Author Topic: UK TV FIVE 9PM: The Real Story of Apollo 11: Stranger than Fiction  (Read 10770 times)

Offline Chris Bergin

Armstrong turns off the computer and flys manually. Way off course, looking for somewhere to land.

The descent engine's fuel tank is getting low by now. JSC note "only calls now will be about fuel".

Crew look out to the surface and see a big crater.

60 seconds to go before the fuel is good and they are 100 feet up.

Landed with 15 seconds of fuel left :)
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Offline Chris Bergin

Crew was planned to go to sleep, but they got into their spacesuits...then they couldn't open the hatch.

Equalised the pressure by bending the hatch back and it opens.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Aldrin's hops and skipping aimlessly around the moon was an experiment on the best form of "locomotion".

Show's the Nixon phone call.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Classified document shows and reads out the Nixon speech in case they couldn't get off the moon, due to concerns over the ascent engine which had failed in some form or the other in space tests.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Circuit breaking switch broke on board. Engine could not be started without this.

Aldrin show the actual pen that saved them. He used the pen to push in the circuit breaker. Very cool.
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Offline Chris Bergin

That was a cracking documentary. Nice ending with Aldrin paying tribute to all the people involved.

Really damn good :)
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Offline apollolanding

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I saw this on US TV may have either been Discovery Channel or The Science Channel.  They run a lot of BBC stuff.  One of the better documentaries on Apollo 11.  I was very excited hearing Aldrin speak so openly about the "UFO" and how they cryptically asked MC about the S-VB distance in order to rule it out as a candidate.  I'm not saying it WAS a vehicle from another life form but who knows.  I think it was Cary Elwes (playing Mike Collins) in From the Earth to the Moon, who when talking about Neil Armstrong's first words said (and I paraphrase), "if you (Neil) had any balls you would scream MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING and cut your mic."
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Offline Justin Space

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This wasn't BBC, it was Channel 5.

Offline Naraht

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The footage and the interviews were great (particularly nice to see Jack Garman getting some screen time), but a lot of the narration was ridiculously sensationalistic... trying to make things sound dramatic just by not giving full explanations. Some things they gave the right amount of drama (the computer alarms, basically; the thinness of the LM skin); some things they ridiculously overhyped (the chances of the ascent engine failing; the mystery of the cosmic rays); and some really dramatic things they actually failed to mention (the fuel line blockage right after the lunar landing). On the whole there were a lot of things that they got wrong. There wasn't very much that was "untold" but quite a bit that was exaggerated or somehow misrepresented.

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Justin Space - 24/7/2006  9:19 PM
Krantz: The communications from Apollo 11 to the Moon was almost like gibberish, with five conversations going on at the same time. Mission control did miss one message.
Not from Houston to the Moon. There was only one air-to-ground loop (mostly). He was talking about the different loops in mission control.

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Justin Space - 24/7/2006  9:23 PM
High Z particles, explained NASA.
AKA cosmic rays. I thought they overhyped this a bit.

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Chris Bergin - 24/7/2006  9:37 PM
Computer crashes.

Aldrin says the computer only showed the 1202 error and nothing else. No one knew what 1202 was.

Jack Garman (young wizkid) is asked to help. He knew what it was from a training excerise.
They overstated this a bit. The computer never actually did crash... it was programmed to continue executing its high-priority tasks while shedding its lower-priority ones, and it did this faultlessly. It was not a computer error.

It's also exaggerating a bit to say that no one knew what it was. Jack Garman obviously knew instantly, and Steve Bales (his frontroom counterpart) definitely had the information to hand although he had to take the time to look it up. It was incredibly good luck, certainly, that the issue of computer alarms had come up in a simulation, causing Jack Garman to make his famous list (which was shown). But given that had happened, several people did know abot them.

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Chris Bergin - 24/7/2006  9:49 PM
Classified document shows and reads out the Nixon speech in case they couldn't get off the moon, due to concerns over the ascent engine which had failed in some form or the other in space tests.
They were trying to make out that they had just discovered this document or just had it declassified, when in fact it's been available publicly for some time.

I also seriously doubt the connection that the program was implying between the Nixon speech and the alleged unreliability of the ascent engine. Nixon prepared that speech not in expectation of any particular contingency, but rather "just in case". As for the ascent engine, Murray and Cox state in "Apollo" that "it had a magnificently reliable record in the ground tests." The documentary stated that only three of its six firings in space worked entirely to plan... this may be true, but I doubt that it was remotely as serious as they claim. NASA may have taken risks in the 60s, but they wouldn't have relied on a rocket engine that only had a 50% success rate.

Offline Stardust9906

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I’m afraid I have to totally agree with you there.  Other than the UFO sighting there was little new information. I also thought the presentation was way over the top.

Offline Naraht

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I've written a review of the documentary (fairly casual in style) where I've tried to assess some of the claims that the program made, and have provided links where people can read more. I'd welcome any comments or corrections:

http://narahttbbs.livejournal.com/77877.html

Offline kevin-rf

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Quote
nacnud - 24/7/2006  2:44 PM

I've heard about the ball point pen before, but can't remeber exactly what it was used for. I'll just have to watch it :)

Maybe reading the national geographic article about Apollo 11 (was the article circa 69 or was it early 70)? My national geo issue is tucked away somewhere but I distintly remember it being mentioned in the article.

I think the flight computer memory was also mentioned in the article... Been so long since I read them ...

Kevin
If you're happy and you know it,
It's your med's!

Offline Chris Bergin

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Naraht - 25/7/2006  1:00 PM

I've written a review of the documentary (fairly casual in style) where I've tried to assess some of the claims that the program made, and have provided links where people can read more. I'd welcome any comments or corrections:

http://narahttbbs.livejournal.com/77877.html

Nicely done :)
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Offline Naraht

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Chris Bergin - 25/7/2006  6:36 PM

Quote
Naraht - 25/7/2006  1:00 PM

I've written a review of the documentary (fairly casual in style) where I've tried to assess some of the claims that the program made, and have provided links where people can read more. I'd welcome any comments or corrections:

http://narahttbbs.livejournal.com/77877.html

Nicely done :)
Thanks; glad it was of interest. :)

Offline apollolanding

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Naraht,
Your review was spot on.  I watched it again last night on The Science Channel although in the US it's titled, "First on the Moon: The Untold Story".  I was bothered by it more the second time I watched it.  Every little thing that happened was punctuated by "which their very lives depended on" or "or else they would be stranded on the moon"...
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Offline Tschachim

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By the way: The UFO was a SLA panel: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/firstonthemoon.html

Cheers
Tschachim

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