When the first rock and dust samples from the moon were returned, many folks were surprised because they were dark gray, almost black. We think of the moon as light colored because it's the brightest thing we see in a dark sky, but in actuality it's not very reflective. In fact, on average, the surface of the moon only bounces about 7% of the sunlight back. That's about as reflective as asphalt.

Posted by: Ted at 07:36 PM | category: Space Program
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I'm re-reading A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts*, and thought I'd pass along a few things that fired my imagination as I read.

Nothing like a little history to refresh your memories, or to educate you youngsters who don't remember back that far.**

Apollo 8 was crewed by Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders. They were the first men to fly to the moon and go into orbit there. It was quite a jump for the day because the farthest away man had been from the Earth before them was 850 miles. Their destination was 240,000 miles away.

If the Saturn V (pronounced "saturn five") was standing next to the Statue of Liberty, the crew could look down and see the top of the torch about six stories below them.

The crew had lunch with Charles Lindberg the day before liftoff. During the conversation, they figured out that in the first second of their flight they would burn twenty times as much fuel as Lindberg used on his trans-Atlantic trip.

Forty seconds after liftoff, they went supersonic.

As the crew was preparing for liftoff, Bill Anders noticed a hornet building a nest on the outside of the window of the Command Capsule.

I'm sure there will be more of this trivia as I continue the books. Wonderful stuff.

* The Amazon link is to a paperback version released with a Foreward by Tom Hanks. I have the original 3-volume hardcover set.

** I'm one of those youngsters. I was too young to pay attention to Mercury and Gemini, and barely recall the later flights of Apollo and the moon landings.

Posted by: Ted at 07:32 PM | category: Space Program
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