A Reader’s Questions about going to the Moon
One of our great Facebook friends, student Zeynep Tasci from Budapest Hungary asked:
“Why didn’t NASA have any spaceflight program to Moon after the Apollo program?”
EOA: Money – they achieved their goal of beating the USSR to the moon and the general public in the US lost interest in the moon. The program cost a huge amount! 10 times what the current program costs and in 1966 peaked at around 5% of the US federal budget.
You can imagine that since the current NASA program is being cut to pieces because of the expense, the government was keen to get NASA back to an affordable part of the budget.
Zeynep: well, what do you think about the claims that NASA never went to the moon?
EOA: I worked on some of the gear to do the video relay from the moon – I’m convinced that we went purely because of my knowledge and the fact that you would have had to keep a secret with about 100,000 people knowing it. It is a ridiculous claim on so many levels. Also if they were going to fake it once, why fake it 5 more times at the risk of being exposed.
Zeynep: I’m convinced too
EOA: I worked on space programs from 1969 to 1983 – the missions were all real – we have the ability to do these things. I was 17 years old in 1969 so it was a really great experience to have worked on Apollo 11 communications during my term break. All my work was double checked afterwards.
Zeynep: great 
so, the only problem was the budget, I mean after Apollo
EOA: Basically, yes. The US public did not care anymore – they had proven that they could do it and thus it is hard to justify funding for such a massive task. Today the US complain about 0.5% of the fedral budget and the Apollo program cost nearly over 5% of the Federal budget in 1966 and there were hidden costs too so maybe over 10 times the current budget is more realistic.
Wikipedia has a table about the costs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
NASA have not even had enough money to build a replacement for the shuttle in recent years, so for the next 5 years they will have to rely on others to launch their astronauts into space. Russia will be charging US$50M each astronaut launched on Soyuz.
Zeynep: and a last question, how could they lift off from the moon surface and achieve a rendezvous between the 2 modules (LEM and the command and service module given that the rocket to get them off the earth’s surface was so large?
EOA: Low gravity, small mass and no air resistance. The orbit of the command module was only about 80 km above the surface – all very acheivable. You can orbit very low on the moon if you have the speed – no air resistance to slow you down!
Only the small top part of the lunar module returned to space for the link-up with the command module (see the image at right). The bottom part stayed on the moon. You can do the basic maths to check this out. The info is in Wiki about the weights of the vehicles. The very light weight vehicle was just large enough for the rocks and the two astronauts. The walls were so thin that they would be easily punctured if care was not taken.
The massive rocket needed to take the Apollo mission into earth orbit was huge just to be able to carry the fuel needed to carry more fuel. They could have used 2 much smaller rockets and linked up in earth orbit, but they chose not to do that.
Zeynep: I know that it’s physically achievable but the rendezvous part is complicated.
EOA: Finding the other space ship is easy, docking is the hard part, but they knew the risks and they already practised it in earth orbit before going to the moon. They tested it many times on earlier missions too. The technology was sound, but i am sure there was relief once they could join the two craft together.
There were many dangerous parts to the mission such as if the engines did not fire as they basically had only one engine for each phase of the mission.
Zeynep: when mission mission ended, how did they return to earth ?
EOA: Before entering the atmosphere they dumped the lunar module and the service module – only the command module returned with the moon rock and the astronauts. The other modules burned up in the earth’s atmosphere.
Look at these posts on our website:
http://echoesofapollo.com/2009/07/24/a11-40yrs-apollo-continues-to-accelerate-towards-earth/
http://echoesofapollo.com/2009/07/24/a11-40yrs-apollo-11-prepares-for-reentry/
http://echoesofapollo.com/2009/07/24/a11-40yrs-command-and-service-module-separate/
http://echoesofapollo.com/2009/07/24/a11-40yrs-apollo-11-lands-safely/
The command module has a heat shield that keeps the rest of the ship safe from the super heated, ionised air. The shape of the module keeps it stable and only the heat shield points to the oncoming air. They cannot communicate with all the ionised air around the capsule and they must slow down first before radio links are reestablished.
Thanks Zeynep for such great questions and good luck at school. I know you have a desire to work in space sciences and Echoes of Apollo wishes you all the best for your future.
