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  Nixon and cooties on the MooooonDec 30, 2010 7:20 PM PST | url
 
Added 2 new A* pages:As you may have noticed, I'm kind of obsessed with the Apollo program, probably because I don't know much about it and am just now finding out stuff I probably should have known since, like...grade school? I dunno, when are they supposed to teach this stuff? :P Anyway, I was looking over the Apollo 11 Wikipedia page recently and noticed some little tidbits I hadn't known before and thought were interesting, so as usual I'll just copy them here in order to look smarter than I actually am!
 
The American flag Armstrong and Aldrin famously planted next to the Eagle lander
 
Image
image by NASA (source)
 
turned out to be too close; when they lifted off from the moon, the blast from their thruster knocked the flag over. Oops! It was about 25 ft / 8 m away from the lander; later missions planted their flags about four times farther away to avoid that.
 
Aside from a toppled flag, they also left a plaque behind on the Moon, and look at these fine signatures engraved there for all Moon men to see through the ages:
 
Image
image by NASA (source)
 
Yep, they'll always remember good ol' President Nixon on the Moon; he didn't miss a chance to get in on the mission, although when he called them up on the Moon for a widely broadcast conversation, he considerately did not read a long speech he'd had prepared for the occasion, "out of respect of the lunar landing being Kennedy's legacy." What a guy! Why, when they got back, he even kept the boys entertained during their 21-day quarantine:
 
Image
image by NASA (source)
 
(Man, is that like the perfect picture for sticking your own photo in the window of the quarantine module, or what? Not that I've done that. :P)
 
The next two Apollo missions to the moon--12 and 14; 13 hit a snag, and I hope to have a separate ramble about that another day--also stuck their crews in quarantine afterward, until they finally realized there were no Moon cooties.
 
And that's all I know about Apollo 11!
 
 
 
 
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