Quote of the Day
"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."
Ten Things You Didn't Know About the Apollo 11 Moon Landing
1. The Apollo's Saturn rockets were packed with enough fuel to throw 100-pound shrapnel three miles, and NASA couldn't rule out the possibility that they might explode on takeoff. NASA seated its VIP spectators three and a half miles from the launchpad. 2. The Apollo computers had less processing power than a cellphone. 3. Drinking water was a fuel-cell by-product, but Apollo 11's hydrogen-gas filters didn't work, making every drink bubbly. Urinating and defecating in zero gravity, meanwhile, had not been figured out; the latter was so troublesome that at least one astronaut spent his entire mission on an anti-diarrhea drug to avoid it. 4. When Apollo 11's lunar lander, the Eagle, separated from the orbiter, the cabin wasn't fully depressurized, resulting in a burst of gas equivalent to popping a champagne cork. It threw the module's landing four miles off-target. 5. Pilot Neil Armstrong nearly ran out of fuel landing the Eagle, ...
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