project apollo ranks among the

most bold and challenging undertakings of the 20th century, within less than a decade, the united states leapt from suborbital flight or space flight to landing human beings on the moon and returning them safely back to earth. hundreds of thousands of people helped make these missions possible, while billions more the globe followed the flights

the material legacy of these missions is immense, with thousands of artifacts from, rocket engines to spacesuits, to ephemera of life aboard a spacecraft, all represented in the smithsonian's vast collections. now, more 50 years after the last lunar landing, we're in for a reassessment of the history of the project through the most evocative objects of the space age more than space hardware alone, the objects featured reflect the deep interconnection project. apollo and developments in american society and politics. dr. teasel muir-harmony is a historian of spaceflight and the curator of the apollo collection at the smithsonian national air and space museum. her research focuses on the exploration of the moon from debates about lunar governance to the use of space flights as soft power. the topic of her award winning book operation moonglow a political history of project

apollo, which was published in 2020. in addition to her work at the smithsonian, dr. meal harmony co-organizer is the space policy and history forum and teaches at georgetown university. she serves as an advisor. the television series apollo's moonshot and her first book, apollo to the moon history in 50 objects was. in 2018 and forms the basis of today's lecture. so please join me in welcoming dr. harmony. good afternoon everyone. thank you so much for coming. it's true pleasure to be here. a especially on the anniversary of the first lunar landings of this talk is perfectly timed for this topic and i, i always think anniversaries are a great opportune to to look back on it at an event and to register its

significance at the time and then also its relevance to today and in the lecture this afternoon, we'll be exploring the history of the apollo program through artifacts through objects that really played a key role within that history and thinking about its relevance. our lives today too, to start off, when we talk the history of the space age, the space race, the apollo program, we often start with sputnik, which is the soviet union's satellite. this is the accomplishment was the first artificial satellite launched in 1957. but i wanted to start here. this is a favorite artifact of mine in this smithsonian's collection. the tv three satellite launched in december. 1957 or attempted launch. so take a look at this artifact. look at these pictures. any sense of that launch went

right. so it's great example of what you know, what artifacts reveal about history. so this launched not go very well here's a picture from that day after the soviet union successfully launched sputnik one into the us, tried to raise the head to compete and launch their own satellite. it ended in a disaster on the launch pad, never made it to orbit the us would be successful not that long after. in the beginning of 1958. but this is a great example of part of what began the space and this competition between the us and the soviet union and how they looked to space exploration and spaceflight to demonstrate national technical capabilities. so here's another example of an object that reveals some that competition between the soviet union and the united states.

so this is an example of two stamps. so one is from the soviet union, the one on the left, and then one is from the us on the right. both of these stamps showcase early human spaceflight. so yuri gagarin's flight for the soviet union and john glenn's flight for the united states. and if take a look at these stamps, they really reveal how the different countries were projecting their space programs abroad and domestically as well. so the ways that they were trying to communicate their space achievements were quite different at that time. so the soviet stamp, this is a stamp was produced for international audiences with the bright colors a bit more elaborate, but what you see here is you see gagarin looking towards the stars. you see a very stylized rocket ship. so this is not accurate of his spacecraft, but instead something from the imagination. and then for the american stamp,

you see a that is very technically accurate. it was actually based on engineering drawings. so nasa's shared the engineering drawings of the mercury spacecraft with the postal service. they created the stamp and released it as soon as john glenn achieved his successful flight, immediately on his landing. but this is a great example of the different ways the countries were to use their space program to to represent different stories and narratives of their own technical, but also of their national image as well so for the united states, a lot of what was produced focused on sharing engineering information, being very open about the space program, broadcasting both successes and failures internationally. and i'll talk a bit more about that in a second. so after yuri gagarin's successful spaceflight, this is

the first successful human spaceflight in 1961. a week later, there was an invasion at the bay of pigs, and this was a us us backed invasion, both of these events were interpreted by president kennedy as a huge blow u.s. prestige. he asked advisors to find him a space program that promises dramatic results that we can win. and those are his words. so it was very important to him to find a space program in particular or he thought that was sort of the currency the day and he wanted one that was going to have dramatic results, which was going to capture attention. and they advised him to send humans to the moon land them there and return them safely to earth within the decade. and kennedy presented this project, apollo to congress and the end of may 1961. and as he it, he thought that

space could win the hearts and minds of the world public and it would infuse the direction that they would take. and what he meant was alignment with either the united states or the soviet union. they would pursue liberal democracy, communism. and so he thought, invest in space flight and project apollo in particular was going to be essential to the us's standing in the world and efforts to fight the cold war. so as mentioned earlier, project apollo was incredibly ambitious and complex over this is just a quick, quick, quick overview of the program so you get some familiarity with it but there re 11 crewed missions between and 72 and six ofhese were lunar landing. so 12 humans walkeon the moon within that period of time, 24 astronauts traveled to the area, the moon.

theyollected about42 pounds of lunar samples and did a lot of other very important science as well. and the cost of th program was about $25 billion at the time for the whole lunar effort today. that would be closer to about $280 billion. so over 4% of the federal budget by the mid 1960s. and this was a major national priority of the kennedy and that the financial reflects that, but also the investment of people. time and focus does as well. and it give you a a sense of the state of the american space program. when kennedy made this proposal, i wanted to share a picture of this artifact, freedom seven. so this is alan shepard's spacecraft. you can see it here. wh kne project apollo shepard's flight was the entire extent of the united human

spaceflight experience. so it was a brief suborbital flight around 15 minutes long at, the beginning of may 1961. and it gave kennedth confidence to go ahead and proposed project apollo, but a lot needed to be learned before humans would reach the moon. in 1969. so new spacecraft needed to be built, a new rocket needed to be built, had to learn about living and working in space. so it wasn't even clear to us at that moment if humans could eat easily in space as basic as eating food had to be answered. so over the next few years it was a major national mobilization to achieve this. this project. so i mentioned a new rocket had to be built, the saturn five, which for many years was the most powerful rocket created the f-1 engines in the first stage of ts rocket, continue to be the most powful engines ever

developed. and successfully used. it's mui-part rocket. so it's three stages and at the very tiptop is where the spacecraft was and where the astronauts sat. so you can see here in this diagm, this is where the astronauts are in the command module, the lunar module is tucked under here. d that's just a here at the tip, tip top. so it's 363 feet tall, so taller. the the statue of liberty. 7.5 pounds million of thrust in the first stage, which was ignited for about a little over 2 minutes, was burning in about 20 tons of fuel. a second, incredibly powerful people who got to witness one of these launches could really feel the grit, their god, the ground shaking. it was so powerful. so this is a part of the

spacecraft. this particular images of the columbia command module. and i'll focus on apollo 11 today because this is the annirsary of apollo 11 this is the astronauts home for the majority of their trip to the moon. it's about the size of three phone bohs. so 210 cubic square feet inside, relatively compact but more spacious. some earlier spacecraft. and one of the importa features of the commd module is that it was part of the spacecraft that returned back to earth, and it required a very advanced heat shield, which i'll speak about. so the spacecraft spacecraft is made up of pressure shell and a heat shield to withstand temperatures up to 5000 degrees at reentry. and that took the work of these people that you see here. so this the spacecraft has this honeycomb structure on the

exterior and each of the cells of that honeycomb are were injected with a resin. and you can see the technicians injecting individual cells with resin. so there were 370,000 individual cells that had to be injected with resin by and then it was cured and then it was x-rayed and anywhere that they notice any imperfection, any void, they drilled out fixed. and so if you if you look really closely at that heat shield, you can see the evidence of that. you see these little circles here. hopefully you can spot them from the audience. these are the areas that they drilled out, the imperfections in the heat shield and fixed it and this is a great testament the level of detail effort that went into every single of this program to ensure that the astronaut would return home safely. this is the interior of this

spacecraft. and i'll just point out that right down here at the bottom, these are seats the astronauts they're calledches and attry. arm's length you have the control panea few things to to out here. this is what's called the diski, but where the in for the apollo guidance computer. if needed to abort. yo have some cs there. so it's over five switches and dials that the astronauts trained on for their flight. this is the lunar module so much like the saturn v rocket multi-stage. the spacecraft is multistage as well. so the astronauts spent most of their time on the way to the moon in the command once they were orbiting the on one astronaut would remain in the cmand module, while two astronauts would gto the lunar rface in the lunar module.

now particular one is lm two. it's at this smithsonian. it was designed to fly ear orbital test, but it was not needed. it was used in some test drop tests, but it's still thankfully so we will have it on display very shortly after our renovation and it's marked up to look like the eagle from the apollo 11 mission as accurately as possible. now, this spacecraft is also a two stage spacecraft, so the astronauts would have landed in the full spacecraft. they would have been in the cabin up here. and once they got to the lunar surface, they would have climbed down the ladder. as you can see. and then once they were ready to return to earth, they would have climbed back up the top part of the spacecraft would have launched from the moon and then rejoined the command module, and then they would continue on to earth in the command module. but a few details to point out here. this is this one important part

of the the lunar module is that it is truly a spacecraft, a crt designed to flyn ter space without the concerns of handling aospheric conditions like you would see in an airplane or something like that. so it can have this funny look because it was designed as a true spacecraft, other oth elements to note, if you can see up here, it had very, very sml windows. they tried to reduce the weight of the spacecraft as much as possible because more meant basically more fuel at launch. and so it was very important to make it as light as possible and they realized that because the moon is one sixth, the earth's gravity, we could land on the moon somewhat differently. so the astronauts need seats. so they were able to save weight by getting rid of the. and since they were standing they didn't need big windows like you might need a car to see outside. you could small windows and that

helped reduce the weight as well. another thing i wanted to point out was the important contributions industry to success of the mission. so hundreds of thousands of people contributed to the apollo program over the course of the 1960s. over 90% of them were contractors and subcontractors. and when kennedy was making the decision about project, apollo initially he was advised that the program not only would be an incredible accomplishment and demonstrate the technical ability of the country. but that it would also showcase american industry. and that was seen essential to the us's internationally as well. and and this is a great example of that. so these are some artifacts from bob foster and his family who worked for mcdonnell douglas, one of the contractors that worked on the space program.

and it includes a bracelet that he gave his wife and every time there was a successful mission or something that he wanted to commemorate, he would give her a special charm. so you can see there most of them are space related charms on at bracelet bracelet. and then this a connection to virginia history. so the lunar orbiter, as i mentioned, our knowledge of space exploration was limited when when kennedy proposed project apollo and our knowledge of the moon was also quite limited. and so we sent spacecraft to uncrewed spacecraft to the moon to learn more about it before we sent the humans there. and one of those programs was the lunar program based out at langley, the nasa's center here in virginia, and there were a handful of missions of the orbiter program, and it was responsible for mapping the moon and maps. 99% of the moon and us select

the landing sites for the upcoming missions. and then also contributed important information to lunar science as well. and this is a photograph taken from the first lunar orbiter. you can see the earth in the distance and it took a number of photographs of earth, including the full earth. it really wasn't till human hands took these photographs that they they resonated much more broadly, culturally and socially. so you've seen probably the earthrise and the blue marble. those were taken by the astronauts on. but before that, the lunar orbiter was taking similar types of photographs of the earth from, a great distance. so by october 1968, the united states was ready to start sending humans into space as part of the apollo program and there were a series of missions that built on each other testing

out the hardware and, learning about living and working in space. so that started with apollo seven in october 1968, and it was testing the command module in earth orbit. then you get to apollo eight with the earthrise image, which i mentioned this is december 1968, the first time humans traveled to the moon. it was an orbital flight. and then this was followed on by apollo nine. it was a pretty quick succession, and this was a test of the lunar module in earth orbit and then followed by apollo ten, the dress rehearsal mission to apollo 11, the first lunar landing mission in may 1969, and right ahead of the launch of apollo 11, there was a protest in florida at kennedy space center and i like pointing this out with this artifact here from the smithsonian.

so was a protest led by the southern christian leadership conference, and it was about 500 people descended on the and they really wanted to draw attention to inequality in the united states and the living conditions especially of the urban poor. and they were there. it was led by reverend ralph abernathy, who had led up the sclc after luther king passed away and they met with thomas paine, who was the nasa administrator. and there was quite a bit of media there, but they really wanted to communicate that. that they recognized the accomplishment of apollo, but they were questioning the united states priorities and questioning how much it cost us. assemble something as simple as feeding an astronaut versus feeding a child who didn't have enough on earth. so i like to bring this up, because at the time there was quite a bit of critique domestically, national

priorities and the amount of spending on the apollo program as well as the vietnam war and domestically, at least the apollo program was fully supported by less than half of the us public and public opinion polls, except around first lunar landing. now thomas paine responded that if if he could decide not to send astronauts to the moon, it would fix the problems on earth. then he not send them the next day, but that the problems have on earth are much more complicated and that that nasa was interested and willing to work on applying some of the lessons from the space program to our problems on earth. and there was a of effort paid in thinking about the ways that that space technology can improve life on earth. okay. so the launch of apollo 11, july 16th, 1969, the astronauts woke up very rlin the morning, a little after 4 a.m. they had the

classic astronaut breakfast steak and eggs then they headed out to the launch pad, were in position around 0 so. and and then they launched that morning. this wasn ent that was by the whole world, more or less so over a million people descende on the kendypace center in florida and that included hundreds and thousands of journalists from all around the world. and this coverage was picked up internationally as well. and so you can example of that in south korea. here's an audience watching, the broadcast of the launch and you can see similar scenes on every single continent. people were following this flight very closely, both within the united states and outside the us as well. after few days, the astronauts reached, the lunar surface. so those 54 years ago today, this this photograph was taken.

this is the first photograph that neil armstrong outside the window of the lunar module after they landed. they have a they had a little bit of time before they went out onto the lunar surface. so they had some food, a little snack. it's considered a meal but it was relatively light here is an example of what they ate. so bacon, squares, peaches sugar cookie cubes, coffee and a pineapple drink. when they came from their eva, they would have a bit more substantial meal, but they were packed for meals for their shorts day on the moon, which is roughly a day but in general, the astronauts not to eat all their food, about 30 to 40% of what was packed for a mission. and so at the smithsonian, luckily, we have a lot of space leftovers that the astronauts decided to eat. so the things that were less appealing. but i'm surprised we have the bacon squares, because those were usually the most popular items on a mission when you're

in microgravity, the fluids in your your body distribute differently more evenly. and the your nasal cavity can fill up with fluid. and so you taste food as well. so it's sort of like having a cold and so spicy things and salty things tend to appeal to the astronaut because they can taste them. and this is today they use a lot of hot sauce in space back during the apollo era, these bacon squares were some of the most appealing and shrimp cocktail was also appealing because it's a little bit more spicy so they had they had a light snack and then and then neil armstrong had out first to walk on the lunar surface and so he would have exited the lunar like this is actually picture of aldrin because aldrin because armstrong took all those photos from apollo 11. so there are there are buzz aldrin. but right before. he walked down that ladder.

he have released this bay here and this housed a television camera that was broadcasting the first lunar landing to earth. so they planned ahead. they that it was important to include the world in this experience, to these first steps back to earth. so this is where that camera was located. and then he descended down that ladder and he he took his first step on the moon. so initially he stood in the footpad, oh, you can't quite it here, but and then test it out. the soil took that first step and said those first famous words one small step for man. one giant leap for mankind mankind. and as i mentioned, the whole world was following this flight for the first lunar landing. over 500 million people watched it live on and over half the world's population was watching

it live on television, reading about it in the newspaper, listening to on the radio. so this was the most participated in event in human history. and i like to point that it was historic, not because humans went to another body for the first time in history, but also came in greater numbers than ever before to experience an event together. and that is an essential part of that story. and the astronauts actually said when they returned to earth and they were in quarantine and then they saw all the coverage of all the people around, the world watching the flight buzz aldrin said to neil armstrong, we the whole thing, because clearly they're having a party here on earth. and this is represented in the the mission patch that the astronauts designed so all the astronaut crews designed their own mission patches for apollo 11. michael collins the command pilot, took the lead and he

decided to trace this eagle from a national geographic bird book. so the bald eagle represents, the united states, they also decided to leave their names off of this emblem. so usually the astronauts have their last on a patch. if you look at other patches, see that they decided to leave names off because they thought this mission represented more than the three of them, more than the hundreds of thousands of people worked on apollo. it really was to them an accomplished man for all humankind. and that was represented in the way they designed this mission patch. a fun detail to remind you of of how new all of this was and lunar exploration was, the shadow on the earth in the wrong location. so if you remember the earthrise image, the shadow should have been on the lower part of of earth from this perspective of the moon, but you can't blame them. it only been a few months, so

there was still lots to learn. so how many of you watched the first lunar landing? oh, fantastic. a good number in this crowd. okay. and how many of you watched and walter cronkite. okay, it similar number which it really is reference additive of the viewing experience back in 1969. so. 94% of american households watched, the first lunar landing, the vast majority of them watched cbs coverage and walter cronkite had covered all the missions. was a space enthusiast, really trained himself and understanding the space program. and cbs put an incredible amount of effort into their broadcasts. it was watched in the white house. this was where everyone tuned in. they had journalists stationed around the world covering the audiences that were around the world. so when you watch the coverage,

apollo 11, you not only watched the astronauts on the lunar surface, you watched the crowds of people around the world with you. so it really really reiterated that this was a global experience, that everyone was participating in together. and this lunar module model is a wonderful artifact in the smithsonian's collection. this is the one that he used in that broadcast. so this is the one that you would have seen if you watched cbs coverage of that flight. so here's another image of of buzz aldrin. as most people know, neil armstrong was the first human to set foot on the moon. buzz aldrin has claimed different. first, he's claimed that he's the first human to urinate on the moon. no one's contest did that, probably for a variety of reasons. but unfortunately for aldrin his urine collection device which you can see here broke as he was descending that ladder, he

joined neil armstrong on the surface about a half an hour after armstrong had been walking on the and so he he walked around in a wet boot. so his experience on the lunar surface was slightly different. i like showing this artifact not only is this question we always get, how do you go to the bathroom in space? but this is also a way that an artifact can be silent and subtle reminder of some of the history. so if you look over here, they're quite old now, but is the way that an astronaut would attach themselves to the urine collection device and these are designed for male bodies. and it's a reminder that all the first astronauts were men. and it wouldn't be till the 1980s with the shuttle program that the us sent women to the moon or not to the moon. that will happen with artemus to to space in general with sally ride. but the artemus programs plan is to send women to the moon in the next few years.

okay so while they're on the lunar surface, they, they conducted some science years an example of some of their, their tools to collect lunar samples, the solar wind experiment. this is a rock box that they used now they had studied geology all. the astronauts joked that they should have master's in geology, given the amount of training they did and they had collected all the samples they were supposed to collect on the first lunar landing, armstrong noticed that this box still had some space in it, so he took a scoop that you can see the style here. one of his tools, and he filled it up with lunar regolith and it in this box, it's known as armstrong's packing material. and it turned out to be one of the most important samples back from the entire apollo program. each of the apollo also had experiment packages for apollo 11. they had a smaller version

because it was a smaller a shorter stay on the moon than the later missions. you can see it here and i'll just highlight one of the instruments that i like, which is the laser ranging retro reflector. and what happens here is that an observatory on earth can aim a laser at it and measure the amount of time that it takes the laser to reach the moon, the return back to earth. this was first done by the lick observatory. takes about two and a half seconds, but it can do is it can tell us more precisely the distance between the earth and the moon and how quickly moon is receding from the earth over time and for the 50th anniversary of apollo, it was used again. so they're sitting the lunar surface and can still use them toea about the moon. so they rejoined after the their two and a half hours and longer stay on thmoon they rejoin ght collins in the command module orbiting the moon.

then they returned back to earth and the columbia command module entered the earth'atmosphere. and thas to an elaborate system, a parachute they were ab to land safely. this is an important part of kennedy's mission was returning tronauts safely back to earth and these parachutes played an important role in that some early parachutes they learned were issued there's a problem called squinting, which you might be able to imagine. what that is, is when a parachute chute opens in the upper atmosphere, they can look like a squid because the air doesn't fill them out in the same way it doesn't create that umbrella shape. and so in order to solve that for project apollo, they had a series small drogue chutes that were initially released, and then they had a series of the main chutes that were made with what they called ribbons. so basically it allowed for a lot holes in the parachute to

help stabilize the spacecraft at reentry. it was still a rough landing, though. it slowed the spacecraft down to about 20 miles per hour and they would hit the surface around between. so i think 12 and 30 or so gs depending on the the waves and and the parachutes at reentry but it got them on all home safely and was in part part the important system for the returning to earth safely. and so after the apollo 11 astronauts landed back on earth, they were in quarantine for a few weeks to ensure that they didn't bring back any moon. and then president nixon them to go on a world tour to represent the united states. and as i mentioned, this was an important part of the apollo program. kennedy proposed project, apollo with the larger cold war context in mind and the ways that would

contribute to the united states as geopolitical position. so sending the astronauts on a world tour was was part of this larger mission and this is a wonderful artifact from when the astronauts visited so they did this global tour over 20 countries they given gifts in all the locations they to and they gave gifts back as well. and when they were in australia, mike collins was given this boomerang which was an artifact in the history of australian flight. it was what the plaque says. i also happened to be his birthday. he kept it and then fortunately donated it to the air and space museum. but another example of the ways that artifacts connect people. so the astronauts were connected to australia through the exchange of this gift. but then we can also be connected to that history. which brings me to this. this is the last artifact that i'll talk about. it is one of my favorite at, the

smithsonian. so this is a pieces from the wright flier, the wright brothers. wright flier airplane, which achieved the first powered airplane flight in 1903. in december 1903. so what happened was neil armstrong worked with a museum in ohio to decide to bring these pieces of, the wright brothers airplane, with him to the moon. so each of the astronauts was given a preference kit, usually they filled them with family photos, memento those things like that. armstrong decided to take these pieces of the wright flier with him to moon, and that gesture really connects those two moments in flight history an incredible way. it's a great demonstration of the ways that objects can connect us to the past. so he connected his mission, the first lunar landing to the wright brothers achievement of that first flight in 1903. and then today we can we can look at this. we can appreciate and we can be

connected to those missions as well through these artifacts. and as a curator, i often think about how artifacts are essential connections. the past, they teach us about this history, but they also us a very tangible connection so that these historic moments aren't just something in our mind, but it becomes part of our present as. this is an image of the lunar south pole. this is the destination of many upcong lunar exploration missions. so there's a lot of activity, a lot of interest in moon today w can talk about that in the question and answer period. if you. but i'll end there and. i'll take any questions you have. thank you. so for your attention.

this. thank you very much. a reminiscence and a question was a summer camp counselor up the shenandoah valley on july 20th, 1969? it was a sunday as many of you may recall, the sunday evening, sunday, and we got all the boys into the dining hall to watch. there was just one tv. there was this is before cable tv, of course. and i guess we got some kind of signal. one of the stations in the nearby city. and but the thing i recall is that it dragged on and on and the boys were falling asleep, their heads down on the day tables. and when it finally when the landing finally occurred, it was, at least in my experience, it was very anticlimactic. and a great relief that we were able to get the boys up into bed by midnight. and that was not something that they used to doing. many of them wilted along the way.

question again, unrelated to that. i'm sure that many people in the room know that there have been people who have questioned the whole validity of, the landing on the moon, and felt that perhaps it was a staged in a sound stage in hollywood. how soon after the actual landing did that questioning of the whole thing occur? there's been skepticism all along in the same way that there are there are always questions and conspiracy theories. it's the percentage of people in polling that that question, the lunar landing tend to be it's a it's a certain percentage of the population. i think it's usually between maybe around 8% pretty consistent. but but for many years it's it's it's not a recent phenomenon. it's something that was questioned a long time. and it often aligns with other

types of skepticism. i, i do get asked about it sometimes, but usually i get asked, what do you say people who don't believe it, but i have not met yet many people who don't believe that the first lunar landing or all the lunar landings happened. some of the answers that i like or if they it up, why would they have gone back multiple times? why keep going? especially because in the united states, at least interest in the lunar landings really dropped off after 11 and especially after apollo 12. people got reinga with apollo 13 because it was there was a horrible accident on the way to the moon and people wanted to make sure those astronauts would be safe. many of the later missions didn't draw. the same level of attention. and the question is, why would you keep on doing that if? it was all made up. another sort of response that i like is that this is an incredibly complex program, $25

billion at the time, hundreds of, thousands of people were part of it would have been extraordinary to be able to coordinate that as a do you know it's almost as extraordinary as setting humans to the moon to be able to to fake something like that would have been a remarkable achievement. there are there are lots of things can say, but usually that kind of skepticism i'm not looking for facts, but. but thank you also for sharing that memory memory with apollo 11. how much of the lunar module that returned the command module if any, came back to earth, or did you stay in orbit? so the lunar module did not come back to earth, jettisoned it shortly after they returned to the command module. so the bottom part of the lunar module stayed on the lunar surface and we actually have

wonderful photographs of all of the lunar module descent stages taken by the lunar reconnaissance. so we've seen these sites from lunar orbit. they're wonderful pictures and i highly checking them out. but the the top stage, the lunar module would have been jettisoned and for the most part, most of them were used in experiments to learn about the structure of the moon. so they would have crash landed back into moon and the astronauts would have set up instruments to do readings of moon. so not earthquakes, moonquakes. there is some question about the apollo 11 upper stage, the ascent stage, and whether or not it actually crash landed. i know there are people investigate that question to the assumption for many years was that it did but there's some interesting evidence recently

that it actually might be in an orbit. i think you can tell from the number of people who raised our hands that we had watched this on that your analogy of the size of the command to three phone booths would work with this crowd. do you have another one for a younger crowd? i would i would love to get one. i actually i actually borrow that from another historian. 210 cubic feet. i don't know. i need to look. why not? because i do tend not to use that one when it's a younger audience, but it is quite compact. the astronauts, though, after experiencing the gemini spacecraft, which is the second american human spaceflight program, the apollo command command module was quite spacious, but it was it was still quite small. good afternoon and thank you for the presentation.

and this is more of a technical question. you mentioned that to lower the weight within the craft. they didn't have any chairs. so when they were reentering and hitting the water, did they have harnesses what did they use to safely protect them when they came back into to the atmosphere. sure. so they they took the chairs out of the the lunar modules. so that was only used for landing the lunar surface. but the command module had chairs and they had specially designed chairs. the spacecraft was designed to handle some of that impact. it's a great question. so they're actual actually ribs built into the spacecraft to help handle some of that that impact the chairs themselves, designed to handle some of that impact. it was it was still a bit, but they were able to bring the astronauts back pretty safely. but there were chairs, the in the command module, and they

were able to store them away for majority of the time they were in the spacecraft. so that gave them a little more space. so part of the three phone booth. i have a bit of a personal story. i make very quick. i was hired as a i was a graduate student at ucla statistics. i was hired by a subcontractor to analyze the 168 gravity moon gravity simulation. and i was a statistician on the project and, you know, they collected all that data with on paper tape. and then they gave me the paper tape in a burden time share the thing that's fast to me is i experienced that look because there's more computer power on our phones than they had there to do this entire mission. i'm so glad you brought up computing history because that's

that's it's really tied so closely to project apollo and when you think about the impact of project apollo from, a technical standpoint, when you think about the spin offs, when it comes to the incredible amount of research and development during apollo program and and the spinoffs or the ways that it contributed to technological development, the history of computing is actually the that probably was impacted most and so before the apollo program computers were getting larger larger and larger. you may remember the apollo program put incredible amount of resources into figuring out how to make smaller and smaller and smaller. and so they needed computers that robust and reliable to fit on these spacecraft to be light. and this was a different direction in computing and a of investment and a lot of expertise. so the people that came to work on the apollo program to work as

a first generation or early generation of computer, computer scientists after the program then went to seed a larger industry and many of them moved from nasa, from the contractors to then help contribute to the development of computing since that point. and so we often think or we can compare the computers that they had in the apollo program to what we have today in our pocket or on our watch. and it's an important part of that legacy. they were very reliable. they were very advanced for the day. and they also made a big leading to our ability to have all these handheld computers today. do you know what changes made to the command module after the apollo one fire? yes. so i didn't talk about apollo one just for time reasons, but it it's a very important story.

and the history of the apollo program and the success of all the later missions. and so if you're not familiar with it, with apollo one, they were doing a test on the launch pad. there was a fire in the spacecraft. it had a pure oxygen environment. unfortunately, there were three astronauts inside of the spacecraft. it was an consumed by flames almost instantaneously, they perished and led to a very serious review of the safety of the spacecraft and in the in the entire larger apollo system. so a reevaluation of the program and what needed to be done to ensure that the missions would be a success, that people's lives would not be put at that type of. risk again. and so the apollo one spacecraft is referred to as the black one, the apollo 11 astronauts flew the block two. there were a number of

modification ins. one of them was that they they no longer did the pure oxygen environment at which to help with fire safety. they also they had a lot of flammable materials inside the spacecraft, velcro and things like that. they limited that. they helped develop and beta cloth, which is flame resistant. so a lot of efforts when it comes to that. they also they also improved the hatch. so there was a really complicated to get the hatch off the spacecraft. astronauts would were not able to do it in time. it's part of the reason that perished. and so nasa's recognize that they had to create hatch that could be removed relatively quickly and easily by the strength of the astronauts from inside the spacecraft in the event of an emergency. so a number of modifications and and one of the really important legacies of apollo one which was

a tragedy, but it did contribute to an improved safety culture at nasa. and and it did require everyone looked at all the systems again and ensure that they were safe. and so with all the follow on missions, you had no more fatalities and you had one major accident with apollo. but those astronauts returned to earth safely and so it's a tragedy, but also an incredible legacy, too, for that mission. in an excuse me, in analog, using the material that we brought back from the moon, how does that compare with the saturn and minerals that exist here on earth? did we find in a material or did we find materials that are very similar to on earth and was there any water or water vapor

or anything like. so one of the exciting findings from those lunar samples the astronauts brought back earth is that they're very, very similar to earth rocks. and that tells us about the formation of the moon and so before the apollo program, there were a number of different theories about how the moon formed. but given the evidence of the rocks and, how similar they are to earth rocks and composition, it told that the earth and the moon are related and it supported the hypothesis that a very planet size body is something similar to the size of mars collided with the earth and that led to some of the formation of the moon. and so the evidence from the apollo program to that some of the the lunar samples they're missing some of the volatiles. so the moon has next to no. one atmosphere and is bombarded with solar radiation so that affects those samples in a way

that you don't see in in earth samples. but they're very, very similar. one really incredible foresight that that nasa had was that these samples, some of them should be preserved. future scientists. there was a recognition then that our instruments were going to improve over time, that we'd have better instruments. in 2023 than we had in 1969. and so some of those samples were sealed and some of them have actually just recently been reopened. so there was a sample taken on apollo, which was the last lunar landing. from 1972. of course, sample that was just recently opened at the anniversary. and some of the are new analysis of those lunar samples has revealed traces of water and things like that. so immediately following the first lunar landing, we didn't have that that knowledge. but at time went on, we were

able with improved instruments to see to see signs of water and one of the major reasons that there is an interest in the lunar south pole, which you can see here, is because there's expectation that there is water, ice deposits there, which could be used for number of different applications. one of them being a fuel and also perhaps for astronauts as they and work on the lunar surface. we have time for one more question. you were obviously not old enough to be one of us who was watching the landing live. so what brought you into as a specialty? so i had a great interest in the history astronomy from a very young age and and that eventually actually led me to work at the smithsonian after graduated from college. for a historian of astronomy there and i was a research

assistant and i went into the archives and i started finding all these documents related to the polity of spaceflight and space exploration. and in particular, it was this one folder in this one box at the national archive. i had extra time for the day, so i just asked for a few extra things and there were all these wonderful reports about the exhibition of john glenn's spacecraft, japan, and the enthusiasm for spaceflight in japan and the the the detailed reports about the hundreds of thousands people who showed up and waited in line up to 8 hours was quite shocking me, because i have not waited in line for 8 hours for anything. and and to think about that level of interest. then these reports from the state department and us information talking about how that was.

contributing to the united states's position within japan and how was helping bolster the united states position in the world generally. i found fascinating and that started that started this deep dive route into the history of of space exploration. and i ended up pursuing it in graduate school and doing my dissertation on the politics, the especially the diplomacy of the apollo program. so that's, that's what got me into it. i don't have a personal memory of the missions, unfortunately, but i was lucky enough to come into this at a point where i've been able to meet many of the people involved in the program and interview them. so the apollo 11 crew, i was able to speak with all of them and work with them. and and then also other engineers and i've been in touch with many people who contributed to apollo. so it's it's very lucky timing that i've been able to do this when i still get to meet people who remember it, whose lives were impacted by it or who were some of the contributors to these successes.