It is quite amazing to think that 40 years and 4 days ago 3 men steped into a tiny capsule attached to Saturn V rocket loaded with enough rocket fuel to take them 0 to 6000 mph in 2.5 minutes in the one stage, then from 6000 mph to 15,300 mph in another 6 minutes. They were targeting the moon, ~240,000 miles away moving at ~ 2200 mph… and 4 days later the made it there and then they came back home! 

After 40 years its hard to appreciate the magnitude of that accomplishment. It is utterly amazing! Reading stories about the moon landing and seeing the creation of the space shuttle as a kid is what made me want to be an engineer, so I could create things that could accomplish amazing feats like a moon landing (and maybe even be an astronaut).

Several years ago my mom had all of my grandmother’s 8mm home films converted to VHS tape (yes it was a while ago). My Grandmother had recorded some of the Apoll0 video footage from her TV.   Watching it stirred excitement in me again.

 (My VHS to DVD dubber is not working, because its fairly useless technology now, but I will try and post the video soon) 

If you are really geeky check this out: as part of the free software foundation open source code project, scanned copies of the original Apollo command module and lunar module software have been transcribed. You can even compile and run it if you want (that is so cool… if you are into that sort of thing ;o)

http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/07/apollo-11-missions-40th-anniversary-one.html

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