One Small Step

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing and subsequent romp around the surface. Although I was only five, I remember the moment like yesterday. I was at my cousin's house and we were watching it on the earliest version of a remote controlled TV, My other cousin took a photo of the TV as Armstrong stepped foot on the moon's surface. I wonder what happened to that picture.

To commemorate Popsci compiled a list of 10 little know facts about Apollo 11. Here are a few of my favorites...

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.

6. The "one small step for man" wasn’t actually that small. Armstrong set the ship down so gently that its shock absorbers didn’t compress. He had to hop 3.5 feet from the Eagle’s ladder to the surface.

8. The toughest moonwalk task? Planting the flag. NASA’s studies suggested that the lunar soil was soft, but Armstrong and Aldrin found the surface to be a thin wisp of dust over hard rock. They managed to drive the flagpole a few inches into the ground and film it for broadcast, and then took care not to accidentally knock it over.

and digitally remastered video of that first step...