Jerry Stone presented the 2019 Christmas Lecture, which was very well attended with good representation from all age groups. He began by introducing himself and briefly described the work of the British Interplanetary Society, a society that has been in existence for 80years. Mankind has long been fascinated by the Moon and his own interest in travelling to the Moon was inspired by reading Conquest of the Moon, published in 1953.
In 1957 the possibility of actually putting a vehicle into space became a reality with the flight of Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviet Union. This came as a shock to the USA who regarded themselves as the world leader in advanced technology. We were told that the USSR's ability to launch a satellite was almost by chance as they had had to decide whether to produce lighter atomic warheads or more powerful rockets and they had gone for the later, producing the R7 series of boosters. In 1961the orbit of the Earth by Uri Gagarin again demonstrated the lead held by the Soviets.
President Kennedy consulted with his vice-president Johnson, then chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, and on 25 May 1961 announced that the USA would land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, a bold statement as, at that time, the longest an American had been in space was 15 minutes.
We were told that there were several proposals as to how a lunar mission could be achieved, some involving multiple flights and setting out from an Earth orbit. Eventually the idea of John Houbolt to go for a Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was accepted and the Apollo programme was born. However disaster struck before the first mission when a cabin fire during ground rehearsal killed the crew. As a result changes were made to the design of the capsule, allowing the door to open outwards.
Several of the early Apollo flights were described including that of Apollo 7, the first manned flight, Apollo 8, the first to orbit the Moon and Apollo 10 the first to deploy the Lunar Module in Moon orbit. These first lunar flights allowed both sides of the moon to be surveyed, revealing the existence of gravity anomalies or 'mascons'. (We were reminded that the 'far-side isn't always the 'dark-side'!).
Some of the key features of the Apollo 11 Saturn V launch vehicle were given. The first and second stages had to be transported by barge while the third needed the services of 'the flying guppy'. Comparison was made between it and the height of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, three foot higher. The first stage burned fuel at the incredible rate of 13 tonnes per second. Such a large vehicle needed massive facilities such as the Vehicle Assembly Building, some 160 m tall and the Mobile Launcher Platform, complete with 120 m Launch Umbilical Tower, that had to 'crawl' three and a half miles away to its launch position.
The talk was well illustrated by videos of the Apollo 11 flight and lunar landing, (without the US/UK conversion anomalies present in the 1969 UK TV transmissions) and several excellent colour photographs taken by Neil Armstrong. It was claimed that Armstrong got to be the first man on the Moon because of the arbitrary decision of the Lunar Module's maker to put the exit door hinges on the right-hand side! Mention was made of the Apollo Guidance computer and its limited capacity, but we were also shown photographs of the massive ground-based mainframe computers that supported its operation. There were no graphic displays then for the Apollo crew, just numbers, one of which was '1202', an alarm message with which they were unfamiliar. In training most alarms led to them aborting the mission but Mission Control gave them the 'go' command and they made a successful landing. Software engineer Margaret Hamilton has been credited with anticipating the possibility of the guidance computer becoming overloaded and programming it to self-recover.
In conclusion some of the many 'spin-offs' from the space programme were quickly covered and, being a Christmas Lecture, the wish was made that the youngsters in the audience would pick up the challenge and help continue to engineer a better world.
The presenter has clearly been a space enthusiast since a child and has a mission to pass that enthusiasm onto the youngest generation which came across well. At the same time he has collected many not so well-known facts about the Apollo programme that added interest to those of us old enough to remember the early days of space flight. (The Union Jack had been carried to the Moon on the solar panel assembly!).
Everything about the Apollo programme was incredible and in many ways still, fifty years later, hasn't been surpassed. The bravery of those early astronauts was surely matched by the boldness of those early space engineers, truly inspirational.
Lego 21309 Saturn V (1,969 pieces!)
Outstanding Fact: The Saturn V first stage uses five F1 rocket engines. Each engine has a fuel pump rated at 55 MW. HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy's largest ship, is powered by two gas turbines each rated at 36 MW.
Commercial Links:
“One Small Step” by Jerry Stone (Amazon)
British Interplanetary Society
(review – non-commercial YouTube)
Wikipedia Links:
