Apollo 11. July 20, 1969

This weekend was the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11's historic trip to the moon.
Lets revisit this event and look at just how they got there.

First.... The rocket that took them was the Saturn V;  this fucker is 363 feet long and the largest rocket ever created. It's basically five engines under "how much weight of fuel can we put on top of them?"

Not impressed are you Mr President? How about when we put  that fucker next to the statue of liberty and recognizable landmarks you've probably seen in the movies but never really appreciate how big they are?

Well, the three astronauts, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins got to the moon basically by being strapped onto the top of that rocket. Here's a picture from the Apollo 11 launch.  The three astronauts are in the lunar module which is juuuuuust above the silver part  of the rocket in the picture. And everything below them is pretty much rocket fuel ie death. Back then they didnt use these new age sissy "space shuttles", it was simply get on top of the dam rocket and pray that it would be a fast painless death.

The computers that guided all of this have less computing power than your mobile phone, which surprisingly were also primarily used for porn.

Although the launch had a team of three, only two of the men walked on the moon.  Michael Collins is the third man who had to stay behind as support.  As a result, Collins won the award for "most envy and repressed anger by any man in history".

But one of his lasting legacies besides forgotten Apollo 11 astronaut is that in this picture of the lunar module and the earth, Michael Collins is the only human not in the frame of this shot.  Let that sink in.