This is a paper that I wrote for my college English Comp 101 class. This is one of those papers that I found intriguing and thought I would share it. Please refrain from quoting anything from this paper without my permission. Thank you.
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued a seemingly impossible challenge to the United States. During a speech to Congress, Kennedy said, "...I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth" (Kennedy). On July 20, 1969 at 4:30pm Eastern Time, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin landed their lunar module on the moon. Six and a half hours later, millions were glued to their televisions to watch Armstrong take his first steps on the moon. After testing the firmness of the surface, he stepped onto the ground and made his famous remarks: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" (Wagener 145). They had realized their goal. For the first time a man was walking on the moon, but not without consequences. Those first men had a huge impact on the moon. Between their footsteps, tokens taken to be left behind, trash, and equipment, the signs of man were unmistakable.
In the planning stages for the mission, known as Apollo 11, NASA officials studied as much information as they could in advance, along with making educated guesses as to what they might discover on the moon. They were sure that when the astronauts landed, the ship, as well as the men, would sink several inches or more into the lunar dust. What they found was that the ship and the men only sunk a mere inch. They also had some doubts as to how much the men would be able to move due to the weight of the spacesuits that were critical to their survival in space. On earth, the spacesuits tipped the scales at 200 pounds. On the moon, the gravitational pull is less than on the earth, and makes everything approximately one-sixth the weight (Wilford). That brought the weight on the spacesuits down to about thirty pounds, making movement easier for the men.
One thing NASA was sure about was that the ship would get them to the moon, but the question remained: could it land them on the moon? The spaceship itself was made up of the Command Module (CM) and the Lunar Module (LM). The CM would remain in an orbit around the moon the entire time and would be piloted by astronaut Michael Collins. The LM, containing Armstrong and Aldrin, would separate from the CM and land on the moon. The LM was made up of two parts: the ascent stage and the descent stage. The descent stage, which would remain behind, would get them to the moon and then act as a launch pad for the ascent stage, which would get them back to the CM (Apollo). The LM was a strange looking machine. It looked like a giant space bug sitting on the moon with legs that spread out for about fifteen feet. The capsule that the men traveled in sat on the top. In between the two were the engines needed to both fly the machine and to launch it back to the CM.
During the landing, the men in the control center in Houston were holding their breath, waiting for the first sound from the astronauts. That was when Neil Armstrong said, "Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed" (Wagener 144). There was a collective sigh of relief. The LM landed on an area of the moon known as the Sea of Tranquility. This part of the moon experiences a daytime which lasts fourteen earth days and a nighttime that lasts another fourteen earth days. When the LM, also known as the Eagle, landed it was during the daytime phase.
It took Armstrong and Aldrin a few hours to go through a checklist to make sure they were ready to get to work on the moon and were prepared for the return trip. Neil Armstrong then left the capsule and made his way down to the surface of the moon. To climb out of the LM, he needed to depressurize the capsule, peel back the door, climb out onto a small porch, and then climb down the seven foot ladder before actually touching the surface. It took several minutes for Armstrong to leave the LM and actually reach the lunar surface. Aldrin climbed down to the moon about twenty minutes after Armstrong.
The astronauts found the surface to be bleak, kind of a brownish-gray color (Wilford). There were many small craters, small hills, ridges, deep cracks, lots of rubble, and many, many rocks of every shape and size. Neil Armstrong said that he found the soil to be "fine and powdery" (Wagener 145). Although the moon has very little atmosphere, there was no wind, no water, and no known microbes to cause erosion or decay. In the shadows, the temperatures could be as cold as -280 degrees Fahrenheit, and in the sun, it could get as high as 280 degrees Fahrenheit. When the men landed, it was zero degress, and by the time they took off, the temperature had reached ninety degrees (Wilford).
One of the initial things that the men did on the moon was to collect samples. The thought was that if something went wrong and they needed to quickly leave, at least the mission would not be futile as they would still have some samples. They grabbed a shovel and started digging up some of the lunar soil. They were able to dig up about thirty pounds of soil and collected around fifty rocks weighing in at about twenty pounds (Apollo). Scientists later determined that the rocks were both basalt and breccias. The basalt rocks are volcanic and are very similar to the kind found in Hawaii. The breccias rocks are rocks that are made up of fragments of older rocks which are compressed together (Apollo).
Buzz Aldrin then grabbed the three by five foot American flag that they had brought with them and planted it on the moon. Due to the solidity of the soil and not being able to fully extend the pole, they were not able to securely plant it on the surface. It stayed in its position until they left, when the exhaust from the LM knocked it over.
The astronauts then set up three experiments (Wagener 146). The first experiment was a device to measre the seismic activity on the moon. This experiment shows that the moon is experiencing approximately 500 earthquakes a year, as opposed to the earth which has approximately 10,000 a year. The quakes on the moon usually range between one and two on the Richter scale, something that probably would not be felt (Seybold). The second experiment was a laser-ranging retroflector. This retroflector was made up of a hundred circular reflectors. A laser bean located in New Mexico bounces off these reflectors. Although only one out of a hundred beams actually hit the reflectors due to the size of the beam and the size of the reflectors, the experiment was working, and it gave an exact measurement of the distance between the earth and the moon (Seybold). It also helped measure the continental drift on the earth. The third and final experiment was a large sheet of aluminum foil that was set up to collect samples of the gases that were located within the lunar atmosphere. When the men returned to the earth, the only experiment that came back with them was the aluminum foil samples. The foil sheet was sent to a laboratory in Switzerland, and the scientists there were able to extract the gases and find out just what makes up the lunar atmosphere.
The astronauts also took along some symbolic tokens to be left for future explorers. Each of the astronauts, including Michael Collins who stayed behind in the CM, were married, and their wives sent along small keepsakes of their lives. None of the astronauts told anyone what those mementos were, and to this day, three items are sitting on the moon known only to the astronauts and their wives. A plaque from NASA was also left. This plaque is a tribute to the men behind the landing, all Americans, and all the citizens of the world by saying, "Here men from the planet eart first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind" (Wagener 148). A patch commemorating the Apollo I mission, a mission that, sadly, did not do what it set out to accomplish, was also taken (Wagener 148). Astronauts Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire that occurred on that spaceship. Although they were on the ground when the fire broke out, the latch to the door would not open, and all three men died. A medal commemorating the Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, who were the first to go into space, was left up there (Wagener 149). A silicon disc which carried statements from four United States Presidents and the leaders of seventy-three nations was left on the moon and a gold olive branch was left as a symbol of peace (Culp).
The astronauts spent about two and a half hours walking, jumping, working, and playing on the moon. When it was time to leave, they had to remove some of the weight from the LM. Something had to be left behind. Both Armstrong and Aldrin removed their boots and the life support packs and dumped them outside the capsule. Then they put empty food containers, filled urine and feces bags, and some other trash, placed them in a larger bag and tossed it outside the capsule (Wagener 153). Armstrong and Aldrin were officially the first to litter on the moon. Many of the tools that they used were also left behind. The New Mexico State University compiled a list of all the things left on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts, and the list exceeds 100 items (Culp). When they added the samples of soil and rocks to the LM, the weight was in excess of the launch weight, so things had to be left behind in order to lower the load to a weight that would accommodate liftoff.
As planned when the Lunar Module once again connected with the Command Module, all the samples and other items that they needed to save were transferred to the CM from the LM, it was then set free, and it crashed onto the moon's surface.
Once the astronauts were home again, scientists figured that the Apollo 11 flight increased the atmosphere of the moon by 30%. It took several weeks for the atmosphere to return to normal (Seybold). For each of the Apollo missions to the moon, they found that there was a similar increase to the atmosphere.
The New Mexico State University is trying to get the Apollo 11 landing site at the Sea of Tranquility preserved on the World Heritage List and the National Register of Historic Places. However, in 1967 the United States signed a United Nations treaty stating that no nation could claim any land on any celestial body. A nation can claim the items left behind, but cannot claim the land itself. There is a contest, which is sponsored in part by Google, with a prize of over $20 million, for the first person to put a robot on the moon and photograph one thing left behind by any of the Apollo missions (Milstein). A huge concern is that one of these sites will be disturbed. Neil Armstrong's footprint, which could, conceivably, be there for 10 million years could be run over with one of their robots, yet there is nothing to be done due to the United Nations treaty. When, or if, moon travel is available to the average person, these sites will be exposed to destruction. The New Mexico State University is doing everything they can do to preserve these sites, and the items left behind (including the trash) for posterity. It is a part of world history. Some of the ideas presented to preserve these areas include building domes over the sites or boardwalks around the sites. These ideas are just more ways to leave signs of man behind.
For the short time that man was actually on the moon, they made several changes to the lunar surface by leaving footprints, digging holes, removing rocks and soil, placing experiments into the soil, littering, and increasing the atmosphere. This was just the first moon landing. For each of the later five landings, more things were taken up and fewer things were brough back. Looking up at the moon today, a person will see a man in the moon, or wonder if the moon is made of cheese, but few will stop and think about the men that walked on that giant, glowing ball seen in the night sky, and even fewer will think about how those men affected it.
"Apollo 11 Mission." Lunar and Planetary Institute. Universities Space Research Association. n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.
Culp, Justin, Dr. Beth O'Leary, John Versluis, and Ralph Gibson. Lunar Legacy Project. New Mexico State University. 8 Apr 2000. Web. 10 Oct. 2011.
Kennedy, John F. "Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs, May 25, 1961." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. n.d. Web. 15 Nov 2011.
Milstein, Michael. "DIGS Space Race II." Smithsonian Magazine. June 2008: 18+. Print.
Seybold, Calina C. Texas Space Grant Consortium. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Aug. 1995. Web. 15 Nov 2011.
Wagener, Leon. One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2004. Print.
Wilford, John Noble. "Men Walk on the Moon." New York Times. 21 July 1969: Sec 1+. Print.
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