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 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 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 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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