Tuesday, March 14, 2017

The Moon Landing

On July 20, 1969 an estimated 600 million people around the world watched as the manned spacecraft landed on the moon. This American expedition covered an astounding 240,000 miles in only 76 hours from their takeoff at the Kennedy Space Center. ABC, CBS, and NBC overall spent around $11-$12 million covering this event that lasted from Sunday morning to Monday evening. The men on board were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Micheal Collins. After spending time on the Moon gathering samples and planting the American Flag they departed, ending up landing in Hawaii. An interesting fact is that when they did land back in Hawaii they were asked to fill out a customs form at security, which the crew wrote that they departed from The Moon.

2 comments:

  1. I found the customs form so strange that I decided to research it, and discovered that while yes, there was a customs form (confirmed by Buzz Aldrin[0]), no, it was not an official form (confirmed by NASA historian[1]). Kind of interesting that NASA made the document "just for fun".

    [0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/yes-apollo-11-astronauts-had-to-complete-customs-forms-for-their-moon-trip/
    [1]: http://gizmodo.com/no-apollo-11-astronauts-didnt-go-through-customs-after-1617614706

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  2. To add a little information, the whole space race between Soviet Russia and the US were for bragging rights. I believe if Russia never started trying to get to space the US wouldn't have tried. If you think about it, just today we could be landing the first person on the moon if it wasn't for the bragging rights "war" that occurred between the two super powers. While in the end I believe Russia was able to successfully make their citizens believe they won the space race as they did get stuff in space first and were first in many space related achievements. The US I also believe were successful in making their citizens believe they won the space race as we landed a man on the moon first.

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