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| UFO: First Moon Mission Was A Touch-And-Go Event |
382 Views |
| posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 |
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FIRST MOON MISSION WAS A TOUCH-AND-GO EVENT: NEW DOCUMENTARY
By Renin Paul
earthtimes.org
July 24, 2006
Original Link
A new documentary reveals that the Americans were so eager to show their one-upmanship over the Russians that they launched the mission to moon without much scientific or technical precision or the required precautions. The mission came to be launched in hope rather than in expectation.
The doucmentary, Apollo 11: The Untold Story, brings out several lacunae that would have ended up in disaster.
The uncertainty was so strong that the then U.S. president Richard Nixon had even prepared an address to the nation announcing that the three astronauts -- Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins -- had died in a space mishap.
Aldrin, now 76, interviewed by the makers of the documentary, narrated how he found to his dismay that a vital switch got damaged as one of the astronauts brushed against it in a bulky spacesuit. He said as he looked around some of the lunar dust on the floor, he found that there was something that did not belong to the moon -- a broken part of a circuit breaker. That was a vital link for the trio to return to the earth in safety. "In the countdown procedure, I used a pen, one of several that we had on board that didn't have metal on the end, and we used that to push the circuit breaker in."
The documentary also provides an account of the crisis that occurred when the landing module was thrown off course by a computer breakdown just as it was about to land. As the astronauts tried to find out what really went wrong, they also noticed that the spaceship had very inadequate fuel. The trio was 100 feet from landing and the vehicle had only fuel for 60 seconds. "Without trying to disturb Neil's concentration my body language was urging him to 'Get on the ground as soon as you can', Aldrin told the makers of the documentary.
Armstrong managed to land with just 15 seconds of fuel left.
There were also problems about escape procedures for the astronauts in case of an eventuality. Classified documents that have been made public indicate that NASA scientists never told the astronauts that the escape procedures could be useless as they would work only if the Saturn V rocket that powered their craft had broken off.
The U.S. government had already ordered the ground control to cut off links with the astronauts if any disaster occurred. The government was more concerned about a whole world watching the American astronauts spinning back into space.
Aldrin also revealed that he and other astronauts had reported seeing a UFO during the flight, but NASA had covered it up. He said, "There was something out there, close enough to be observed, and what could it be?
"Now, obviously, the three of us weren't going to blurt out, 'Hey Houston, we've got something moving alongside of us and we don't know what it is you know?'
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