Thanks Simon and team - my favourite of all your content these ❤ Brian Cox said he’d like to send Boris Johnson into space - that wasn’t to get rid of him - he thought it was a good investment - that if all leaders saw what they were in charge of nurturing and protecting it would give an immersive feeling of individual responsibility to the planet and themselves. And it would empower their judgement; so they could understand as elected leaders that their true calling was to protect and serve ALL AND EVERYTHING on this wonderful planet and to agree that through cooperation, compassion, compromise and most importantly comprehension we are stronger together - that we need to work together to embrace our differences and combine these to make the strengths that we need to progress. It would be money well spent. Send them all he said and then put them in a room.
Hello, Simon, Do you realize that you, yourself have a direct part in this achievement? By doing a detailed episode 55 years later, you continue knowledge of this history and awareness of the Lunar Landing. If it weren't for people like you, would young people would even know the details of the Apollo Program? They're certainly not going to learn about it on Tictok or X. Gen Z and even most Millenialls have NO exposure to this part of history and hence no care to even learn about it.
It was daytime on a school day here in Oz. My mother could not get a guarantee from our elementary school that we would be able to view Apollo 11's landing, on the one tiny B&W TV the school possessed - so my mother kept my sister and me home for the day, to ensure we got to watch the telecast. As the landing TV feed was sent first to Australian radio telescopes, it meant the moon was visible when I walked outside after watching the broadcast of the landing. I looked up at the moon in awe and wonder, thinking "gosh, there are two men walking around on that Moon, right now" It was a life-shaping moment, for sure.
Apparently I was sitting in a pram on the streets of Perth while my mother and grandmother watched the landing on a plethora of black and white televisions in a department store window with hundreds of others. My grandfather passed the month before and never got to see it. 5 years later in 1974 I watched a total solar eclipse on a black and white monitor in my classroom in Western Australia. Well, it was a black and white television. A big one. I don't know how they did it but even our teachers thought that us watching it on a screen would send us blind. Outside it was midnight at midday. They fussed over us like hens fussing over their chics...
@arnoldzyphill3167 He said he was at school, you said it was July, and OP pointed out that yes, it was winter in Austrailia, ergo, they were in school.
When listing the side-benefits, you missed arguably the two most significant ... the giant leap in materials science, and the hyper acceleration of semiconductor development ... bringing to us the very medium by which we watch your videos.
Yeah...but then they would have to brief the not so overly burdened by knowledge past stare-poke-stare-selfie smart device operating and not suffering from any back pains whilst doing it, and honestly it would worry myself if responsible about the larger than willing to admit number nom nomming Crayola getting magpied by a new shiny. 😅
You're also forgetting the rocks, with which the theory of a gigantic object collided with the earth, thus forming the moon, water molecules in which we have realized it's more common than we thought, and a lot of other discoveries that came decades after because we didn't have the technology to actually detect more complicated stuff. I don't think Alan Turing "invented" (keyword, please) the computer only to realize his mathematical theorems would be used 70 years later to binge tiktok. Edit: Typo
Despite having moved to Houston, I somehow haven't been to Johnson Space Center. My BIL took my niece and nephew there for the Artemis splashdown. That being said, seeing a rocket launched at Cape Canaveral when I was 11 is still the most awe-inspiring thing I've ever experienced. We were at the observation tower, and a couple seconds after the boosters kicked on, the sound wave rattled the tower and almost knocked me to my feet. I'll never forget that. We showed up and didn't know why half the space center was closed until we overheard a few people talking about a rocket launch. My dad and I BEGGED my mom to stay long enough for that and I'm so glad we did. If anyone ever has a chance to witness something like that, I highly recommend it. That was 25 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
People that haven’t been to a launch have no idea how incredibly loud they are. I had a conspiracy guy tell me that there were Apollo missions after Apollo 17 but (get this) they launched them at night so nobody was around to see them launch. He didn’t realize people live all around the space center. The problem with the vast majority of conspiracies is they require the listener to turn their brain off.
Can we just appreciate the fact that even though the Soviets and Americans were in the middle of a cold war and directly competing to get to the moon first, they still left a memorial for the Soviet cosmonauts that came before them.
That was USA that had a race, not russia. Russia was the first in space. Later USA changed the race to who is first on the moon. There was never a race between them. Only USA was saying that.
Nah, that's hard historical revisionism from Tankies who are still mad about it. The USSR blew up several large rockets trying to beat Apollo to the moon. @@ProgNoizesB
@@louisvaught2495 including the peoples communist Republic of China and their failure of the Chang Zheng 3B (or Long March 3B in English)satellite rocket lauch after the USSR in the late 90's Edit: while doing a quick fact check I found out the descendant of the Chang Zheng 3B, the Chang Zheng 3B/E was launched in 2007 with the 3C to follow it. As of last year the Chang Zheng 3B, 3B/E, 3C, and 3B/G5 have conducted 89 successful launches and 2 full failures and 2 partial failures, accumulating a success rate of around 95.7% according to Wikipedia. That is just insane what a come back for a tragic rocket Also plainly difficult has a video covering the Chang Zheng 3B launch failure if you're interested that's what got me interested in the first place :)
@@ProgNoizesBhahaha no. Please open and read a history book. There were debates about whose kitchen was superior, and you think this wasn't a race? Overall, it was more a relay race of who could outdo the other to prove the superior world power which clearly worked out for the Soviets. 🤦♀️
@@ProgNoizesB If this was true then why did the Russians continue to take part in the space race trying to be the first ones on the moon? This is like saying there was never a World War and only britain seen it that way. They quite literally took part and ackowledging it was a space race... Publically... They were the first to send a man made object to space, they were the first to spend a human to space and were the first to send a human around the moon. Russia was quite literally competing and winning. it wasn't until the US put a man on the moon did Russia see defeat.
I vividly remember being a young boy watching the moon landing and Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon on my family's black and white television. The Apollo clips still take my breath away 50+ years later.
1:19 a space race comeback 3:56 end of sponsorship 9:30 to perform the impossible 17:09 the spacecraft the astronauts 25:34 the missions 40:39 ending Apollo 47:30 return to the moon
I have known people that took that statement the wrong way. They used it to bring hardship to others, saying only things that cause pain are worth doing. I have worked for than one manager that believed if their employees were happy, they weren't being productive. I will always remember one had that statement, in cross stitch, in their office. Whenever someone complained about the conditions, he would point to the sign and tell them to suck it up. The point president Kennedy was trying to make is that goals requiring extreme effort bring about innovation and growth. As with anything else, context is important.
Buzz Aldrin is much more noted for work on rendezvous rather than EVA. He was called "Dr. Rendezvous" because that was the subject of his doctoral dissertation at MIT.
Yes, and ironically it was Buzz that switched on the ‘Rendezvous Radar’ (not on checklist), while the computer was taking guidance control from the ‘landing radar’. As I understand it, this is what caused the 1201 and 1202 alarms. The computer was being overloaded with data from both radar systems. So, Dr Rendezvous was a little paranoid about getting back to the ‘Columbia’ Command Module. 👨🚀
@@bipolarbear9917- assuming that this is the real case why he did it, I won’t be surprised, specially since their landing was the first attempt ever… I would be as paranoid as him, if not more…
@@ProgNoizesB not that anything on the subject wasn’t shown before, more I was looking for an educational video at the time and the algorithm as well as one of Simon’s channels delivered.
My hubby’s grandma didn’t work on the Apollo program- but she became an astronomer and later an astrophysicist during the Gemini and Apollo programs. Later went on to found infrared astronomy and worked on the Spitzer telescope (Dr. Judith Pipher if you want to look her up). I was so proud and awed to get to know her and would listen for hours about her work and what it was like to grow up and be an astronomer- especially a woman astronomer- during that time. Space is so damned amazing.
LOL at the incredibly confused mice. Also my favorite Apollo contribution to lay out for this stuff is the cordless drill. Apollo's contributions to modern computing can't possibly be understated either- the Apollo program is directly responsible for the dominance of the American tech industry. It revolutionized both hardware and software.
Let's not forget it also helped lay down the ground works for gps systems, ultimately it was a amazing feat for humanity, also the drill thing I did not know about and honestly that's very cool
I believe that this is my favorite of all of the videos from the Whistlerverse. It is such a well done deep dive that had me at the edge of my seat the whole time.
That was amazing Simon and Company. I was in high school when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I never thought that I would live to see it happen again. I'm happy to say that it looks as though I was wrong. I heard it on the radio at school the first time. Maybe I'll get to see it this time, on a computer that couldn't even be dreamed of then!
“That’s one small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind.” According to Armstrong, he said, “…a man”, but the radio transmission dropped out for a split second. Either way, it’s still a powerful quote.
My first thought after reading your comment was “that sounds more down to earth”. Then i had to laugh at myself because of my accidental pun In all honesty though, “a man” vs “man” just sounds more natural. More like the way a pilot would say it, as opposed to an announcer
Indeed there was some research some years back, looking at the audio that was recorded that concluded this is what he did indeed say. I forget the detail but I seem to remember there are some tell tale audio signatures in the next word that indicates what his vocal folds were doing in the previous moment that corroborates this .
I grew up with the space race, which means I grew up with real-life heroes: no nonsense guys, competent, discreet, and definitely not in for the money. So my idea of a role-model was defined by this era, and very different from today. Not to mention all the thousands of behind-the-scene brilliant and dedicated people who made it happen (cause, you know, it DID happen).
@@borissmolic6505Says the moronic troll that says “Ur were fooled sorry.” What incredible grammar and spelling. You are clearly working with a fully-functioning brain…🙄🤦🏻
Without a doubt one of your best videos yet. I was a little girl in the Apollo years & was too young to really understand. I do however remember watching in first grade the first landing and later missions. Thanks for an excellent lesson on where we were and where we are going. I thought future missions were still dreams. Obviously I need to read up as I can’t imagine being an inquiry mind of the 60’s & 70’s and not being interested
1:25 - Chapter 1 - A space race comeback 2:45 - Mid roll ads 3:55 - Back to the video 9:35 - Chapter 2 - To perform the impossible 17:15 - Chapter 3 - The spacecraft, the astronauts 25:40 - Chapter 4 - The missions 40:45 - Chapter 5 - Ending apollo 47:35 - Chapter 6 - Return to the moon
One _massive_ regret in my life is that I never got to see a shuttle launch in person... I know I can go see Artemis II launch, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the shuttles.
Get you. We went on a family holiday to Florida and me n mum wanted to go Kennedy and Dad n bro wanted to go to Bush Gardens - they won the toss. Gutted. I will see a rocket launch though so maybe see ya there chief 👍🤙😎
NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration You said "National Aeronautics and Space Agency" Otherwise, a great presentation ! ! ! I enjoy listening to and watching your presentations on here.
My dad worked at NASA from Apollo 8 through the Challenger accident. Back when it was free we visited NASA's visitor center about once every other month. Dad once told me that the command capsule "computer" was barely more sophisticated than a bunch of magnets on a string. I think if you could see what technology they had to work with your toes would curl.
i think it's a great shame that humans kinda take for granted what other humans do, i mean i have no real idea how to get a spaceship up into orbit and go through a square just a few feet wide so it will continue to the moon, and hit another square just a few feet wide in order to orbit. i just know some other poor sucker did all the work. but in taking all this stuff for granted we've spent the last 50 years sitting on our hands rather than getting out there. "we could if we wanted" when really it's a case of "we really need to".
@@HarryNicNicholasProblem with the private sector. A lot of things just appear on the market without explaining due to trade secrets and such. Nevermind everything can be weaponized after some imagination.
I appreciate that you guys didn't stop at 11 or 13 and went all the way to the end of the program. While not as exciting as the other two, they're important parts of the space program and most of the time they get no attention at all.
In 1972, when I was 6, my mum sat me on her knee and pointed to our Black and white TV. Those men there, pointing to the suited Astronauts, are on the moon. She pointed outside and upwards. From that day forwards I've been fascinated by space flight, and the moon.
Wonderfully produced documentary that packed more audio & visual information into it's running time than any comparable offering I've seen; and I've seen the majority of them. Well done sir! Mark Simon USN, 1981-1989
Dear Editor(s), Could we nix the TV edit please; across all of Simon's channels? Not only is it annoying, but it's harder to hear and understand what Simon is saying during it. It's a neat idea, but fails in execution
My granddad trained the Apollo crew on low oxygen breathing and some orbital mechanics as he was a test pilot for the blackbird and basically wrote the book on it, col. Robie Hackworth
While Apollo 13 was happening, it seemed like the world forgot about almost everything else that was going on. It really did feel like the whole world was holding its breath, in fear for the astronauts.
In a way, I feel like it was similar during that recent sub disaster. I swear it’s all I heard about for days. I felt so sad when I realized they were almost certainly dead. The passengers did not deserve their fate.
The fact that 60 years later, landing people on the moon is still a monumental challenge shows just how breath-takingly incredible an achievement the Apollo landings were.
Or it shows that our grandparents never went to begin with. Especially only having a tiny fraction of the technology we now have. Face it, no one has gone beyond 400 miles up since the early 70's. Many countries have been working so hard to send someone beyond low earth orbit, but it isn't happening. Going 240,000 miles up and 240,000 miles back in the 60's is just too ridiculous.
@@tmo4330 Ah a “moon landings were fake” person. If the six manned landings and two lunar orbits HAD been faked do you honestly think that the thousands of people involved in just launching the rockets would’ve all stayed quiet? If you think that is actually true then you are incredibly naive. You can take your conspiracy theories elsewhere because I don’t care to listen. We DID land on the moon. It was a monumental challenge that remains so, but it not impossible and wasn’t impossible for the technology of the 60’s.
Whew! Great post Simon!!!! I lived through this period. Was fascinated by it SO greatly! On a more personal note, my dad was involved on the 2nd stage rocket engines. I knew a man that was an engineer at Redstone, Alabama working on the 1st stage rocket. Back to dad.........the company he started was founded on 20 July, 1969. We all watched this event of Neal Armstrong place his foot on the Moon in our humble home in Detroit.
Simon and team! Huge congratulations on a superb summary! You have collectively covered the essential and important aspects of a decade long endeavour! This should be essential viewing in schools worldwide to understand what is possible by scientific and engineering applications!
Very well done again, Mr. Whistler! The biggest thing that came through for me from what you outlined in this episode of Megaprojects is the fact that nations collaborating on the Artemis program will draw mankind closer together,taking it another step towards world peace--our destiny here on Planet Earth.
Growing up 7 miles from LBJ Space center in the 60s and 70s I got to see several Astronauts, Meet Charles Duke (capcom of Apollo 11 ) and got to see so much cool equipment (Lunar lander, Saturn V mock ups F! and other engines) Now you can go to Space Center Houston (right next to LBJ) and see those plus the Shuttle transfer 747 with a mock up on it, A Falcon 9 booster, tour mission control Houston etc. It was very cool for a space nerd.
Great job. If you decide to take on the Shuttle, think about the question of how re-usable it was. How many engines were built, how many flown, how many flights per? Similarly for the external boosters. I suspect the airframes were the only part that really was fully reused at any thing like the promise.
Vietnam wasn't a war though. It was the Vietnam Conflict. The US was there on a peacekeeping mission too. Vietnam was only retroactively declared a war by a cowardly Congress decades after it has concluded.
@@1pcfred lol don’t try to justify some stupid war we should have been involved with in the first place. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Israel. All excuses for the military industrial complex to keep going.
@@Tyler_Owen23 if all we ever did was just sit back and not exert our influence globally then we wouldn't be a superpower either. You do want us to be a superpower, don't you? Or would you rather someone else called the shots? Because that's the choice. Either we're top dog or someone else is. Personally I'm glad it's us.
34:25 As Aldrin was coming out, he said he was “making sure not to lock it on my way out.” Armstrong laughed & then responded “Particularly good thought.”😂
To be honest, I hear agency so much that I imagine when carrying out the quite clearly extensive research for a video this long, the person writing the script probably didn't think anything of it. They may have had absolutely zero doubt that they knew what NASA stood for (wrongly). It's such general knowledge, unlike 99% of this video, that they simply didn't check. As I bet they didn't check to see who were the first and second men on the moon, etc.
Hello, thought I'd break the ice as no-one else wants to. Thankyou for all you did. I'm old enough to appreciate those that planted acorns. Being as I was in nappies in 1969 I'm looking forward to seeing the oak tree grow before my demise 💜🇦🇺
When you click the profile, you can see some other comments he left. I have a hard time believing Buzz Aldrin called someone else a "Typical beta liberal..." while claiming affirmative action was institutionalized racism... While he may or may not share those ideas, 'typical beta liberal' does not sound like something a 94 yo would say...
Watched the launch on the causeway to Cape Kennedy with my grandparents when I was 9. Then about 4 days later watched them walk on the Moon. And to think that the phone I'm writing this has 10+ times more computing power than the LEM. Cheers from Tennessee
For a little alternative perspective: Your phone has more "computing power." But NOT more I/O channels. They could hang hundreds of terminals off of some of those old mainframes.
“Now we know you know what he said..” -I thought you were going to take this opportunity to educate people that the famous quote we all “know” is incorrect! He actually said “..one small step for A man..”
I remember the first moon landing so well, I was 4, nearly 5 years old, my farther got me up early and we watched it live on TV, later we sat outside looking up at the moon knowing that two men, while we where sitting there, where walking on the moon, this my most favourite memory I have off time with my farther.
No matter what we do or where we go, the early NASA days will forever be pure magic. These spacecraft were designed & built without any computers. Your cell phone has many times the computing powers of anything that the Apollo spacecraft had. I remember these days. America was clean & strong & stood for everything that was good. These astronauts were my boyhood heroes. ❤️ 🫡 🇺🇸
They were absolutely designed and built with computers. Apollo basically sustained the microchip market in those days. And if you think America was "clean and strong and stood for everything that was good" back then you clearly aren't a woman or a minority
Loved the video but you showed the delta heavy launch vehicle instead of the Artemis 1's SLS rocket.. Missed opportunity there, it was a great launch video. Brightest in history!
Along with millions, I watched the first landing and the following as they "premiered' on television. When the second mission was being televised, my wife didn't understand why I was so eager to watch it. She said, "They've already done that, it's like a rerun." 🙃
Was it still legal to backhand your wife back then? 😂 But seriously, that anecdote does illustrate how the immense cost of the Apollo program simply couldn’t continue to be justified because of (among other things) a lack of public interest.
Just imagine how awesome and terrifying it is to have your name synonymous with the first moon landing for the rest of our history. The name Armstrong will live on until humanity‘s death, and will carry-on past our demise.
Worth mentioning the Luna 2 mission that was in September 1959 that was the first spacecraft to reach the reach the moon and the Luna 9 mission in January and early February 1966 that was the first spacecraft that achieved a survivable landing on the moon and took the first photo from another space body. Also Luna 17 was the first mission with a space rover on the moon.
True, but this is a video about the Apollo MANNED space program to the Moon. Russian/Soviet achievements/firsts in space are well known. This wasn't one of them.
I've heard it twice in two different videos now, not sure if it's a script error or recitation error but "unrequited success" is not a phrase. You're looking for "unqualified success".
Its absolutely nuts that they were able to go from Point Zero to putting a guy on the moon and then bringing him back in 8 years. If I would have been alive when they first explained how they were going to detach and reattach these lunar vehicles in outer space I would have said these guys are lunatics
The crazy part is that the program originally called for 3 launch pads and options for a 4th and 5th. Nova was even on the cards, nearly doubling the amount of thrust at launch.
@@michaelgallagher3640 What type of telescope might that be? I'm assuming that it cannot be Earth based, since the atmosphere severely limits the resolution.
@@johnpearcey Correct. The only pictures I know of are from the orbiters. Which is not to lend any credence to the deniers, of course. They're morons. But countering a falsehood with another falsehood doesn't help anyone.
We shouldn't give the deniers the time of day. Most of them have a weird belief that if something didn't happen within their lifetime or they didn't see it with their own eyes, then it didn't happen. For them, all of human history prior to their birth is suspect because they didn't see it. It must be a very disturbing way to live.
You should do an episode on India's Space Program next! It's definitely belongs in the ranks of Megaprojects especially given how they were able to do it with a budget smaller than even those of NASA.
Oh totally, I'm excited for when the time comes for India to be apart of the international space station. There's a lot of potential there and it's evoking a childlike sense of wonder in me that I haven't felt since I visited the Everett museum of flight in Washington state back in 2019 Edit: spelling correction
I was eight years old and my family was on a road trip to Disneyland. We were in my family's little travel trailer watching the moon walk on a ~15 inch black and white TV. I'm still such a space nerd. I have watched The Right Stuff many times. Hidden Figures. Apollo 13. Countless documentaries on this subject. And here I am listening to Simon recount the details anyway.
I grew up in the 60's and loved space and nasa and was oblivious to the politics of the time. At least until that sad day in november when the entire nation cried over a murder of the president brought reality home to this 8 year old. Now we live in a time where negativity is the safe path for so many and accomplishing anything important is an uphill battle. It's hard to face our deaths and many try to live like they have forever until you're too old to make much of a difference for future generations.
I've been priveledged to examine some of the thin sections made of lunar regolith returned by Apollo 17 and it's fascinating because of how immediately alien the appearance of the slides are. As geologists, it's pretty rare to see a slide that just blows your mind, geologic processes are the same everywhere on Earth, but that doesn't hold up when you see ancient LHB era soils created exclusively by impacts over billions of years. Very beautiful and extremely unusual.
Cool! Can you explain some of these differences, in ways which would be understandable to people with high school geology knowledge? I mean, I know Moon rock minerals are totally lacking in water, the rocks' surfaces are covered with microscopic craters, and they're soaked in solar radiation. I also understand that the Moon's lower gravity affected the formation of the rocks, but I don't understand how. Thanks!
The US will never achieve the level of leadership it had in space through the 90's as the largest share of the Federal budget now goes to social programs and other "entitlements"
sort of on this subject, it'd be interesting to see your take on the series "for all mankind" and the mega projects that they put into motion during that series, the series basically explores the decades following apollo 11 if the russians landed on the moon just before apollo 11 launched and how that would further spark the space race.
Why use a bad AI generated thumbnail of an “Apollo” astronaut when there’s literally hundreds of HD images of that identical shot available royalty free from nasa of the real thing??
@@HarryNicNicholas No, I’m a diehard Italian gluten lover. Although my bastard of an immune system didn’t get the memo somehow, so I’m counting down the seconds till the new celiac drugs hit the market 🙏
Here I got this from NASA web, the answer to your question is in bold: “COMMERCIAL USE For use of NASA images in books, *clearances may be necessary* for images that include any NASA logos or *NASA employees to be used as cover art* or in promotional content. Otherwise, NASA imagery can be generally used editorially within published works that are not promotional in nature”
@@tonamg53 From www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/ News outlets, schools, and text-book authors *may use NASA content without needing explicit permission*, subject to compliance with these guidelines. NASA content *used in a factual manner that does not imply endorsement may be used without needing explicit permission*. NASA should be acknowledged as the source of the material.” NASA is publicly funded by tax dollars and as a result, all media they release is completely copyright free and free to use even for commercial purposes by anyone. You are even allowed to sell nasa images and media if you wanted to.
I visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum a few years ago and saw replica pieces of the lunar landing module and I think some collected resources of the Moon and parts of Saturn V but I'm not entirely sure. I distinctly remember the lunar module though. It is big.
Not counting the first deaths, considering it was a test and on the ground, I’m shocked there wasn’t ever an accident with loss of life in launch, space, or re-entry until Challenger. It’s honestly astounding. We made it all those missions and then got too cocky and lost Challenger. NASA got lucky with those first flights to orbit and the moon.
I'm surprised nobody was ever killed or seriously injured in any of the spacecraft recoveries on the ocean. If you look at the videos, some of them were pretty hairy. This includes Mercury & Gemini as well as Apollo, and not meaning just the astronauts, but the Navy divers. It's the one part of the old space missions where I look at the video and say to myself, "there had to be a better way of doing that", such as sending a launch out from the carriers to pick up the astronauts instead of helicopters.
@@RRaquello There were a couple near misses- Grissom, obviously, but also a diver who was knocked out by the swinging lift cage and had to be rescued by an astronaut (McDivitt if memory serves) since nobody else noticed. At least by the Skylab era they were lifting the entire capsule onto the ship before unloading the astronauts.
@@cptjeff1 The Apollo 9 recovery was a real mess. The rafts overturned, everyone got dunked, and one of the guys was dragged under the water after getting hooked up. I think they all took notice after that and were more on their game, but the whole helicopter thing was a disaster waiting to happen and they were lucky it never did.
@@RRaquello Per McDivitt's telling, the root cause was the carrier CO insisting on flying the mission himself, pushing aside the guys who had actually trained for it. McDivitt cast it as for ego reasons, more generously interpreted as him thinking the astronauts deserved the prestige of the highest ranking guy available flying the flight. CO apparently got pretty well reamed out for that one by navy brass.
The excerpt from this speech really picks a weird spot to start. "We choose to go to the moon and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard." "and do the other things? what other things??? Isn't this speech about going to the moon? What else is there???" Yes, if you listen to the whole speech, or if you do what I did and look up the transcript, the part before that is "But why, some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may as well ask ;why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon!..." With that context, "and do the other things" is referencing those other challenges - Everest, long distance flying, and a sports thing that Wikipedia notes seems to have gotten substantially more difficult since the speech (before the speech it was a pretty even rivalry, afterwards, Rice has only beaten Texas twice)....but for someone who generally just hears the excerpt, it's kinda baffling. And everyone picks this point to excerpt. Unless you actually go looking for the full speech, you could easily assume that was the start of the speech, not the end of it. Which makes "and do the other things" confusingly ominous. "We choose to go to the moon and a couple other things that we're not telling you about, just because we want to challenge ourselves."
Apollo is still the pinnacle, and it happened over 50 years ago. The Saturn V was one of the only launch vehicles to work every time, to never lose a vehicle, and they built it in less than eight years. They landed on the moon six times, in a vehicle with less computing power than a phone. Now what do we have? A government that won't fund their space agency so they can artificially create room for corporations to be involved, a space agency that can't afford to build and launch more than one rocket per year, and a corporation led by an idiot who got the contract for the first landing through obvious corruption and promises to deliver an oversized and impractical lander based on an unfinished rocket that has yet to complete a flight without blowing itself to bits. Artemis is exciting, but it's a Frankenstein's monster of a program, cobbled together from bits of Apollo and Shuttle and Constellation, with gaps filled in by private enterprise that, honestly, should not exist. America is a country with more empty houses than homeless people, and they can't figure out how to square that circle (I guess it doesn't involve enough magic bootstraps), but yet also has people who are rich enough to own their own space programs. Of this class of richer-than-god people, the most obnoxious of the lot managed to secure the contract for his company to provide the first lander, despite his proposal being impractical vapourware, because the person in charge of awarding the contract was making preparations to leave NASA and join his company. NASA are apparently already preparing Michoud to store completed SLS stages that they won't be able to use until SpaceX can get their vehicle working, which is very encouraging.
@@thomashiggins9320 I remain entirely unconvinced that Starship is ever going to be man-rated, let alone adapted into a lander. "No launch escape system" is an issue the powers that be shouldn't stand for. If they _do_ stand for it, they learned nothing from the Challenger and the deaths of seven people. The current Starship models that are flying for the tests are not vehicles. They are fuselages with enough tech inside them to fly under their own power, but they have no seats, no controls, no life-support, no payload bay, nothing. It's an oversized remote control toy. They have to actually finish it first. Then they have to convert it into both a tanker, and the HLS. Then they have to carry out a bare minimum of eight launches (not including getting the fuel transfer satellite into orbit), possibly as many as 16, just to get one HLS to the moon, and all of those launches have to go exactly right or the entire mission fails. I call that incredibly inefficient. Artemis needs half an Apollo program to carry out one mission? They then have to land a tall vehicle with a narrow footprint in loose, uneven ground. Like, it took SpaceX a good few attempts to land their rockets on Earth, on smooth, sturdier landing platforms without them toppling over. Now they have to do it hundreds of miles away on the lunar surface? Yeah, that's going to be interesting. Of course, we can't really make estimates based on the physical qualities of Starship HLS at the moment, because it doesn't have physical qualities. It's a CGI render. It's supposed to put humans on the moon in two years' time and it does not exist outside of a computer screen. Or... maybe they should use a conventional lander to get the people down there and drop building materials off with automated vehicles that don't need to worry about staying upright. Just a thought. Starship believers should have a look at the Hyperloop, or the number of Tesla fires and recalls, or the N64 graphics truck with no crumplezones, or Twitter, and consider whether they're being taken for a ride by a snake oil salesman with delusions of adequacy, who never would've been part of Artemis without plainly obvious corruption.
It's a misnomer that Apollo didn't use private contractors. 500K people worked on it and only a tiny fraction were employed by NASA. Pretty much every project in its history has been a mess of pork barrel contracts to help congressmen tout jobs come re-election time.
Another great video. EXCEPT for the "Simon In Space" audio. Truly painful. No, literally, using headphones it physically hurt my ears and I had to take them off until it passed. Please, never use that again.
The greatest engineering achievement in human history thus far. The Apollo Program was extraordinary. And the more you learn about it, the more impressive it is. Awe-inspiring.
It’s truly cute that so many people actually believe in the given narrative of the Apollo mission. Especially people who will concede how regularly the United States government lies about things.🤷🏻♂️
The USA couldn't lie about Apollo, because they knew the Soviets were watching. The Soviets tracked the missions, they had NASA and contractor staff passing them information, and they were exploring the same environment. In addition, NASA's Apollo moon rocks have been studied by thousands of scientists from around the world over the last 50 years.
It's truly cute that so many people actually believe in the given narrative of conspiracy theory. Especially people who will concede how regularly these grifters lie about things. 🤷♂
@@donniccolo "is it your belief that the United States government has never lied about anything?" So, are you saying that because they lied about something else, they also lied about Apollo?
@@maxfan1591 No! I'm saying they lied about Apollo and that's why they lied about Apollo lol (the plethora of other things they have lied about are irrelevant)
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Neil's words where " one small step for A man, one giant leap for mankind ". radio interference cut the "A" out.
How did you not wear Speedmaster for this vid?
Thanks Simon and team - my favourite of all your content these ❤
Brian Cox said he’d like to send Boris Johnson into space - that wasn’t to get rid of him - he thought it was a good investment - that if all leaders saw what they were in charge of nurturing and protecting it would give an immersive feeling of individual responsibility to the planet and themselves. And it would empower their judgement; so they could understand as elected leaders that their true calling was to protect and serve ALL AND EVERYTHING on this wonderful planet and to agree that through cooperation, compassion, compromise and most importantly comprehension we are stronger together - that we need to work together to embrace our differences and combine these to make the strengths that we need to progress. It would be money well spent. Send them all he said and then put them in a room.
Why did you talk so much crap on this channel?
You skipped the secret space spies to spy on?
You avoid the truth mate
Hello, Simon,
Do you realize that you, yourself have a direct part in this achievement? By doing a detailed episode 55 years later, you continue knowledge of this history and awareness of the Lunar Landing. If it weren't for people like you, would young people would even know the details of the Apollo Program? They're certainly not going to learn about it on Tictok or X.
Gen Z and even most Millenialls have NO exposure to this part of history and hence no care to even learn about it.
It was daytime on a school day here in Oz. My mother could not get a guarantee from our elementary school that we would be able to view Apollo 11's landing, on the one tiny B&W TV the school possessed - so my mother kept my sister and me home for the day, to ensure we got to watch the telecast.
As the landing TV feed was sent first to Australian radio telescopes, it meant the moon was visible when I walked outside after watching the broadcast of the landing. I looked up at the moon in awe and wonder, thinking "gosh, there are two men walking around on that Moon, right now" It was a life-shaping moment, for sure.
Apparently I was sitting in a pram on the streets of Perth while my mother and grandmother watched the landing on a plethora of black and white televisions in a department store window with hundreds of others. My grandfather passed the month before and never got to see it.
5 years later in 1974 I watched a total solar eclipse on a black and white monitor in my classroom in Western Australia. Well, it was a black and white television. A big one. I don't know how they did it but even our teachers thought that us watching it on a screen would send us blind. Outside it was midnight at midday. They fussed over us like hens fussing over their chics...
it was july.
@arnoldzyphill3167 yes it was. Winter in Australia
@@gailforce what was i replying to /
@arnoldzyphill3167 He said he was at school, you said it was July, and OP pointed out that yes, it was winter in Austrailia, ergo, they were in school.
When listing the side-benefits, you missed arguably the two most significant ... the giant leap in materials science, and the hyper acceleration of semiconductor development ... bringing to us the very medium by which we watch your videos.
Yeah...but then they would have to brief the not so overly burdened by knowledge past stare-poke-stare-selfie smart device operating and not suffering from any back pains whilst doing it, and honestly it would worry myself if responsible about the larger than willing to admit number nom nomming Crayola getting magpied by a new shiny. 😅
@@Nipplator99999999999 make not sense not much no
You're also forgetting the rocks, with which the theory of a gigantic object collided with the earth, thus forming the moon, water molecules in which we have realized it's more common than we thought, and a lot of other discoveries that came decades after because we didn't have the technology to actually detect more complicated stuff.
I don't think Alan Turing "invented" (keyword, please) the computer only to realize his mathematical theorems would be used 70 years later to binge tiktok.
Edit: Typo
and Velcro
@@captiannemo1587 Tang
Despite having moved to Houston, I somehow haven't been to Johnson Space Center. My BIL took my niece and nephew there for the Artemis splashdown. That being said, seeing a rocket launched at Cape Canaveral when I was 11 is still the most awe-inspiring thing I've ever experienced. We were at the observation tower, and a couple seconds after the boosters kicked on, the sound wave rattled the tower and almost knocked me to my feet.
I'll never forget that. We showed up and didn't know why half the space center was closed until we overheard a few people talking about a rocket launch. My dad and I BEGGED my mom to stay long enough for that and I'm so glad we did. If anyone ever has a chance to witness something like that, I highly recommend it. That was 25 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
Similar way I got to see a shuttle go up. The unbelievable level of sound was incredible.
People that haven’t been to a launch have no idea how incredibly loud they are. I had a conspiracy guy tell me that there were Apollo missions after Apollo 17 but (get this) they launched them at night so nobody was around to see them launch. He didn’t realize people live all around the space center. The problem with the vast majority of conspiracies is they require the listener to turn their brain off.
Night launches are also easier to observe because of the tremendous amounts of light generated...
You really should get to JSC. Seeing the Saturn V in person is kind of humbling.
BIL equals brother in law? Nice😊
Can we just appreciate the fact that even though the Soviets and Americans were in the middle of a cold war and directly competing to get to the moon first, they still left a memorial for the Soviet cosmonauts that came before them.
That was USA that had a race, not russia. Russia was the first in space. Later USA changed the race to who is first on the moon. There was never a race between them. Only USA was saying that.
Nah, that's hard historical revisionism from Tankies who are still mad about it. The USSR blew up several large rockets trying to beat Apollo to the moon. @@ProgNoizesB
@@louisvaught2495 including the peoples communist Republic of China and their failure of the Chang Zheng 3B (or Long March 3B in English)satellite rocket lauch after the USSR in the late 90's
Edit: while doing a quick fact check I found out the descendant of the Chang Zheng 3B, the Chang Zheng 3B/E was launched in 2007 with the 3C to follow it. As of last year the Chang Zheng 3B, 3B/E, 3C, and 3B/G5 have conducted 89 successful launches and 2 full failures and 2 partial failures, accumulating a success rate of around 95.7% according to Wikipedia. That is just insane what a come back for a tragic rocket
Also plainly difficult has a video covering the Chang Zheng 3B launch failure if you're interested that's what got me interested in the first place :)
@@ProgNoizesBhahaha no. Please open and read a history book. There were debates about whose kitchen was superior, and you think this wasn't a race? Overall, it was more a relay race of who could outdo the other to prove the superior world power which clearly worked out for the Soviets. 🤦♀️
@@ProgNoizesB If this was true then why did the Russians continue to take part in the space race trying to be the first ones on the moon? This is like saying there was never a World War and only britain seen it that way.
They quite literally took part and ackowledging it was a space race... Publically... They were the first to send a man made object to space, they were the first to spend a human to space and were the first to send a human around the moon.
Russia was quite literally competing and winning. it wasn't until the US put a man on the moon did Russia see defeat.
I vividly remember being a young boy watching the moon landing and Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon on my family's black and white television. The Apollo clips still take my breath away 50+ years later.
I remember that as well.
1:19 a space race comeback
3:56 end of sponsorship
9:30 to perform the impossible
17:09 the spacecraft the astronauts
25:34 the missions
40:39 ending Apollo
47:30 return to the moon
The real hero.
Thank you!
Merci
Omg thank you
"Because they are hard" stuck with me as a kiddo. I loved taking the more difficult path for the challenge itself, not the destination.
It's almost like having a strong national leader is a good thing.
When’s the last time any politician spoke like that to the American people. Now they bribe their low-IQ, low-information voter base with free stuff
I have known people that took that statement the wrong way. They used it to bring hardship to others, saying only things that cause pain are worth doing. I have worked for than one manager that believed if their employees were happy, they weren't being productive. I will always remember one had that statement, in cross stitch, in their office. Whenever someone complained about the conditions, he would point to the sign and tell them to suck it up.
The point president Kennedy was trying to make is that goals requiring extreme effort bring about innovation and growth. As with anything else, context is important.
@@wowplayer160the CIA didn’t think he was a strong leader lol
That’s what she said….
Buzz Aldrin is much more noted for work on rendezvous rather than EVA. He was called "Dr. Rendezvous" because that was the subject of his doctoral dissertation at MIT.
Well said Sir.
Yes, and ironically it was Buzz that switched on the ‘Rendezvous Radar’ (not on checklist), while the computer was taking guidance control from the ‘landing radar’. As I understand it, this is what caused the 1201 and 1202 alarms. The computer was being overloaded with data from both radar systems. So, Dr Rendezvous was a little paranoid about getting back to the ‘Columbia’ Command Module. 👨🚀
@@bipolarbear9917- assuming that this is the real case why he did it, I won’t be surprised, specially since their landing was the first attempt ever… I would be as paranoid as him, if not more…
He literally wrote the book on orbital mechanics. He’s an incredibly smart man.
@@cotati76 Johannes Kepler wrote that book in the 17th century. Now the issue of how you bring two orbits together, that's different!
Was looking for something educational to watch with my kids tonight, thank you Simon.
lol, like this was never shown on youtube ever before xD
@@ProgNoizesB not that anything on the subject wasn’t shown before, more I was looking for an educational video at the time and the algorithm as well as one of Simon’s channels delivered.
My grandpa worked on the design of the lunar module and helped during Apollo 13, I love this type of content
My grandpa worked at Hydraulic Research and built the servoactuators that controlled the thrust vectoring for the Saturn V
My hubby’s grandma didn’t work on the Apollo program- but she became an astronomer and later an astrophysicist during the Gemini and Apollo programs.
Later went on to found infrared astronomy and worked on the Spitzer telescope (Dr. Judith Pipher if you want to look her up). I was so proud and awed to get to know her and would listen for hours about her work and what it was like to grow up and be an astronomer- especially a woman astronomer- during that time. Space is so damned amazing.
The Apollo Program was truly a colossal endeavor. It took more than 400,000 people + 20,000 industrial firms and universities.
I don't know anyone who worked on Apollo, but it's extremely cool that some of you do. Interesting history to have in your family.
A worthy claim to fame 😎
LOL at the incredibly confused mice. Also my favorite Apollo contribution to lay out for this stuff is the cordless drill. Apollo's contributions to modern computing can't possibly be understated either- the Apollo program is directly responsible for the dominance of the American tech industry. It revolutionized both hardware and software.
Let's not forget it also helped lay down the ground works for gps systems, ultimately it was a amazing feat for humanity, also the drill thing I did not know about and honestly that's very cool
I believe that this is my favorite of all of the videos from the Whistlerverse. It is such a well done deep dive that had me at the edge of my seat the whole time.
I agree, one of the best, and most accurate they have done so far
Agreed! Congrats fact Boy!
@@hanschristianben505 unfortunately quite a few inaccuracies.
That was amazing Simon and Company.
I was in high school when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I never thought that I would live to see it happen again. I'm happy to say that it looks as though I was wrong. I heard it on the radio at school the first time. Maybe I'll get to see it this time, on a computer that couldn't even be dreamed of then!
“That’s one small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind.” According to Armstrong, he said, “…a man”, but the radio transmission dropped out for a split second. Either way, it’s still a powerful quote.
My first thought after reading your comment was “that sounds more down to earth”. Then i had to laugh at myself because of my accidental pun
In all honesty though, “a man” vs “man” just sounds more natural. More like the way a pilot would say it, as opposed to an announcer
Indeed there was some research some years back, looking at the audio that was recorded that concluded this is what he did indeed say. I forget the detail but I seem to remember there are some tell tale audio signatures in the next word that indicates what his vocal folds were doing in the previous moment that corroborates this .
@@jonnyhifiI have a vague recollection of this also
His brother was on a documentary and told it this way. It's been a couple years but it's out there somewhere.
I think it's even better. What a coincidence! 'You couldn't make it up.' 😊
I grew up with the space race, which means I grew up with real-life heroes: no nonsense guys, competent, discreet, and definitely not in for the money. So my idea of a role-model was defined by this era, and very different from today. Not to mention all the thousands of behind-the-scene brilliant and dedicated people who made it happen (cause, you know, it DID happen).
Same here
Ur were fooled sorry
Moon landing was FAKED
@@borissmolic6505Says the moronic troll that says “Ur were fooled sorry.” What incredible grammar and spelling. You are clearly working with a fully-functioning brain…🙄🤦🏻
@@borissmolic6505Your fooled to thinking you can control anything. Whatever 'control' you think you have, you don't.
Without a doubt one of your best videos yet. I was a little girl in the Apollo years & was too young to really understand. I do however remember watching in first grade the first landing and later missions. Thanks for an excellent lesson on where we were and where we are going. I thought future missions were still dreams. Obviously I need to read up as I can’t imagine being an inquiry mind of the 60’s & 70’s and not being interested
1:25 - Chapter 1 - A space race comeback
2:45 - Mid roll ads
3:55 - Back to the video
9:35 - Chapter 2 - To perform the impossible
17:15 - Chapter 3 - The spacecraft, the astronauts
25:40 - Chapter 4 - The missions
40:45 - Chapter 5 - Ending apollo
47:35 - Chapter 6 - Return to the moon
One _massive_ regret in my life is that I never got to see a shuttle launch in person... I know I can go see Artemis II launch, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the shuttles.
Get you. We went on a family holiday to Florida and me n mum wanted to go Kennedy and Dad n bro wanted to go to Bush Gardens - they won the toss. Gutted. I will see a rocket launch though so maybe see ya there chief 👍🤙😎
I did But it was the Wrong One,Challenger,god rest their brave souls!
@@graemebell8391 RIP 🤝
I feel the exact same way
Space planes are definitively cooler than rockets!
(even if the shuttles were little more than re-entry gliders)
I have loved Simon's videos for months but this is the best video he has ever done. WOW. Just Dreaming of the moon
NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
You said "National Aeronautics and Space Agency" Otherwise, a great presentation ! ! !
I enjoy listening to and watching your presentations on here.
Amy Shira Teitel's "Breaking the Chains of Gravity" is an excellent piece on the creation of NASA.
My dad worked at NASA from Apollo 8 through the Challenger accident. Back when it was free we visited NASA's visitor center about once every other month. Dad once told me that the command capsule "computer" was barely more sophisticated than a bunch of magnets on a string. I think if you could see what technology they had to work with your toes would curl.
We have all the tech today but can't go 400 miles up.
@@tmo4330 it's not a matter of tech, dummy. Going to the moon is expensive and NASA decided it would rather put robots on Mars and explore Pluto.
This was and still is one of the most important things to ever happen in human history, and JKF’s famous speech sums up what humanity can achieve
i think it's a great shame that humans kinda take for granted what other humans do, i mean i have no real idea how to get a spaceship up into orbit and go through a square just a few feet wide so it will continue to the moon, and hit another square just a few feet wide in order to orbit. i just know some other poor sucker did all the work. but in taking all this stuff for granted we've spent the last 50 years sitting on our hands rather than getting out there. "we could if we wanted" when really it's a case of "we really need to".
@@HarryNicNicholasProblem with the private sector. A lot of things just appear on the market without explaining due to trade secrets and such. Nevermind everything can be weaponized after some imagination.
@@wowplayer160Well of course. No one wants to invest millions or even billions into R&D, without getting that money back.
I appreciate that you guys didn't stop at 11 or 13 and went all the way to the end of the program. While not as exciting as the other two, they're important parts of the space program and most of the time they get no attention at all.
I think the last Apollo landings were much more interesting.
In 1972, when I was 6, my mum sat me on her knee and pointed to our Black and white TV. Those men there, pointing to the suited Astronauts, are on the moon. She pointed outside and upwards. From that day forwards I've been fascinated by space flight, and the moon.
Did she tell you that was America displaying its industrial and intellectual strength like no other country could?
I still remember the Apollo 11 lift-off, and then a few years later I got to see the Apollo 16 lift-off from the causeway.
Wonderfully produced documentary that packed more audio & visual information into it's running time than any comparable offering I've seen; and I've seen the majority of them.
Well done sir!
Mark Simon
USN, 1981-1989
Thank you for your service.
Scott Davidson
USN 1988-1992
Dear Editor(s),
Could we nix the TV edit please; across all of Simon's channels? Not only is it annoying, but it's harder to hear and understand what Simon is saying during it.
It's a neat idea, but fails in execution
I think everyone watching these videos will agree with you.
@@deividweiss I disagree. The only thing annoying is all of you crybabies.
Yes^
If people want things done a certain way, they should make their own videos.
"Given a task to do, and the will to do it, mankind can accomplish almost anything."
-Jim Lovell
My granddad trained the Apollo crew on low oxygen breathing and some orbital mechanics as he was a test pilot for the blackbird and basically wrote the book on it, col. Robie Hackworth
props to the writer(s)...props to the editor(s).. and ,Yes, props to the Narrator.
...you ....just rock...
While Apollo 13 was happening, it seemed like the world forgot about almost everything else that was going on. It really did feel like the whole world was holding its breath, in fear for the astronauts.
Exactly! oh what a distraction it was
In a way, I feel like it was similar during that recent sub disaster. I swear it’s all I heard about for days. I felt so sad when I realized they were almost certainly dead. The passengers did not deserve their fate.
A whole hour of Simon let’s gooo
A brilliant deep dive Simon and Co. Great video. Cheers
The fact that 60 years later, landing people on the moon is still a monumental challenge shows just how breath-takingly incredible an achievement the Apollo landings were.
Or it shows that our grandparents never went to begin with. Especially only having a tiny fraction of the technology we now have. Face it, no one has gone beyond 400 miles up since the early 70's. Many countries have been working so hard to send someone beyond low earth orbit, but it isn't happening. Going 240,000 miles up and 240,000 miles back in the 60's is just too ridiculous.
@@tmo4330 Ah a “moon landings were fake” person.
If the six manned landings and two lunar orbits HAD been faked do you honestly think that the thousands of people involved in just launching the rockets would’ve all stayed quiet? If you think that is actually true then you are incredibly naive.
You can take your conspiracy theories elsewhere because I don’t care to listen. We DID land on the moon. It was a monumental challenge that remains so, but it not impossible and wasn’t impossible for the technology of the 60’s.
Whew! Great post Simon!!!! I lived through this period. Was fascinated by it SO greatly! On a more personal note, my dad was involved on the 2nd stage rocket engines. I knew a man that was an engineer at Redstone, Alabama working on the 1st stage rocket. Back to dad.........the company he started was founded on 20 July, 1969. We all watched this event of Neal Armstrong place his foot on the Moon in our humble home in Detroit.
Who is Neal Armstrong? 😉
Simon and team! Huge congratulations on a superb summary! You have collectively covered the essential and important aspects of a decade long endeavour! This should be essential viewing in schools worldwide to understand what is possible by scientific and engineering applications!
Very well done again, Mr. Whistler! The biggest thing that came through for me from what you outlined in this episode of Megaprojects is the fact that nations collaborating on the Artemis program will draw mankind closer together,taking it another step towards world peace--our destiny here on Planet Earth.
Growing up 7 miles from LBJ Space center in the 60s and 70s I got to see several Astronauts, Meet Charles Duke (capcom of Apollo 11 )
and got to see so much cool equipment (Lunar lander, Saturn V mock ups F! and other engines)
Now you can go to Space Center Houston (right next to LBJ) and see those plus the Shuttle transfer 747 with a mock up on it, A Falcon 9 booster, tour mission control Houston etc.
It was very cool for a space nerd.
Great job. If you decide to take on the Shuttle, think about the question of how re-usable it was. How many engines were built, how many flown, how many flights per? Similarly for the external boosters. I suspect the airframes were the only part that really was fully reused at any thing like the promise.
Yup, they were pretty much completely rebuilt after every mission. There’s a good reason they had more than one, but only launched one at a time.
Excellent video, Simon and team. Thanks!
Really like the deep dive format! Well done!
Apollo 16 and 17 r truly masterpieces of exploration by humanity
Love a deep dive now and again. Some topics just need a much longer look. Thanks team.
With regard to the "excessive cost", the entire Apollo program cost about the same as one year of the Vietnam war.....
We just spent nearly 900 billion on our military this year… we will spend more next year and more the year after that..
@@Tyler_Owen23It would be cheaper today if we had listened to General Curtis LeMay when we had two hundred and those commies only had one.
Vietnam wasn't a war though. It was the Vietnam Conflict. The US was there on a peacekeeping mission too. Vietnam was only retroactively declared a war by a cowardly Congress decades after it has concluded.
@@1pcfred lol don’t try to justify some stupid war we should have been involved with in the first place. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Israel. All excuses for the military industrial complex to keep going.
@@Tyler_Owen23 if all we ever did was just sit back and not exert our influence globally then we wouldn't be a superpower either. You do want us to be a superpower, don't you? Or would you rather someone else called the shots? Because that's the choice. Either we're top dog or someone else is. Personally I'm glad it's us.
34:25 As Aldrin was coming out, he said he was “making sure not to lock it on my way out.” Armstrong laughed & then responded “Particularly good thought.”😂
Simon, the second A in NASA stands for Administration, not Agency.
It's literally the same... if anything nasa fits agency more than administration
How do you get something like that wrong? Makes you wonder what else is wrong in the video.
@grayandgrumpy no, it doesnt... thats a easy mistake especially since it better fits the description of agency than Administration
@@kohanrains776 No, it's not. If you're doing a video about NASA the minimum you can do is to get the name correct.
To be honest, I hear agency so much that I imagine when carrying out the quite clearly extensive research for a video this long, the person writing the script probably didn't think anything of it. They may have had absolutely zero doubt that they knew what NASA stood for (wrongly). It's such general knowledge, unlike 99% of this video, that they simply didn't check. As I bet they didn't check to see who were the first and second men on the moon, etc.
It's an honor to be mentioned here in Megaprojects. Love your videos! Keep up the great work!
Hello, thought I'd break the ice as no-one else wants to. Thankyou for all you did. I'm old enough to appreciate those that planted acorns. Being as I was in nappies in 1969 I'm looking forward to seeing the oak tree grow before my demise 💜🇦🇺
wow, I can't believe I'm reading something written by THE Buzz Aldrin, thanks for posting, that made my day 🙂 !!!
Even Heroes tune in to Megaprojects/Whistlerverse. Thanks Buzz!
Much respect and admiration sir!
When you click the profile, you can see some other comments he left. I have a hard time believing Buzz Aldrin called someone else a "Typical beta liberal..." while claiming affirmative action was institutionalized racism...
While he may or may not share those ideas, 'typical beta liberal' does not sound like something a 94 yo would say...
Love your stuff. I've been watching your channel for years now. I hope you keep it up!!!! Merry christmas and a happy new year to you!!!!
Watched the launch on the causeway to Cape Kennedy with my grandparents when I was 9. Then about 4 days later watched them walk on the Moon. And to think that the phone I'm writing this has 10+ times more computing power than the LEM. Cheers from Tennessee
For a little alternative perspective: Your phone has more "computing power." But NOT more I/O channels. They could hang hundreds of terminals off of some of those old mainframes.
@@ThatBoomerDude56 People confuse "early" tech with "simple." Engineers are still marveling at both the LEM and Saturn guidance computers.
Thanks!
Simon, how could you forget to mention the great invention of Velcro from the program?
Easy considering the role it played in the Apollo 1 fire.
Velcro was invented long before Apollo was planned.
@@1pcfredThat's what I thought.
The best video you've ever done Simon. I can't count the amount of times I've watched it. Very well done.
“Now we know you know what he said..” -I thought you were going to take this opportunity to educate people that the famous quote we all “know” is incorrect! He actually said “..one small step for A man..”
I remember the first moon landing so well, I was 4, nearly 5 years old, my farther got me up early and we watched it live on TV, later we sat outside looking up at the moon knowing that two men, while we where sitting there, where walking on the moon, this my most favourite memory I have off time with my farther.
No matter what we do or where we go, the early NASA days will forever be pure magic. These spacecraft were designed & built without any computers. Your cell phone has many times the computing powers of anything that the Apollo spacecraft had. I remember these days. America was clean & strong & stood for everything that was good. These astronauts were my boyhood heroes. ❤️ 🫡 🇺🇸
They were absolutely designed and built with computers. Apollo basically sustained the microchip market in those days. And if you think America was "clean and strong and stood for everything that was good" back then you clearly aren't a woman or a minority
Loved the video but you showed the delta heavy launch vehicle instead of the Artemis 1's SLS rocket.. Missed opportunity there, it was a great launch video. Brightest in history!
Along with millions, I watched the first landing and the following as they "premiered' on television.
When the second mission was being televised, my wife didn't understand why I was so eager to watch it. She said, "They've already done that, it's like a rerun." 🙃
Was it still legal to backhand your wife back then? 😂
But seriously, that anecdote does illustrate how the immense cost of the Apollo program simply couldn’t continue to be justified because of (among other things) a lack of public interest.
Just imagine how awesome and terrifying it is to have your name synonymous with the first moon landing for the rest of our history. The name Armstrong will live on until humanity‘s death, and will carry-on past our demise.
Thank you. Men walking on the moon is mankind's single greatest scientific achievement.
How have i not heard of this channel? I was wishing that his other channel did long form content when all I had to do was stumble upon this channel😂
Worth mentioning the Luna 2 mission that was in September 1959 that was the first spacecraft to reach the reach the moon and the Luna 9 mission in January and early February 1966 that was the first spacecraft that achieved a survivable landing on the moon and took the first photo from another space body. Also Luna 17 was the first mission with a space rover on the moon.
True, but this is a video about the Apollo MANNED space program to the Moon. Russian/Soviet achievements/firsts in space are well known. This wasn't one of them.
The astronauts going up on artemis II are SO awesome. their interview on colbert was HILARIOUS. lol i'm rooting so hard for them.
One wonders if we'd continued after Apollo. Where could humanity have gone to in the last 50 years, had we kept going?
Fascinating and I can’t wait for an invite to play table tennis up there. Yes I do play table tennis already.
I've heard it twice in two different videos now, not sure if it's a script error or recitation error but "unrequited success" is not a phrase. You're looking for "unqualified success".
Its absolutely nuts that they were able to go from Point Zero to putting a guy on the moon and then bringing him back in 8 years. If I would have been alive when they first explained how they were going to detach and reattach these lunar vehicles in outer space I would have said these guys are lunatics
One of the reasons I watch Simon is because of his voice. PLEASE STOP FUCKING WITH IT.
The crazy part is that the program originally called for 3 launch pads and options for a 4th and 5th. Nova was even on the cards, nearly doubling the amount of thrust at launch.
I feel bad for the people that don't have the ability to understand complicated topics and don't believe we've been to the moon.
You can see the stuff they left behind with the right telescope.
@@michaelgallagher3640 What type of telescope might that be? I'm assuming that it cannot be Earth based, since the atmosphere severely limits the resolution.
@@johnpearcey Correct. The only pictures I know of are from the orbiters.
Which is not to lend any credence to the deniers, of course. They're morons. But countering a falsehood with another falsehood doesn't help anyone.
We shouldn't give the deniers the time of day. Most of them have a weird belief that if something didn't happen within their lifetime or they didn't see it with their own eyes, then it didn't happen. For them, all of human history prior to their birth is suspect because they didn't see it. It must be a very disturbing way to live.
@@littleshopofelectrons4014 I totally agree. I think it's a mental illness of some kind.
Really surprised this didnt end up on Astrographis. Great content as always from The Great Whistler!
44:43 250billion seems a bargain compared to HS2.
Excellent. You do this stuff so well.
46:05 thank you nasa for the insulin pump added years to my life
You should do an episode on India's Space Program next! It's definitely belongs in the ranks of Megaprojects especially given how they were able to do it with a budget smaller than even those of NASA.
TOTALLY!
Oh totally, I'm excited for when the time comes for India to be apart of the international space station. There's a lot of potential there and it's evoking a childlike sense of wonder in me that I haven't felt since I visited the Everett museum of flight in Washington state back in 2019
Edit: spelling correction
Is this a contender for the longest episode on this channel? Will we soon have 3hr episodes like on Cas Crim?
I was eight years old and my family was on a road trip to Disneyland. We were in my family's little travel trailer watching the moon walk on a ~15 inch black and white TV. I'm still such a space nerd. I have watched The Right Stuff many times. Hidden Figures. Apollo 13. Countless documentaries on this subject. And here I am listening to Simon recount the details anyway.
I grew up in the 60's and loved space and nasa and was oblivious to the politics of the time. At least until that sad day in november when the entire nation cried over a murder of the president brought reality home to this 8 year old. Now we live in a time where negativity is the safe path for so many and accomplishing anything important is an uphill battle. It's hard to face our deaths and many try to live like they have forever until you're too old to make much of a difference for future generations.
I've been priveledged to examine some of the thin sections made of lunar regolith returned by Apollo 17 and it's fascinating because of how immediately alien the appearance of the slides are. As geologists, it's pretty rare to see a slide that just blows your mind, geologic processes are the same everywhere on Earth, but that doesn't hold up when you see ancient LHB era soils created exclusively by impacts over billions of years. Very beautiful and extremely unusual.
Cool! Can you explain some of these differences, in ways which would be understandable to people with high school geology knowledge? I mean, I know Moon rock minerals are totally lacking in water, the rocks' surfaces are covered with microscopic craters, and they're soaked in solar radiation. I also understand that the Moon's lower gravity affected the formation of the rocks, but I don't understand how. Thanks!
Whats crazy that in 1966, NASA recived about 4% of the Federal Spending
The US will never achieve the level of leadership it had in space through the 90's as the largest share of the Federal budget now goes to social programs and other "entitlements"
sort of on this subject, it'd be interesting to see your take on the series "for all mankind" and the mega projects that they put into motion during that series, the series basically explores the decades following apollo 11 if the russians landed on the moon just before apollo 11 launched and how that would further spark the space race.
Why use a bad AI generated thumbnail of an “Apollo” astronaut when there’s literally hundreds of HD images of that identical shot available royalty free from nasa of the real thing??
to annoy people who dislike gluten?
Astronauts aren't even allowed to have beards! Yeah that's a pretty lame AI photo.
@@HarryNicNicholas No, I’m a diehard Italian gluten lover. Although my bastard of an immune system didn’t get the memo somehow, so I’m counting down the seconds till the new celiac drugs hit the market 🙏
Here I got this from NASA web, the answer to your question is in bold:
“COMMERCIAL USE
For use of NASA images in books, *clearances may be necessary* for images that include any NASA logos or *NASA employees to be used as cover art* or in promotional content. Otherwise, NASA imagery can be generally used editorially within published works that are not promotional in nature”
@@tonamg53 From www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/
News outlets, schools, and text-book authors *may use NASA content without needing explicit permission*, subject to compliance with these guidelines. NASA content *used in a factual manner that does not imply endorsement may be used without needing explicit permission*. NASA should be acknowledged as the source of the material.”
NASA is publicly funded by tax dollars and as a result, all media they release is completely copyright free and free to use even for commercial purposes by anyone. You are even allowed to sell nasa images and media if you wanted to.
Awesome episode! Thank you for all your hard work 🎉😊
You know what's worse than a short segment that purposely has unintelligible audio? Several of them, that's what.
I visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum a few years ago and saw replica pieces of the lunar landing module and I think some collected resources of the Moon and parts of Saturn V but I'm not entirely sure. I distinctly remember the lunar module though. It is big.
The LM isn't a replica, it's a real one that was used for ground testing. Everything the Smithsonian has is real equipment.
Not counting the first deaths, considering it was a test and on the ground, I’m shocked there wasn’t ever an accident with loss of life in launch, space, or re-entry until Challenger. It’s honestly astounding. We made it all those missions and then got too cocky and lost Challenger. NASA got lucky with those first flights to orbit and the moon.
Well, US accident. The Russians had two, both in re-entry, in 1967 and 1971. And there were quite a few very close calls.
I'm surprised nobody was ever killed or seriously injured in any of the spacecraft recoveries on the ocean. If you look at the videos, some of them were pretty hairy. This includes Mercury & Gemini as well as Apollo, and not meaning just the astronauts, but the Navy divers. It's the one part of the old space missions where I look at the video and say to myself, "there had to be a better way of doing that", such as sending a launch out from the carriers to pick up the astronauts instead of helicopters.
@@RRaquello There were a couple near misses- Grissom, obviously, but also a diver who was knocked out by the swinging lift cage and had to be rescued by an astronaut (McDivitt if memory serves) since nobody else noticed. At least by the Skylab era they were lifting the entire capsule onto the ship before unloading the astronauts.
@@cptjeff1 The Apollo 9 recovery was a real mess. The rafts overturned, everyone got dunked, and one of the guys was dragged under the water after getting hooked up. I think they all took notice after that and were more on their game, but the whole helicopter thing was a disaster waiting to happen and they were lucky it never did.
@@RRaquello Per McDivitt's telling, the root cause was the carrier CO insisting on flying the mission himself, pushing aside the guys who had actually trained for it. McDivitt cast it as for ego reasons, more generously interpreted as him thinking the astronauts deserved the prestige of the highest ranking guy available flying the flight. CO apparently got pretty well reamed out for that one by navy brass.
The excerpt from this speech really picks a weird spot to start.
"We choose to go to the moon and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard."
"and do the other things? what other things??? Isn't this speech about going to the moon? What else is there???"
Yes, if you listen to the whole speech, or if you do what I did and look up the transcript, the part before that is "But why, some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may as well ask ;why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon!..." With that context, "and do the other things" is referencing those other challenges - Everest, long distance flying, and a sports thing that Wikipedia notes seems to have gotten substantially more difficult since the speech (before the speech it was a pretty even rivalry, afterwards, Rice has only beaten Texas twice)....but for someone who generally just hears the excerpt, it's kinda baffling.
And everyone picks this point to excerpt. Unless you actually go looking for the full speech, you could easily assume that was the start of the speech, not the end of it. Which makes "and do the other things" confusingly ominous. "We choose to go to the moon and a couple other things that we're not telling you about, just because we want to challenge ourselves."
Apollo is still the pinnacle, and it happened over 50 years ago. The Saturn V was one of the only launch vehicles to work every time, to never lose a vehicle, and they built it in less than eight years. They landed on the moon six times, in a vehicle with less computing power than a phone.
Now what do we have? A government that won't fund their space agency so they can artificially create room for corporations to be involved, a space agency that can't afford to build and launch more than one rocket per year, and a corporation led by an idiot who got the contract for the first landing through obvious corruption and promises to deliver an oversized and impractical lander based on an unfinished rocket that has yet to complete a flight without blowing itself to bits.
Artemis is exciting, but it's a Frankenstein's monster of a program, cobbled together from bits of Apollo and Shuttle and Constellation, with gaps filled in by private enterprise that, honestly, should not exist. America is a country with more empty houses than homeless people, and they can't figure out how to square that circle (I guess it doesn't involve enough magic bootstraps), but yet also has people who are rich enough to own their own space programs. Of this class of richer-than-god people, the most obnoxious of the lot managed to secure the contract for his company to provide the first lander, despite his proposal being impractical vapourware, because the person in charge of awarding the contract was making preparations to leave NASA and join his company.
NASA are apparently already preparing Michoud to store completed SLS stages that they won't be able to use until SpaceX can get their vehicle working, which is very encouraging.
Once we land on the Moon, again, and the Starship lander starts to drop tons of equipment for a permanent settlement, what will you think then?
@@thomashiggins9320 I remain entirely unconvinced that Starship is ever going to be man-rated, let alone adapted into a lander. "No launch escape system" is an issue the powers that be shouldn't stand for. If they _do_ stand for it, they learned nothing from the Challenger and the deaths of seven people.
The current Starship models that are flying for the tests are not vehicles. They are fuselages with enough tech inside them to fly under their own power, but they have no seats, no controls, no life-support, no payload bay, nothing. It's an oversized remote control toy. They have to actually finish it first. Then they have to convert it into both a tanker, and the HLS. Then they have to carry out a bare minimum of eight launches (not including getting the fuel transfer satellite into orbit), possibly as many as 16, just to get one HLS to the moon, and all of those launches have to go exactly right or the entire mission fails.
I call that incredibly inefficient. Artemis needs half an Apollo program to carry out one mission?
They then have to land a tall vehicle with a narrow footprint in loose, uneven ground. Like, it took SpaceX a good few attempts to land their rockets on Earth, on smooth, sturdier landing platforms without them toppling over. Now they have to do it hundreds of miles away on the lunar surface? Yeah, that's going to be interesting. Of course, we can't really make estimates based on the physical qualities of Starship HLS at the moment, because it doesn't have physical qualities. It's a CGI render. It's supposed to put humans on the moon in two years' time and it does not exist outside of a computer screen.
Or... maybe they should use a conventional lander to get the people down there and drop building materials off with automated vehicles that don't need to worry about staying upright. Just a thought.
Starship believers should have a look at the Hyperloop, or the number of Tesla fires and recalls, or the N64 graphics truck with no crumplezones, or Twitter, and consider whether they're being taken for a ride by a snake oil salesman with delusions of adequacy, who never would've been part of Artemis without plainly obvious corruption.
Quite disapointing how we 'evolved' indeed..
It's a misnomer that Apollo didn't use private contractors. 500K people worked on it and only a tiny fraction were employed by NASA. Pretty much every project in its history has been a mess of pork barrel contracts to help congressmen tout jobs come re-election time.
I really enjoyed the longer format video on this occasion
Love how the only people in these comments are smart science people, no conspiracy nuts
I “love” your “optimism”. 😂
they have all been deleted
[armstrong]: _"I'm going out to set foot on the Moon. Hold all my calls!"_
[aldrin]: "Even if the President calls??"
Another great video. EXCEPT for the "Simon In Space" audio. Truly painful. No, literally, using headphones it physically hurt my ears and I had to take them off until it passed. Please, never use that again.
Agreed, this is actively hostile to the listeners.
The greatest engineering achievement in human history thus far. The Apollo Program was extraordinary. And the more you learn about it, the more impressive it is. Awe-inspiring.
Could we please stop using the old school TV audio effect? It is very distracting. Love everything else about the whistler-verse!
Best video of the channel.
It’s truly cute that so many people actually believe in the given narrative of the Apollo mission. Especially people who will concede how regularly the United States government lies about things.🤷🏻♂️
The USA couldn't lie about Apollo, because they knew the Soviets were watching. The Soviets tracked the missions, they had NASA and contractor staff passing them information, and they were exploring the same environment. In addition, NASA's Apollo moon rocks have been studied by thousands of scientists from around the world over the last 50 years.
It's truly cute that so many people actually believe in the given narrative of conspiracy theory. Especially people who will concede how regularly these grifters lie about things. 🤷♂
@@yassassin6425 peacefully, is it your belief that the United States government has never lied about anything?
@@donniccolo "is it your belief that the United States government has never lied about anything?"
So, are you saying that because they lied about something else, they also lied about Apollo?
@@maxfan1591 No! I'm saying they lied about Apollo and that's why they lied about Apollo lol (the plethora of other things they have lied about are irrelevant)
Just as I get caught up, they send out this majestic video
CAN YOU STOP WITH THE DAMN STATIC RADIO SOUND I CAN MAKE OUT F ALL WHAT IS BEING SAID. ITS SUPER ANNOYING.
This one made me cry. I hope future peoples succeed where we stumbled.