![]() Notice the 1960s-era technology: pneumatic tubes, a manual pencil sharpener, a slide ruler, and rotary dials. It’s no longer used and has been restored to an Apollo-era appearance. The Mission Control from which the Apollo missions were run is now known as “historic Mission Control.” You can see it today if you visit the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. More than 500 species of wildlife inhabit the refuge, with 15 considered federally threatened or endangered." ![]() It also is a major wintering area for migratory birds. The refuge is currently home to a dozen bald eagle nests and, says NASA, “also includes several wading bird rookeries, many osprey nests, up to 400 manatees during the spring, and approximately 2,500 Florida scrub jays. Lindbergh wrote about how Apollo’s flights to the Moon might affect our view of life on the Earth - thoughts encouraged by the meeting of nature and technology at the Cape, home not only to NASA, but also the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The herons here are a small reference to Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s essay “The Heron and the Astronaut,” a meditation on her and husband Charles Lindbergh’s visit to Cape Canaveral (then Cape Kennedy) to watch the launch of Apollo 8, the first flight to leave Earth orbit and to orbit the Moon. The fellow in the bow tie closing the hatch is a nod to Guenter Wendt, Pad Leader through the Apollo missions. The White Room opened onto the hatch of the Command Module, and it's from inside the White Room, a glimpse of which you get on the right-hand page, that the astronauts board Apollo 11. (More about that ice when the rocket launches.)Īt the highest of the swing arms that reach out to the Saturn V from the launch tower, look for the astronauts (you can spot their yellow feet) making their way toward the White Room at the swing arm’s end (not visible here). Steam swirled at the base of the rocket because the rocket was filled with supercooled fuels, kerosene, liquid oxygen, and liquid hydrogen - fuels so cold that by launch time moisture from the Florida air formed a thin skin of ice on the rocket. This engineering masterpiece was designed to tame that energy and liberate it in a sustained, fiery release of power.” In his book A Man on the Moon, Andrew Chaikin writes, “Everything about the Saturn V was grossly out of scale with the rest of the world.” Fully fueled, he writes, the Saturn V “would contain the explosive energy of an atomic bomb. That helped keep the spacesuits clean, and the inside of the spaceships, too. The silver cases the astronauts carried are portable oxygen systems they supplied the astronauts with air to breathe until the astronauts boarded their spaceship and were connected to the onboard oxygen.Īnd the yellow shoes? Slippers that the astronauts wore over their suits until just before they climbed into Columbia. It is a moment that came early on the morning of the flight. Here is that moment for the crew of Apollo 11. The world can still be seen, but that is all - not smelled, or heard, or felt, or tasted.” From that moment on, no outside air will be breathed, only bottled oxygen no human voice heard, unless electronically piped in through the barrier of the pressure suit. In Liftoff: The Story of America’s Adventure in Space, Michael Collins writes, “A space flight begins when the technician snaps your helmet down into your neck ring and locks it in place.
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