wrapped in wax paper. I think it was

(44:18):
so uh. Neither one of us were boy scouts actually,
because my brother would have owned that sure, and his
son went all the way through. Of course, way is
your brother envious? Is he like Michael Collins? Yeah, I
think so. Um. But here's the deal with all that
stuff up there is, uh, lunar tourism is going to
be a thing at some point, So NASA actually had

(44:40):
to establish lunar heritage sites and rules like you can't
go within a certain amount with like don't go near
any of this stuff. Basically, if you see a rover,
just turn around and walk the other way, which is
like or hoped the other way. I guess, yeah, I
don't fall down. Man. Can you imagine like seeing a
lunar rover beyond due can't go over there, but on

(45:01):
the moon to like just see oh my gosh, frozen
in time. It would be so Creepsville would be awesome. Yeah,
So what's going on these days? Well, so you said
there there, we haven't been back since to the moon,
which is really kind of astounding if you think about it.
But understandably, the political interest public interests a lot of
it waned. That means funding dried up. Um. And because

(45:24):
the Moon kind of got left behind, NASA was like, well,
we'll just focus on lower Earth orbit stuff and really
went all in on the Shuttle program and then um
also on the International Space Station. Both again are in
lower Earth orbit, not in what you think of as
like outer space, right um. And then oh, the Obama
administration came no, I'm sorry. The the space Shuttle accident

(45:47):
UM that blew up the Columbia UM in two thousand three,
UM caused George Bush to say, George W. Bush to say, hey,
we let's bounce back, let's go back to the moon
by and UM, that's not happening though, No, So the
NASA got directed back to the Moon, and Obama's administration

(46:10):
did an audit and found that NASA was so far
behind that we wouldn't make it back to the Moon
by so Obama said go to Mars instead. This is
this is par for the course for NASA. Every few
years they get a completely new directive to somewhere else
in the Solar System, and they have to scramble to
like change plans, try to salvage whatever they were working on.

(46:31):
And they've gotten kind of good at applying stuff they're
working on to to basically fudge to say, okay, we're
working on this this Mars, this Mars launcher right now,
the SLS, the Space Launch System, and yeah it can
get us to Mars, but we could really also go
to the Moon with this thing too. They're cross trained, right. So, um,

(46:52):
after the Obama administration came along and said forget the Moon,
forget this Shuttle program, go to Mars. That started languaghing,
and then um the current administration said, let's go back
to the Moon. The current administration said, what did Obama say?
We'll do the opposite of that, right, So now the
man now The current target date is mind bogglingly tight.

(47:15):
The the target is to put humans on the Moon
again in five years and four years after that establish
a moon base. That is extremely ambitious. Yeah, and I
think most people UM kind of acknowledge, like, you know,
we're not gonna hit that date, but hopefully NASA doesn't.

(47:37):
These are outsiders say they're on target. Well, even the
outsiders I think are saying, hopefully we'll be within a
few years of that. It's possible. I mean, one reason
why it is possible is because NASA today has a
thriving commercial space industry to work with, and they they
are embracing wholehearted partnering with them. Now, how does that work.

(47:58):
They just pay those private firms a lot of money
to to tap their resources. Yeah, if you get a
contract to build the lunar lander for NASA, you might
as well just be printing money. Um. They I think
the current administrator for NASA UM estimated recently that it
would be about thirty billion dollars to get back to

(48:20):
the Moon. And they put out a call the designs
UM for designs for their lunar Lunar lander, and so
Jeff Bezos, remember I went to New York to see
the Blue Origin unveiling. That's what he was doing, was
unveiling their thing called Blue Moon. It's a lunar lander.
It's got a flat top like kidn play, and um,
you can put anything on it, a lunar rover, a

(48:41):
bunch of scientists, a lab, whatever you want, or pieces
to a space base, a moon base and build it
slowly like that. Um, and it looks pretty good. Nice,
and it runs on hydrogen, which is big because they're
gonna start landing on the South Pole of the Moon,
which is where they think permanent ices which can be mined, right, Yeah,

(49:04):
they haven't. They haven't been to the South Pole first
of all with any of the Apollo missions, So that
makes a lot of sense to go there. And yeah,
like you said, they got ice there. They can split
that hydrogen and oxygen thanks to electrolysis, and then you
can make rocket fuel. So used to get back potentially. Yeah,
I mean the the command module when it was orbiting

(49:24):
the Moon, it was operating on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
So this is like an old technology, but the new
thing is we would be mining it on the Moon. Amazing,
and the kind of the logical conclusion of that then
is if we can establish a permanent presence on the Moon.
That's the new motto. So this program, which I think
is kind of awesome, is called the Artemis program. This

(49:47):
returned to the Moon sister to uh Apollo, right, which
makes sense. But it's also the program that's expected to
put the first woman on the Moon, which right, pretty cool. Um,
But the the the way that they're saying is now
we're going to return to the Moon and stay there.
Like that's the point, Like, we're permanently returning to the
Moon now. Um. So once we do that, we'll have

(50:09):
a new place to launch an outer space I mean,
remember how many pounds of thrust and how much fuel
that first stage of the Saturn took and then the
second stage. This doesn't require any of them. And so
the plan is to build a small space station in
permanent orbit around the Moon that you fly out to
and then just like you keep a boat at your

(50:30):
lake house tied up, they're gonna keep a lunar lander
tied up to that to that um that that space station,
and you just kind of go back and forth to
the Moon using that. Amazing, it is pretty amazing. And
they're talking about doing this in five years. Can you
imagine the equality of video and audio that we're gonna get.
It's gonna be great. It's gonna be pretty sweet. And

(50:51):
I've seen that there are starting to like you were
talking about with commercial tourism, Like I saw something like
five million. Can at you to the moon? It's pretty
soon the moon or just orbiting the moon. Oh, I'm
sorry to the to the space station. The I S
S five million, which is not bad because they wanted
to charge Lance Bass like thirty million or something crazy

(51:13):
like that. It's like HDTVs back in the day. Is
that price is gonna just keep coming down everybody. Pretty
soon you're gonna be able to go to the moon
for cool even Lance Basking afford that you got anything else, no, sir, Well,
congratulations to the world for fifty years of having been
on the moon the first time. I'm proud of us.

(51:34):
Uh And since Chuck said hooray, that means it's time
for a listener. May I'm gonna call this one I've
been meaning to read for a while. We did a
show about Live Aid and do they know it's Christmas?
And we're like, we love that song. Who doesn't love
that song? It turns out a lot of people don't
love that song really because the message is flawed. Oh yeah,
yeah when you look at the lyrics. Uh, hey, guys,

(51:56):
we'll listen to the show on Live Aid and the
song do they know it's Christmas? What? That's such a
great song. Call me a fuddy duddy. But what I
hear is this, There won't be any snow in Africa
this Christmas time. The greatest gift they'll get this year
is life. And he went, oh, I think, he said,
where nothing ever grows. It's like, that's not possible. Africa's

(52:19):
is large cottin it with lots of growing things. Uh,
no rains or rivers flow. Ever heard of the Nile?
That's North Africa? Um? He said. Basically, it treats Africa
as a single, homogeneous region when in fact it's incredibly
large and diverse, ignores the fact that most of Africa's
in the southern hemisphere, so Christmas is in the summer there,

(52:42):
and assumes that lack of knowledge of Christmas is a
flaw caused by lack of resources in good weather, rather
than a reasonable cultural difference. Considering the large Uh that
a large percentage of Africans are not Christian. I think
this guy is taking the do they know it's Christmas? Literally? Well,
a lot of people wrote in about this. I gotta say,
I think the point of the lyrics was they have

(53:03):
so much hardship in front of their faces. Are they
even aware that Christmas time has come? The holiday spirit
in season hasn't even shown up there because there's so
much hardship. That's the point of the lyrics. Come on.
He finishes by saying this, it's okay if you like
the song it's sketchy, but please don't claim that everyone
should like it. Everyone should like that song. And that's

(53:26):
anonymous from a bunch of people. I bet you're anonymous.
Uh well, thank you for writing. And we always love
opposing opinions, right, thanks bo Yeah right, He's like, if
my lyrics had been accepted, it would have been a
much better song. Uh well, if you want to point
out that something we like is actually heinous, we love

(53:47):
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(54:11):
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