In honor of the 55th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon, I’ve posted a video of the mission communications and film shot during that nearly 20-minute descent. It should be remembered that while cameras were rolling in Mission Control Houston and onboard the LEM/Eagle spacecraft, the event was being entirely communicated via their live audio signals and computer/sensor telemetry that continually dropped off when the antennas moved out of position. The visuals in this first video were edited to sync with the audio after the fact. The two astronauts were a bit busy trying to land on the moon to work cameras during the landing (except to switch on the camera that was mounted on the inside of one of the forward windows). Also it’s important to remember that no one would see the film shot on the moon until it was brought back to Earth and processed. We’re more than a little spoiled these days expecting live images and perfect audio of anything we’re doing in space. 

With that in mind, I’ve included a second video of the live CBS news broadcast of the event where they used part of the audio feed between Apollo 11 and Mission Control with commentary by Walter Cronkite and Apollo 7 astronaut Wally Schirra plus an animated simulation for the visual part. I find it interesting that the CBS animation showed the lander coming straight down vertically, when it would have still been flying in a horizontal or lateral trajectory and just after the 60-second fuel remaining callout from Mission Control, when Aldrin says the “lights on” message, the folks running the animation confused that message for the “contact light” message thus they showed the LEM on the ground over 30-seconds too early, with Aldrin still calling out their flight direction and position. Oops.

Looking at this footage 55-years later I wonder if it would have been “better” if they would have just gone with an audio-only presentation or more clearly a drawn-animation of the landing, versus an attempt to make it look like they were showing the landing live. I’m a bit uncomfortable with the shot of a tiny LEM on the “moon” and then a shot with the camera moving along some rock outside the LEM looking through the front windows showing “astronauts” working inside the vehicle. Even with the words “SIMULATION” on-screen, it might have been better to let the theater of the mind tell the story and then fill in the images later, when they got back to Earth with actual film of the event. 

Either way, it’s amazing what we can do when we decide  that something is important enough to do, even when others think it’s impossible. Fortunately, so many of our technological leaps over the past 55-years have happened because the minds and hands doing the work, in many cases, didn’t know that what they were doing was “impossible.” We need more of that today. 

Happy 55th Anniversary of the Landing of Apollo 11 on the moon!

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Tags: 55th anniversary of Apollo 11, Apollo 11 moon landing, CBS News, space cadet, that’s the way it was

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