In yesterday’s post, I talked about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s walk across the lunar surface back in 1969 and wondered, how come they walked such a modest distance? Less than a hundred yards from their lander?
Today Neil Armstrong wrote in to say, here are the reasons:
* It was really, really hot on the moon, 200 degrees Fahrenheit. We needed protection.
* We were wearing new-fangled, water-cooled uniforms and didn’t know how long the coolant would last.
* We didn’t know how far we could go in our space suits.
* NASA wanted us to conduct our experiments in front of a fixed camera.
* We [meaning Neil] cheated just a little, and very briefly bounded off to take pictures of some interesting bedrock.
[blockquote]* NASA wanted us to conduct our experiments in front of a fixed camera.[/blockquote]
Conspiracy theorists will love that one.
It wasn’t Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s job to do a lot more. The most important thing was to show it could be done safely.
It’s unfortunate that not enough attention has been given to how much the later missions did.
Thank goodness Armstrong is talking about this. For years he was silent–or close to it–about his experiences on the moon. It is good to see him relaxing and speaking out. He has MUCH to offer.
Now, back to the moon. Let’s install a Very-Large-Array radio-telescope system on the far side, mediated though a permanent relay facility parked in the L2 LaGrange point some 40,000 miles away. The radio telescope system will be incredibly powerful and completely unimpeded by Earth-based electromagnetics.
If you think Hubble revealed a lot …