To the Moon

Listening to the podcast I blogged about not too long ago (13 Minutes to the Moon) triggered my interest in the Apollo program. I've always had an interest in space, but the Apollo missions seemed like ancient history. The first thing I did was re-watch Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell.

That's when I started wondering how old were the astronauts? A search online didn't turn up their ages at the time of the mission, but it did show the current ages for the two surviving crew members of Apollo 13. Lovell was 42 and Haise was 37...if I did my math right. :-) I used a calculator, but even then I've been known to make mistakes.

From the podcast, I'd learned that the average of mission control was 27 years old.

I always imagined that everyone involved in the space race was older, a grizzled veteran from the military pushing 50 if not already in their 50s. It was a little staggering to learn I had this wrong all this time.

My interest is really fueled now and I'm going to have to see if I can find some more podcasts or maybe some documentaries about NASA's Apollo program. The podcast had clips from the oral history museum, so maybe that would be a place to start. First hand accounts from the people who were directly involved would be fascinating.

It also gets me wondering why we haven't been back to the moon since the 1970s? I know it's expensive, but if did it with the technology from 50 years ago, surely we could do it again for less than what it cost then.

To the moon, NASA!

13 Minutes to the Moon

***I received no compensation of any kind for this post.***

I love podcasts and I'm always looking for interesting ones to listen to. I found a good one recently produced by the BBC World Service called 13 Minutes to the Moon. It's about Apollo 11 and the first moon landing.

They could have focused solely on the first moon landing itself and I would have been riveted because I'm super into space stuff. (Probably why I started off writing Science Fiction Romance stories.) The BBC did more than this, though, giving us all kinds of fascinating episodes into other things that impacted the mission in some way.

The first episode covered the Soviet space program and how that propelled President Kennedy to set the moon as our goal. Other episodes that I've listened to so far include mission control and the fact that most of those guys were in their 20s. The lunar module. Apollo 1 and the fire that killed three astronauts. There was also an episode covering the computer and the software running on the computer that landed the astronauts on the moon. Even topics I didn't think would be that interesting ended up being incredible!

I wish I could listen faster!

One of the really cool things is how many interviews are included. Some of the people were interviewed by NASA before their deaths, but many were interviewed by the BBC. Many of the men and women interviewed mentioned things I'd never thought about or simply took for granted because they've always been part of my life.

If you have any interest in the Apollo program, I highly recommend this podcast. If you search for the title on any podcast app, it should show up.

Five stars (Through episode 5)

Did Earth Have Two Moons?

This video is by NASA and I found it interesting.

Evolution of the Moon

Tour of the Moon