Curated playlist
Apollo program
- Earth orbit rendezvousGemini 8 made the first docking of two spacecraft on March 16, 1966. It tested Earth orbit rendezvous methods.
- Apollo programApollo 13's crew got home by using their lunar module as a lifeboat after a tank exploded.
- Lost MoonLost Moon tells how an oxygen tank explosion ended Apollo 13's trip to the Moon in April 1970.
- Lunar Receiving LaboratoryNASA dropped Moon quarantine beginning with Apollo 15 after finding no evidence of lunar life.
- Apollo Applications ProgramSkylab grew out of a plan to live in an empty rocket fuel tank. Budget cuts turned that idea into a dry workshop.
- S-IVThe S-IV rocket stage saved up to 20 percent of its structural weight with one shared wall.
- Vehicle Assembly BuildingClouds can form inside the Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida. It was built to hold rockets, not weather.
- Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39Around 1890, Harvard graduates built a mahogany clubhouse where Pad 39A now stands.
- Lunar orbit rendezvousApollo 13's crew survived in a lander lifeboat role never written into its specifications.
- EarthriseApollo 8's commander claimed for years that he took the Earthrise photograph. Bill Anders took all three.
- Thomas J. Kelly (aerospace engineer)Ice clogged a fuel line on the Moon lander while Neil Armstrong was already on the surface.
- Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control CenterThe first Mission Control was in Florida, and it was demolished in May 2010.
- Michoud Assembly FacilityThe Michoud Assembly Facility began as a boat yard before it built Moon rockets.
- S-IIEngineers shaped the S-II rocket stage's fuel tank parts with underwater explosions.
- Saturn IBEngineers nicknamed the Saturn IB's first stage Cluster's Last Stand. It used recycled missile tanks.
- Taurus–LittrowThe Taurus-Littrow valley on the Moon is deeper than the Grand Canyon. In December 1972, Apollo 17 landed there.
- The Blue MarbleEach of three Apollo 17 astronauts has claimed to have taken the Blue Marble photograph of Earth.
- S-ICThe Saturn V's first stage lit its five engines in stages, 300 milliseconds apart.
- S-IVBOne S-IVB rocket stage was turned into Skylab, the first American space station. Three successive crews lived aboard it.
- Saturn IThe Saturn I rocket beat the odds with a flawless first launch in 1961. Nine more flights followed.
- We choose to go to the MoonKennedy wrote a football joke into his Moon speech by hand. He asked a Houston crowd, "Why does Rice play Texas?"
- Stolen and missing Moon rocksAbout 180 of the 270 Moon rocks Nixon gave to nations are unaccounted for today. Some sat forgotten in desk drawers.
- Direct ascentNASA's first Moon plan was to fly one giant rocket straight there. It was dropped as too costly.
- Harrison StormsAfter the Apollo 1 fire, NASA demanded that North American remove Harrison Storms. His boss chose to reassign him.
- Wernher von BraunWernher von Braun's V-2 rocket cost more lives to build than it took as a weapon.
- Abe SilversteinAbe Silverstein, a NASA engineer, gave the Apollo program its name. He chose a Greek and Roman god of light and the sun.
- Trans-lunar injectionA trans-lunar injection, the rocket burn that sends a spacecraft toward the Moon, once lit up the pre-dawn sky south of Waikiki. That burn belonged to Apollo 8, and people across the Hawaiian Islands watched it happen. It was photographed,…
- Boilerplate (spaceflight)A spacecraft dummy lost in 1969 was picked up by a Soviet trawler. The Navy had lost it during recovery training.