44 years ago today...

Ickie said:
as i recall they aimed the camera at the sun and it blew up, quit working?
Click to expand...

That was the Apollo 12 mission - second landing. The Lunar Module Pilot, Alan Bean, inadvertently pointed the colour TV camera into the Sun and fried the camera. Apollo 11 used a B & W TV camera, which worked fine, a Hasselblad 70mm medium format still camera mounted on the chest control pack of Neil Armstrong's EVA spacesuit, and a time lapse 16mm cine-cam mounted in one of the windows of the LM to record the surface EVA. Ironically, other than the TV and 16mm EVA film footage, there are no still portraits of Armstrong on the lunar surface taken with the 70mm Hasselblad camera, they are all of Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin as it was deemed too difficult and time consuming to transfer the camera back and forth between Armstrong and Aldrin, so the photography duties fell to Armstong. The only Hasselblad image of Armstrong is of his tiny reflection in the gold-plated visor of Aldrin's EVA helmet as he took the historic portrait of Aldrin above...

N.
 
ThinkingManNeil said:
That was the Apollo 12 mission - second landing. The Lunar Module Pilot, Alan Bean, inadvertently pointed the colour TV camera into the Sun and fried the camera. Apollo 11 used a B & W TV camera, which worked fine, a Hasselblad 70mm medium format still camera mounted on the chest control pack of Neil Armstrong's EVA spacesuit, and a time lapse 16mm cine-cam mounted in one of the windows of the LM to record the surface EVA. Ironically, other than the TV and 16mm EVA film footage, there are no still portraits of Armstrong on the lunar surface taken with the 70mm Hasselblad camera, they are all of Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin as it was deemed too difficult and time consuming to transfer the camera back and forth between Armstrong and Aldrin, so the photography duties fell to Armstong. The only Hasselblad image of Armstrong is of his tiny reflection in the gold-plated visor of Aldrin's EVA helmet as he took the historic portrait of Aldrin above...

N.
Click to expand...

On the Apollo 12 mission Alan Bean actually snuck aboard the CSM a Hasselblad self timer, which he and Mission Commander Pete Conrad were going to use for a portrait of themselves standing next to the Surveyor 3 lander. They wanted to play a joke on the folks back at the Photo Processing Lab in Houston, leaving the Lab folks wondering how the astronauts were able to make a photograph of themselves without the means to do so. Unfortunately, time constraints didn't allow the crew to make that photo op.

I look back on the Apollo Program with awe and wonder; how we were able to come together and make a journey like that happen... and why we can't do the same thing today.

:salute:
 
ViperPilot2 said:
Unfortunately, time constraints didn't allow the crew to make that photo op.:salute:
Click to expand...

That was probably just as well. can you imagine what the Lunar landing deniers and conspiracy theorists would have made of that? :ipepsi2::isadizzy::pop4:
And as an aside, I don't remember them blowing up the Sun. :kilroy:Who fixed it?
:icon_lol:
 
One of the most impressive engineering achievements in human history :salute:, and almost as impressive was getting Apollo 13 back with the crew alive. Yet those who did it are quietly fading away, just as those who risked all in WW2 have now mostly gone. Sic transit gloria mundi.
 
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