Why Did the Apollo Landers Look So Odd?
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2024
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The Apollo lunar lander or LEM was one of the strangest looking spacecraft ever built but it was designed to get a job done that had never been done before. Some say that it was a fake and too flimsy to withstand the rigours of space flight and get men to the moon and back again and yet it did that very job six times with without fail. This is the story of why the Apollo landers looked like they did and why they became an Icon of the space race.
Written researched and presented by Paul Shillito
Images and footage : Grumman Airfcraft Corp, NASA
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Excellent video! I love how you ended it. One of our Marine Corps fighter/attack aircraft squadron's mottos was "Can Do Easy".👍
can you do a video on how - the 1969 apollo crew, are three inmates who 'disappeared' from alcatraz prison in june of 1962. Clarence and john anglin and frank morris. they had to hide the 1963 plasma reactor tech ripple tech (taught at MIT in 2021) so apollo was a propaganda program.
How did they sleep inside the LEM?
Best ad Volkswagen ever had for the Beetle…”It’s ugly, but it gets you there.” Caption was underneath a picture of the LEM.
"It's ugly, but it gets you there, and if it gets you back, so much the better."
It’s ugly,it’s cheap…
Lemon.
Yes, I remember that same ad! I see some say it was a lemon but they were easily repairable. I knew many VW owners that also had the book "VW Repair Manual for the Complete Idiot."
My favorite VW Beetle 'ad' featured a Bug floating in water. The caption read _"Had Teddy Kennedy driven a Volkswagon, he'd be President today. It floats!"_
A political-satire and very unofficial 'ad' featured in National Lampoon years ago.
It's incredible to think that the LM only exists because one guy pushed really hard for Lunar Orbit Rendezvous when all of his superiors thought it was a stupid idea. If it wasn't for his persistence, we might never have landed on the Moon at all.
And that is also why the Apollo service module was ridiculously over powered - it was designed to launch back to Earth from the surface of the Moon. It never flew with a full fuel load.
Yeah, looking back at it, knowing all the facts, it is such a genius idea.
But for the people at the time, it must have been a lunatic idea. The people have been grown up with propeller aircraft and cigar rockets. And them takjng off in one piece.
But it was a genius move, not taking to the moon the heavy re-entering heat shield and not taking to the moon the heavy aerodynamic main capsule was ultimately logic. We needed to revision our own point of view. On the moon no friction and 1/6 gravity.
The lunar lander, and two part mothership+lander idea was genious. I can't even fathom what kind of futura it must have been for people who saw the portable tape player as futuristic (the apollo astronauts carried with them the first walkman precursors).
And it is a testament to the genious of those engineers, that I would, with lots of people far smarter than me, still, in 2024 take the apollo+saturnV system to the moon today (as long as the oxygen tank stirrers were checked).
And of course it is still the only piece of tech to take people to another astronomical body. And that is no small step, nor an easy choosing.
@@allangibson8494Interesting, I never knew that.
EVEN MORE INCREDIBLE, IS THAT SOME PEOPLE STILL BELEIVE IN THE MOON LANDING.
lunar orbit rendezvous added a lot of complexity and smaller problems that had never been solved before. but it also removed one great big problem, which was how to build and launch a rocket even bigger than the Saturn 5
HBO’s late 90s miniseries “from the Earth to the moon” episode five “spider“ is all about this. Those of you who have never seen this mini series - It is totally worth your time. It’s amazing…. my kids and I watch it once a year.
That episode is one of my two favorites. The other is the geology episode.
I can second this. Watch the series if you haven't already.
@@colormedubious4747 I like spider and 1968. Wife likes the geology episode the best.
That scene with the steel washer.... genius filmmaking right there.
I really enjoy "Spider" and "Is that all there is?" (The one with Pete Conrad, Al Bean and Dick Gordon on Apollo 12.) The only ones I'm not fond of are "We have cleared the tower" and "We interrupt this program". Don't care for those as much.
One documetary said the idea of standing was in answer to making smaller windows. The large windows just weren't working out but astronauts were like, "Yeah but we got to SEE where we're going." Then someone realized if you stand up real close to a small window, you have just as good a field of view as sitting back from a large window.
True. And as a bonus they got rid of the weight of the seats.
@@joevignolor4u949 And made more space available for donning suits, and on later missions, sleeping in hammocks.
"Whoopie man, that may have been a small one for Neil but it was a long one for me"
You can take the astronaut out of the navy but you can't take the navy out of the astronaut...
Every bit I read about Apollo 12 is hilarious, especially when juxtaposed to Apollo 11 and the weighty nature of everything, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins working together very proper.
The Apollo 12 is like “Me and my navy buddies went to the Moon!”
Which is also why DSKY had to waste calculation cycles to convert Apollo's native metric into idiot. Not just so that even fifty years later murricans could still bleat the ole "durr, two types of countries" joke, but because they were all Navy folks (with very few exceptions) who wouldn't know what a meter was if they had to throw coins in it for parking.
@@Anvilshock Cry more 😢
@@Anvilshock Let's see, you wrote this on Wednesday. Maybe from now on, let's make Wednesday your "not dumb day" so you don't make posts like that, what do you say there, chief?
I met Charles Conrad and he signed a comic for me that he helped do of the Apollo 12 mission.
The landers don't 'Look So Odd', they look so 'Form Follows Function'.
Just like a Volvo car used too.
Agree. Dan Gelbart says "If something is 100% functional, it's 100% beautiful." I give you: the LEM.
This is what prototypes and other gadgets look like of they arent intended for consumers
Skinless Lunar lander is kind of terrifying...
basically what the Soviet proposal was.
@@throwback19841 I agree, did you have a higher point
HR Geiger could have done better at designing a lunar lander to look more “organic”.
@@throwback19841I've seen a Soviet lander at a London Science Museum exhibition. First time they'd ever been exhibited anywhere in the world, and quite possibly the last given current politics.
Oh no,
I thought I knew a little about the LEM. I didn't know how little I knew.
you are trash pete
It doesn't occur to conspiracy theorists that the Mylar and Kapton blankets on the LM actually indicate that the landings were NOT faked. If they had been, special effects artists would have designed something that looked cool, and more like what a layperson would expect. They wouldn't have built ugly little bugs designed purely to function in a near-vacuum.
One of many points I've raised with deniers...if the landings were fake, why would they have faked something that looked like *that*?
I still await a logical answer as to how a camera was placed to where it showed Neil coming down a ladder... as from this video you can clearly see the angle of the video could not have come from the alleged " attached to lander leg " scenario...
The view does not match up any where close...
@@evelghostrider That's all been explained a million times. You might as well try arguing that water isn't wet.
@@evelghostrider Iirc, the camera used to film Armstrong on the ladder was nowhere near the leg. It was in a compartment called the Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly, the side panel between the front and right legs. The whole panel would fold out before the moon walk. This would then have the camera facing towards the ladder, giving us the iconic “one small step” footage.
@@evelghostrider
*_"I still await a logical answer as to how a camera was placed to where it showed Neil coming down a ladder."_*
This gives the impression that the question is either difficult to determine from NASA mission data, or that you've found it gives Apollo proponents a problem when attempting to answer it.
Of course, it may also indicate you really don't have a clue how to use your computer.
The answer you seek is in LEM schematics, the flight plan, the mission timeline, the transcripts, the post-flight, and hundreds of sites talking about comms and AV technology developed by Westinghouse and used on Apollo.
Nobody ever said the camera was attached to a lander leg. Engineers attached the camera upside down in a flap door in the MESA which tilted at an 11-degree angle at the door's fully open position. This was corrected in the signal processing on Earth, but to reprocess the signal for worldwide transmission to horizontal scanline formats there was a huge loss of quality.
An engineer at Honeysuckle Creek filmed the first adjusted and processed TV transmission before it was reconverted for transmission to Houston via Sydney. Ed von Renouard's 8 mm film was thus far higher quality than anyone saw on a TV.
_You're welcome._
It wasn't just odd looking. It was practically covered in tinfoil for skin. No need for a real skin in space except for controlling radiant heat buildup. Even blown up fine dust can damage the skin but it still held up and did it's job and that's all that counts.
Are you serious? Reflective Mylar was a brand new material in 1969, ‘tinfoil’ was replaced by aluminum foil decades ago, and wasn’t used on any part of this. Did you even watch the video? “No need for skin in space …” seriously?? Ever heard of solar radiation, (gamma rays, x-rays, etc.) or micrometeorites? “Radiant heat buildup”? C’mon man, did you hear him say that the sunny side reached 300 F while anything in shadow could drop to 274 below zero F? It also had to withstand depressurization so they could open the hatch, then re-pressurized so they could take their spacesuits off … that’s about 115 psi above absolute vacuum if I remember right … that’s about 3 times what you have to put in your car tires above average barometric pressure in order to inflate them. I think you’re practicing physics without a license, Hoss … the LEM’s outer skin was quite complex as described in the video … maybe you should watch it again… meanwhile, you can explore the Challenger Deep in your sand-rail dune buggy if you want, but I would strongly advise against it.
No atmosphere meant no wind to blow the tinfoil off, try landing the LM in earth the friction and drag would tear it apart
And the amazing Kapton tape.
Well it does have a pressure vessel... but not much more beyond that!
i've never considered it odd looking, it looked how it needed to look for what it was... but then i was never big into scifi so i never thought it needed to look like anything from the movies. Then you have Musk who wants his ship to be pointier because that's what's important right? 😆
11:01 I do the same thing with my toaster over the sink to get all the burned crumbs out. I give it a little shake as well.
I've never seen this done before, it was great to see footage of the LM toaster shaker.
There should be a slide out tray on the bottom of your toaster. Unless you like shaking the toaster. I totally feel ya on that.
I do the same with my tent before packing it
Wish I could do that with my car.
And now you know, each time you do that your toaster becomes vacuum-rated.
First time learning that Hexcel, known for their core material in composites, made the single use shock absorbers for the lander. Thanks for the video!
They were famed for their skis. Back in the 70s, I never fell off of a finer pair of skis than Hexcel's.
@@colormedubious4747 My ski coach kept ripping the bindings out of his Hexcel's.
@@jonmoceriGuessing they were drilled out wrong.
@@jonmoceri That's odd. Mine seemed to have a hair trigger. That "might" be because I was a TERRIBLE skier. 🤣
The LEM is a beautiful craft. Thank you for posting these amazing archived videos!! Those engineers & technicians created magic with slide rules & drafting tables.
A very proud moment in 2nd grade for me when the Teacher brought the TV in for us to watch the crew of Apollo 17 walk and drive around on the Moon. I told everyone that my Dad had worked on the LEM and the Teacher backed me up. Everyone elses Dad had boring jobs like Firemen and Lawer and such. Good times
one of the rare Moments when "Firefighter" is in the "boring job" categorie :D
it was hollywood set
My Uncle Cliffy was the head nightwatchman for United Technologies for their Apollo stuff. We got to watch 11 landing with him, he was so proud.
@@billwendell6886 how fake
@@hassyg4083 No.
I have always found it quite beautiful. No frills, just functional but also very iconic.
My uncle worked on the LM at Grumman. He would give me cut-offs of extra length of wire and other scraps generated during its manufacturing. I understand that the same engineer that helped design the landing gear of Grumman's F4F Wildcat also designed the LM's landing gear too.
I wonder if your Uncle knew my Dad.
Or maybe he knew my Dad and his identical twin brother both at Grumman then (in shipping).
I wonder if you still have any of those scraps, and if so, what are they worth these days? 👾
I went to see the LM on display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island. The Uber driver who took me from the museum back to the train station was a moon landing denier and flat earther. I let him know that I know the earth is not flat due to the completely different stars I saw, with my own eyes, when I visited New Zealand. The web of lies needed to convince an engineer like me would be impossible. It would take engineers a standard deviation smarter than me. There were not enough people like that at the time. In addition, engineers are poor liars.
Them: if I can’t understand it, it can’t be real.
Engineer: if I can’t understand it, I need to sit down, develop a design, build it, test it and refine it until it’s real.
Ask any of them to describe, at a technical level, how their mobile phone transmits invisible data. How does it get there? Magic? Sounds like a conspiracy. Oh wait, 5G…
@@c1ph3rpunk worse, there some Idiots that are so hard in denial, they go to lenghts to move the Goalposts, even spend thousands of dollars for hightech equipment to prove them wrong ... which ofc. don't work as they want because well, earth isn't flat
Hi mcarleton . No fooling you my friend.
Liars have to remember every detail of a lie, that's too much effort for us Engineers.
We're only poor liars because we don't waste brain space on remembering shit when we have so much awesome truths & facts that we want to remember.
FBI trip up liars by getting them to repeat chain of events backwards, harder to do if lying.
Stupidity isnt a medical condition.You cant put brains into statues
all that material and procedure testing is such an underrated achievement of Apollo.
there's a beauty to having to _really simulate_ for testing
It’s amazing that the original Furbee had more computing power than the Lunar Landers. Those original astronauts really had their asses in both hands.
Imagine, today with all of our technology we still can’t replicate what we accomplished in the late sixties early seventies, what we lack is the WILL!!!
We could replicate that old technology, easily. We have working examples of much of it.
But it's much cheaper to use an unmanned spacecraft, with a rover. We've done that.
The public dropped its support for NASA after it got bored with the lunar missions; politics is everything.
We are also lacking in courage and fortitude. People today are too afraid to try and fail, when it is best to try and fail then not to even try at all. Neil Armstrong went to moon with a bomb strapped to his ass as did all the Apollo astronauts. They new the risks were extremely high, but they did it anyways. People today just do not have what it takes to go far beyond ones capabilities and try to achieve something great. They all did, why can't we? The only way to fight fear is to face it.
We can replicate what they did. Sure, it would take a bit of R&D to spin things back up (all the old production lines are long since shut down and the facilities and equipment repurposed/dismantled), but the tech is still there. Now, we would certainly do it much differently than they did it then. For example, the F-1 engines that powered the Saturn V were all exquisitely hand built machining and engineering marvels. Oh and they're all at least a little unique because they made changes in the field during production and they were hand made. What we have now is an iterated version of that engine, called the F-1B. It's simpler (so should be more reliable), more powerful, cheaper (adjusted for inflation), and easier to build (thanks to 3D printing) than the original. Going back is really just a matter of budget. We don't have any pressing desire to have another manned moon mission, so we don't allocate enough budget to do it like they did. So we're reliant on technological progress to bring costs down and make it practical again. We'll be back, but this time, thanks to improved technology, it will be much more sustainable because the costs will be more reasonable.
Well what would be the purpose in going back to the Moon be? Remember this was a space race during the Cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States
@@desertodavid I’m sure the European government’s centuries ago could have rationalized the same argument - “Why bother exploring the unknown world?” Advancing as a society involves curiosity, exploration, & discovery.
The detail about how worn the inside looked really blew me away. Made me realise how tried and tested those modules were.
And I'm glad they didn't "retouch them" I know from sub misadventures that repainting/tidying up has incredible potential to introduce a defect.
14:58 Destin from smarter everyday got a whole room full of nasa managers laughing when he showed the left picture within the context of keep it simple with redundancy.
I grew up about 1-2 miles away from Grumman, so a lot of the men in the archival footage seen here were probably the fathers of my classmates.
Nearby, there used to be a little motel called the Astro Motor Inn. I found out years later that it got its name for being the place where the astronauts would stay when they came up to Long Island to visit Grumman for training and such.
Had I known at the time, those poor astronauts would have frequently seen some goofy little kid camped outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of her heroes.
❤👨🚀❤👩🚀❤👨🚀❤👩🚀❤
I lived in Hicksville from 1965 until 1968. My dad worked on LEM drawings in Grumman's design office.
@@AlbanyBrickThat's so cool! I lived in Hicksville, too!
My friend's dad worked on the LEM's legs.
Aerodynamics mean nothing in the vacuum of space. Weight is everything. Period.
Mass not weight
@@tomdumb6937 weight is 90 important cuz than mass, the more mass the more weight. Lifting weight from earth to space is not easy
@@tomdumb6937 pedant
@@nonamecieso9506Sssh, sit down, you don't know what you're talking about.
Mass is correct not weight. Weight is mass x acceleration due to gravity.
Weight of 1kg mass on Earth is 1kgf.
In space 0kgf but still 1kg mass.
On the moon 1/6kgf but still 1kg mass.
As an Aerospace Engineer, I find the LM beautiful!
😂 its a pile of junk. Are you serious?
@@JackDawfIt's precision engineered to do what it needs to do with no excess weight.
@@JackDawf Your thought processes are a hopeless mish mash of incoherence.
@owensmith7530 I recently did an Engineering talk about the LM. It was ahead of its time and used cutting edge tech. Fly by wire controls, doppller radar, throttleable descent engine, (for the time) an incredible computer that never crashed, space based sublimation radiative cooling, to name a few.
Remarkable engineering marvel. I tip my hat to the designers and the builders.
@@aemrt5745 Actually the computer sort of crashed several times during the Apollo 11 landing, that was what the 1201 and 1202 program alarms were about. It was overloaded because the rendezvous radar was left on when it shouldn't have been. But it was designed to robustly recover and reboot and retain important information to continue the landing. It depends how you define the word "crash" whether these were crashes or controlled reboots.
"You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like "
I had Hexel "aluminum honeycomb" skis back in the late 70's.
Even to this day, the LEM is the only true manned spacecraft - i.e. one that is exclusively intended for travel and operation in space.
Unlike the shuttle or dragon or....i would argue the lem was the only object intended to leave earth and land on a planetary body and safely return the occupants to earth...jfk said as much
@@paulgerrard9227 The LEM never returned from the Moon (except for Apollo 13 but even that was jettisoned before reentry). Both the shuttle and dragon come back to Earth and are therefore designed to operate in the atmosphere as well.
It’s maybe stretching the definition of “manned spacecraft” past all previously known limits, but it could be argued that the Manned Maneuvering Unit is also a true manned spacecraft?
@@paulgerrard9227 The LEM never returned any crew to earth, it was incapable of operating in Earth's atmosphere.
Thank you so much for the deep dive on all the hundreds of thousands of procedures that had to be followed to the letter, to ensure that this was not a one-way trip I remember being woken up in the middle of the night to go to my grandmom‘s houseto see the Apollo 11 moon landing, because she had a color TV. It is still one of the highlights of my childhood memories.
The LEM is beautiful and amazing 👏
Ask the crew of Apollo 13...
I love the episode of “From the Earth to the Moon” that covered the design and construction of the Lunar Module. Some humorous moments and covering the debate over Direct Ascent vs Lunar Rendezvous. Great series produced by Tom Hanks among others. 👍🏼
"How much do these windows weigh?"
I'm always (!) amazed how you find not that common footage that even I haven't seen yet. Please keep up this notch work!
One of the best, of many, memoirs about the Apollo program is Thomas J Kelley‘s “Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module”. He was the young, chief engineer at Grumman for the LM. 2 huge lessons are conveyed : the need for testing & being allowed to fail & learn. I highly recommend it if you want a great engineers story!!
This is what I like about your videos. Genuinely interesting stuff and no dumb jokes.
I thought so as a kid back then and still think as an adult now that the Apollo Lunar Module is the most beautiful spacecraft ever built for human spaceflight.
Never thought about the single use shock absorber. Really shows how every aspect needs to be considered lest a mission failure occurs
_Eagle_ landed so gently its shocks did not activate!
"You came in that thing?? You're braver than I thought!" 😉
This line is interestingly familiar. I wonder where from. ;)
*EASIER TO GO TO THE MOON THAN TO FAKE IT*
The logistics of trying to fake all SIX Apollo Moon Landing Missions is so impractical to not even be considered. Even trying to imitate the one sixth gravity of the Moon compared to the Earth's is impractical. And In terms of film footage, the Apollo missions recorded approximately 20 hours of video footage on the lunar surface. And then there's the spectacular 360 deg panoramas taken during Apollo's 15/16 and 17. Just looking at those clearly show that they far surpass what even the best film makers of today can produce with their science fiction movies. Back then in 1969/1972 ? Have a look at the moon visas in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. They're totally unrealistic compared to the real photos and films.
Sadly, the deniers continue to thrive - _'Apollo is fake because it all looks fake and I saw this video confirming it, but the Earth is flat because we have at least 9 different drawings of it!'_
They never debate their own opinions, because the vocabulary of the average Apollo denier is 28 characters...including spaces and punctuation.
@@ginskimpivot753 Exactly.
@@ginskimpivot753 I like to ask them exactly what was fake or when they began to fake it. Did they fake the Gemini missions? Did the Russians fake stuff? Were the robotic landers fake? They generally have no answer, and they don't know all that much about the missions.
It does not look odd! It is just unconventionally beautiful!
Yes, but odd too.
Without having yet watched the video, WHY did the Lunar Modules look the way they did?
BECAUSE THEY OPERATED IN A VACUUM SO THEY DID NOT HAVE TO BE AERODYNAMIC.
Wrong. As the video you are about to see explains, it was because they all got drunk at an office party and drew the plans as a joke. Then, still intoxicated, they accidentally sent it off to the NASA administrators instead of the serious design, but what the heck, it worked anyway!
After the Apollo 11 mission, Volkswagen did a full page advertisement in newspapers across the US saluting the achievement. Volkswagen's standard ad slogan for the Volkswagen beetle at the time was "It's ugly, but it gets you there!" and it was that slogan in large type under a photo of the lunar lander in the advertisement! Brilliant! 😁
That was informative. I had no idea how the shock absorbers functioned on the LEM. THANKS!!!!
It doesn't look odd though. I've never understood the tendency of people to think it looks strange at all. It's a vehicle meant for exploring a rocky body with no atmosphere, so it doesn't need to be aerodynamic, like every other vehicle, flying or otherwise, that most people think of.
It looks exactly like you would expect, with no thought given to form, and ALL thought given to function, as it should. That isn't odd. What would be odd, is if the people who designed the systems, got the weight down and nicely balanced, and then said "Hey, let's let someone with an arts degree draw up plans for an outer shell for this thing". That would be HELLA weird.
The legs look like they're based on a spider's legs; designed for cushioning a landing.
The legs in the video brings into question just how did a camera film Neil down ladder when the angle of the legs does not match up the view we were given... and again in all the models no camera was ever displayed on these detailed models foe sale.
@@evelghostrideroh know models don't include a little tiny box. The whole thing must be fake!!
The one issue with the crush core shock absorbers was that, once stroked, the gear was permanently shortened. If you were coming straight down onto a level surface, that's not a problem, all the struts will stroke about the same. But on Apollo 15, for example, the LM landed with its rear and right (minus Z and plus Y) footpads over a smallish crater that was about 10 meters or so across. The front and left (plus Z and Minus Y) footpads were over level ground, while the right footpad was over an area about a meter within the small crater, with the back footpad about three meters into it. So, the back footpad was maybe 1.5 meters lower than the front, with the right footpad abut .75 meters below the front. The crater's rim ran directly under the engine bell.
On this landing, Dave Scott had killed his sink rate to nearly zero, at about one foot per second (so about 0.3 mps), when the contact light came on. He was very quick at shutting down the descent engine, so that his LM, the heaviest flown to date, was allowed to basically free-fall from the largest height any LM dropped in from, about two meters, resulting in the fastest touchdown speed, about 5.4 feet per second, of any Apollo landing. The touchdown sequence was that the front and left footpads hit first, and their legs stroked as the weight of a hard-ish landing came through them. Then the vehicle tipped back and to the right, as those footpads kept going before hitting the ground. In the meantime, the descent engine bell, which was still expelling gas as part of the shutdown process, slammed into the crater rim, crumpling the bell and risking a descent engine explosion (you can see the soil of the crater rim shooting out at the bottom of the field of view, in the descent film, as the bell hit and burped soil all over). The rear and right pads hit with less force than the front and left pads, as much of the force of the landing had been attenuated by the two footpads and engine bell that already hit. So those stroked less than the other two struts. What was left was a LM resting almost entirely on three legs, with the plus Z (ladder strut) footpad actually sitting off of the ground. When Jim Irwin stepped down from the ladder when first going out onto the surface, the footpad swiveled on him and, had he not had a grip on the ladder, would have caused him to tip over backwards. I believe they got it more stable by pushing dust and some rocks under it, for continued operations. But the whole time they were on the Moon, their LM was tipped back and to the right at about a 20 degree angle.
That is super interesting, thansk!
@@lucaherman6227 Thank you! Yeah, there was a reason why, when the LM touched down hard and then fell back and to the right, again sort of hard, that Irwin's first word after touchdown was "Bam!" It's interesting, that the guy who had the lowest descent rate when he shut down the engine actually had his LM land the hardest. But if you think about it, if you're nearly hovering at two meters and then drop, you have farther to just fall than if you're coming down at about a meter per second and hit the shutdown switch when the contact probes hit, at two meters in height. Because it takes a moment to react. If you're nearly hovering, you don't drop much at all in that moment, and fall from the full two meters. But if you're going a meter a second, you've descended about a meter by the time you hit the switch. So, even though you were coming down faster, you don't shut down thrust until you're closer to the ground, so you don't have time or space to get going as fast.
It seems contradictory, but the accelerometers proved that, if you wait until you touch down to shut the engine off, you land the softest. Armstrong and Shepard both let their LMs settle to the ground before they got their engines turned off, and had the softest landings. While Pete Conrad, on Apollo 12, cut his engine the moment the contact light flashed on, and even though he had a 1 mps sink rate, he still landed second hardest. He even commented, "I shut it down, and we DROPPED, didn't we!?"
I think the LEM looks fantastic, it's authentic and exactly what it needs to be
Soooo authentic and real.
@@eilidh771 Yes. Problem?
Seems like if the whole thing was fake like those weirdos say it is, the LM would have looked like what science fiction and comic books depict. The worse part of the whole conspiracy thing is the attack on the character of all those hard working people that made the Apollo program a success.
Even painting stuff over adds weight. Plus the surfaces were only very lightly painted to begin with. Weight was so important.
This is why the space shuttle's external fuel tank was white only for the first few missions; needless weight.
It's absolutely worth watching Episode 8 of "From the Earth to the Moon" entitled "Spider". It covers the development of the LM rather well.
SO as I have mentioned before my Father worked at Grumman in electrical maintenance during the glory years so he worked all over the different plants in Bethpage NY. It was unique to wear the bunny suits in those days to work in the giant clean room. One time he brought a used up bunny suit home for us to check out. We took the pill hat and attached a plastic army man with fishing line and a couple of weights for an impromptu parachute. It was great to be a kid on Long Island back in the day.
My father was an electrical engineer for Grumman at that time, too. I accompanied him to the observation floor with glass windows above the huge clean room to see them completing the assembly of that LEM. Busy men in white suits and hats moving around the floor was very impressive to this little boy and Dad seemed proud of the work going on below.
@@moregrouchy Me too!! I don't remember it but I do remember the room over the F-14 plant. What a great place to work back then!!
@@74360CUDA Dang! I also got to watch an F14 Tomcat take off at Calverton when they were testing it. And now they are relics of history as time rolls on
After all that cleanliness scrutiny, it just got the interior loaded with lunar dust getting into everything after the astronauts game back in from their lunar surface e.v.a.
This is a good detailed video on the making of the L.E.M. and the design troubleshooting.
727, 747, 737, 737-200, 737-300, 737-400, 737-500
@@williamchamberlain2263
Boeing might have played a roll in manufacturing parts for Apollo
It is great to watch another episode of yours. For some reason, RUclips stops pushing your videos to me until today. It is great to “see” all is well, Paul. Great stuff 👍🏻
There was definitely many things I did not know before
That gimbal to shake things out of the LM is both crazy and sensible 😳
The problem was a lot of crap fell out the first couple of times. So much for the clean room.
An incredible piece of engineering. Absolute Icon.
Definitely worth checking out is the book Moon Lander by Thomas J Kelly. He was an engineer who spent most of his career at Grumman and his career progressed following the design, development, and implementation of the LEM. It’s so detailed and really interesting, and those guys went through hell trying not to fail the Apollo mission timelines whilst trying to produce something special. Highly recommended.
I'll go out on a LEM and say we need to find that old style of doing a job right and stop putting shareholders' profits first!
Great detail about the shock absorbers and the Mylar covering.
Anyone who thinks the LEM looks odd has gotten his idea of "normal" from science fiction.
1950s science fiction often had the lunar landers looking like giant V-2 rockets like this:
faculty.etsu.edu/gardnerr/sputnik/Destination-moon-luna.jpg
"a can do attitude" and 4% of the US national budget....
no need for aerodynamics in space
They had to deal with the Earth's atmosphere for 100,000 Miles or so.
@@desertodavid Dude what? The earth atmosphere does NOT reach almost half way to the moon. And second, it was the Saturn V rocket that was subjected to the earth atmosphere, not the lunar lander.
@@desertodavidtry divide by 1000!
Lunar lander was inside the saturn V rocket for launch.
@@desertodavid Bullshit.
I highly recommend reading Tom Kelly's book, Moon Lander, to get an inside feel for how the design came to be. It was a remarkable time when NASA had true experts working closely, in partnership, with contractor Grumman. There was an incredible degree of trust in that relationship and the Grumman team put their hearts and souls into that fantastic machine.
Excellent coverage of the "Bug"! I especially liked all of the film clips showing so many details.
To me, the most beautiful spaceship ever made (well, Gemini is a serious contender). Both in it's weird look and treasure of engineering.
My dad was an engineer on the LEM. He said the absolute hardest part they encountered was "getting that dam car to fold up in the allotted space" lol I don't know why but I thought that was hilarious.
They had big issues with the folding mechanism and required dimensions and at the same time to keep the rover light and sturdy
It’s always a good day when you get home from work to a Curious Droid video 💪
Who 'didn't' have the lander model or the smaller Saturn V model with the stages, lander and command ship as a kid in the 60's/70's. :)
I had the Airfix Saturn V plus the LM on it's own little diorama
I have an old desk set up to look like my desk when I was about 10 years old. It has a model of the Saturn V and the LM on it.
Heller 1:100 CSM and LM!
The Kapton film was deliberately wrinkled before applying it so as to minimize contact between layers and limit thermal conduction.
I am amazed that all this was already done, but we can't do it again. Without a trip to the moon and back of red tape.
No political will....unless China gets there first, which seems likely.
I always enjoy your videos, but I liked this one even more than the rest for some reason. You mentioned things I didn't even know about, and I thought I knew quite a bit about the lander. Thanks for this video!
There is a mix of DAMPERS and shock absorbers shown. The "1960s shock absorbers" are dampers, as it is the springs absorb the shock. The ones on the lander do seem to absorb the shock by utilising a crumple zone within them, and are as is said are one use shock absorbers.
Nice one. I didn't know that about the shock absorbers. The test footage was something I hadn't seen before.
Another great presentation 😊
My friend, you are so good that you could read out loud a phone book and we'd love it
When you see the LEM and Gemini Capsule at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum you are humbled by the courage and faith in Engineering the astronauts had. They look tremendously poorly built to the uneducated eye.
As a kid here in Australia I vaguely remember the tour of the module & I think Gemini capsule and the thing that really struck me was how small & cramped gemini in particular was, iirc.
SpaceX is the company that as a person growing up with the Apollo missions excites me. Thank goodness for SpaceX.
From the earth to the moon, The spider. GREAT episode.
I never thought they looked odd, given the mission and constraints.
It's miraculous they were able to go from no humans in space to walking on the Moon in less than ten years.
Nothing miraculous about it. Just good old fashion engineering innovation and the collective will to accomplish something that was seemingly impossible at the time.
Then forgot how to do it. Modern missions with 2023 technology can't even land the right way up.
@@MattyEngland We realize that this accomplishment by your fellow man is very difficult for you to accept and comprehend, but yes, the SIX Apollo Moon Missions were a series of astonishing events in Modern History. Never underestimate or call into question what your fellow man is capable of doing, once he sets his mind to do something, in this case, something that is seemingly impossible. All around you are people who are far more intelligent and capable of doing remarkable things, than you and I Just because you have difficultly in understanding how something was accomplished, doesn't mean that it didn't happen no matter how you 'feel' about it.
I learn new things with every video you make, thank you Paul.
This is actually really cool testing footage of the Apollo missions
*A FUNNY THING HAPPENED* WHEN NASA SENT NINE APOLLO MISSIONS OUT TO THE MOON Six of those missions succeeded in getting a two man crew down to the Lunar surface. Those were Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15,16, and 17 Now how about that !
What happened to the intro, this channel has one of the best intro around YT that doesn't sound annoying.
We did this _with a can do attitude that seems sorely lacking these days_
To paraphrase the fictionalised astronauts in "The Right Stuff", it was *funding* that made these birds go up. No bucks, then no Buck Rodgers.
Just more than 20 years before, during ww2, Grumman was making tough US Navy airplanes.
Me as a mechanical engineer I have always wondered how they coordinated the lunar lander take off and rendezvous with the module in orbit, they only have seconds worth of power and once is shut off it cannot be turned back on…this maneuver is not well documented by video or photographs. It would be nice to see a video about this!
ISTR there was a contingency for the CM/SM to do a burn and go into a low eliptical orbit if it needed to, in order to 'meet' the ascent stage part way. Fortunately all LM's were able to ascend without a problem.
@@mikefochtman7164From Apollo 14 onwards the CSM did that anyway for both descent and ascent to give the LM more hover time.
Actually the LM ascent engine could restart. They had multiple burns to keep raising their orbit, and they could stay in a lower orbit to catch up with the CSM.
You should try playing KSP (Kerbal Space Program). It will both teach you what you need to know, and give you even greater respect to the engineers that worked this all out on the fly with slide rules.
i remember an interview with the engineer in charge of designing the LM ascent engines. he made them pressurized hypergolic and only had 2 valves to make it simple in order to be as reliable as possible. just have the valves open and the fuel will instantly light up.
An unusual amount of content beyond the usual treatment. Much appreciated.
All done with slide rules.
Not quite
@@FIREBRAND38that’s up there with the “they landed with less power than your phone has”.
Not entirely accurate, yes, the AGC was but there was an awful lot of compute power all over the back end, in the rocket, in space, all over.
Yes. This is the “akshully” comment, many of us around here are engineers, we live to be pedantic, it sorta matters.
@@c1ph3rpunk Actually I was responding to the claim that the LM CSM and Saturn V were all created and launched with slide rules. Also NASA had like five IBM360 mainframes to LAND MEN ON THE MOON AND RETURN THEM SAFELY (Which they did). No need to engage in the logical fallacy of arguing from authority. I'm neither a flat earther nor a Moon landing denier. All I said was that there were more than slide rules to get all this done.
@@FIREBRAND38I think they just replied to the wrong comment since you seem to be strongly agreeing with each other (and me!)
@@robbybobbyhobbies The point was - the computers were on earth. the lander had probably less computer power than your smart-phone. - - (edit to correct the incorrect autocorrect! Bleepin computers!! 🙂 )
The Spider episode on From the Earth to the Moon, is my favorite of the series.
The Lunar Module was an engineering marvel, the first true spacecraft.👍👍
Part of the answer: the Apollo lander only had to function in a vacuum, so no design thought or work had to be put into aerodynamics. They could make it any shape they wanted and put things anywhere they want. Form follows function, so this is what they came up with.
If you need 4 kilos of fuel to lift 1 kilo of weight wouldn't you need 16 kilos of fuel to lift the weight of the first 4 kilos of fuel? That's 20 kilos of fuel which requires 80 kilos of fuel to lift.....
ya, thats the problem with getting to the moons surface and back, or any space shenanigans really. Thanks to the tyranny of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, your fuel requirements increase exponentially for the given increase in craft mass and fuel needed.
this however also mean that if you first make a design that works, and you then change your mission profile, further reduce weight etc etc, you can get a lot more payload. as was the case for the later J missions during Apollo.
Yes, it grows exponentially. That's the reason for the gigantic Saturn V rocket just to get the Service, Command, and Lunar modules on the trajectory to the Moon.
Well, as you get higher, you use up most of the fuel, so that 4kg of fuel becomes a lot less. If you want 4kg up high(let's say in orbit) yes you would need more fuel.
@@maksphoto78it's not just about trajectory it's achieving Earth's escape velocity so you don't just fall back to Earth. It's about 25,000mph!
As you know in a car accelerating to high speed takes a lot of energy!
I'd say you got all the best footage Paul!! It's hard to understand the lack of footage and pics during the era. Not including all of those horrible Hollywood style sets and simulator videos. If I were in charge of Grumman back then I would have guys in bunnysuits with cameras taking pics every day.
"If I were in charge of Grumman back then I would have guys in bunnysuits with cameras taking pics every day."
As far as I'm aware, they did (not sure about the bunnysuits).
In a word?
liteweight!!!!
They cut ALL options to liten the weight.😮
*lighten. Don't be a part of the Great Dumbening
Please keep up the great reporting and small documentaries... You are, without a doubt, one of the best...
Thanks, Paul! Very interesting video
As always, another excellent video from Curious Droid.
It must be amusing to watch Paul's face as he reads some of the truly ridiculous comments left on his videos. I honestly don't know how he stays motivated sometimes. Brilliant work, as always, Paul.
@@JackDawf
Grow up troll
@@JackDawf Now lets have a think about this. Do I believe some random nobody dude on the internet giving his opinion that all SIX Apollo Moon Landings didn't happen ? Or do I accept what Modern History tells me about it all. ? I think I'll go with Modern History if you don't mind. Sorry. Well I'm not really. 🤣
@@JackDawf Literally the most provable thing the United States has ever done.
If it was a stage prop, it would have looked like in the movies.
✔
it looked like tin foil bits from rosewell
@@hassyg4083 no
@@RegebroRepairs im afriad it did , all staged as u know usa lies loads for eg covid iraq war etc
What happens when engineers are in charge. Does the job, doesn’t look good. Kinda what you want going to the moon.
Great video. Almost always stuff I have never seen before in your vids.
I was always impressed by the fact that the engineers were let go to design a functional spacecraft without the pressures of aesthetics. Obliviously it worked, and it worked many times over without leaving a astronaut on the moon. Outstanding!
Yet todays spacecraft can't even manage to land the right way up 😂
who thinks they look "odd", only fools. they look exactly correct for the job they had to do.
I guess the fools don't understand that the lunar lander didn't have to be _streamlined_ as it was designed to operate in vacuum only.
I bet he has no idea how many primary school teachers use his videos to teach children as well. Incredible stories with incredible content. Thank you for always delivering at A+ wear in awesome threads.
Kids don't get taught this boomer fairytale any more. No one with an IQ over 50, or a date of birth after 1980 believes this drivel.