Posted: 8/19/2025 1:53:03 PM EDT
 Apollo Docking sequence - Connecting the Command Module to the Lunar Module. Kudos to whoever created the animation! It was very clear. |
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Quoted:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drYZcMY9jUKudos to whoever created the animation! It was very clear. 
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If you're interested in stuff like this you should get the book called how Apollo went to the moon By David woods Learning about how Apollo worked is like learning how a magician's clever tricks work Only like 800000 clever tricks all jumble together and assembled at the same time and designed at the same time It's absolutely astonishing what they accomplished |
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Only like 800000 clever tricks all jumble together and assembled at the same time and designed at the same time It's easy to forget just how unique the effort was at the time; it was so well made that there were so few accidents, and Americans actually became so blasè. ALL this stuff was being done for the first time. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were current events in my school years. If you can, look up Robert Heinlein's testimony before a Congressional subcommittee, about how the space race benefitted the elderly. |
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Quoted: That process, not just the intricate details, has always astounded me. As my father in-law stated to me several times. "we were hired to get it done and everybody knew that, so we got it done" He was an electrical engineer and started on the ground floor with Gemini and finished after Apollo 12. He tripled his pay when he left and moved to Downey CA as a consultant for satellite builds. |
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Quoted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drYZcMY9jUKudos to whoever created the animation! It was very clear. Indeed! Thanks for posting that! |
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The LEM "Snoopy" mentioned at the end is still in heliocentric orbit apparently. The "only spacecraft in orbit without it's crew". (wiki) I assume that means the SS or whatever the Chinese have going on. Also sort of implies there could be spacecraft with crew in perpetual orbit of Earth or the Sun. Probably Soviets.  Soon, China will join this particular communist club. 
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| There was a really good TV series called Moon Machines. It covered the Saturn V Rocket, the Command Module, the Navigation Computer, the Lunar Module, the Space Suit, and the Lunar Rover. |
| Such clever engineering. The probe and drogue were absolutely, 100% critical to the mission, and they had to work perfectly, there was no backup. Yet they have to be easily removed and replaced several times by hand by the crew, which to me is the most interesting part. Last time I went to Space Center Houston, they have an example of one, and I spent some time staring at it, while my family wondered why. |