Talk:Apollo program/Archive 3

The Article currently says: The Apollo program ran from 1961 until 1975, and was America's third human spaceflight program (following Mercury and Gemini). Well, While it is certainly true that Apollo's first flight as well as its program termination were later than Gemini's, it also seems to be undisputed that Project Apollo was started earlier, with Gemini in something like a dedicated supporting role, to gain experiences needed for Apollo. Several sources also claim more advanced technology in some details of the Gemini spaceship due to the corresponding Apollo systems having been design-frozen at an earlier time. So I think Apollo should be numbered as America's second human spaceflight program and Gemini third. --BjKa (talk) 13:58, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

You make a good point about Apollo actually starting earlier than Gemini (which was planned to support Apollo), so I agree "third program" should be changed. But consider these:

• I think it would be just as "wrong" to call Gemini the third program, since it actually did fly before Apollo.
• I (and at least one other WP editor) notice a disturbing trend toward giving numbered statistics for everything in spaceflight, down to individual space flights. Perhaps it isn't so important to rank Gemini and Apollo as second or third.

Therefore, I think we should strike "third program" and just say that it followed Mercury, and the manned launches followed Gemini (and similarly in Project Gemini.)

I would also be very interested in seeing specifics about Gemini technology more advanced than Apollo. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:15, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

While the correction of removing "third program" from the timeline statement is a good one, I feel that stating that Apollo followed the Mercury and Gemini programs is equally inaccurate. If Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972 (as is stated), then it ran concurrently with these programs. I suggest stating something to this effect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.28.43.239 (talk) 01:34, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me most of the thrust figures in the article contain errors, in that the thrust given in N is about a tenth of the thrust given in pounds. For example, for Saturn 1B, the article says 1,600,000 pounds (730,000 N), when in fact 1 pound = 4.4 N approximately, so this should be more like 7,400,000 N. Could this be corrected, please? I won't edit myself, because I don't know which figure is accurate, and there are also minor inconsistencies with the specific articles about the different types of launch vehicle. -- 163.1.146.148 (talk) 16:15, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

The thrust error is usually caused by a common error caused by Template:Convert, because you have to use a different code for "pounds-force", which is different from "pounds" (taken as a unit of mass). I'll take a look and fix it. (There should really be no difference since a pound mass is the same as a pound force on Earth, but I'm not familiar with template programming. I would guess using pounds-mass makes it think the Newtons are kilograms, so it's not applying the 9.8 metric conversion factor.)

As for launch vehicle inconsistencies, can you please specify? Thanks. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:40, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I fixed that specific error, but there seem to be several other places where the template was used and the conversion is incorrect. Voiceofreason01 (talk) 16:48, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

• The convert template settings just needed adjusting/correcting. Was no need to remove/replace. -fnlayson (talk) 16:55, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

How are you guys able to turn updates around so quickly? :-) I tried to do what you two did and kept getting edit conflicts (including this talk page reply). JustinTime55 (talk) 17:07, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

• No idea why. Sorry 'bout the e/c. -fnlayson (talk) 17:11, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Original IP user: we still haven't settled what you mean by minor inconsitencies with other articles. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:07, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

The first Apollo mission was "Apollo I" while the next mission after that was designated "Apollo 7". What happened to missions 2 through 6? Any art or design to the numbering of the Apollo missions? Theaternearyou (talk) 05:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

This is all explained carefully in the article. Please read it.SBHarris 05:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The old proverb says this doesn't make much sense; it's still a pig. Similarly, I don't think the solution for this paragraph in the Cultural impact subsection, is to make incremental copyedits, but rather to remove it:

The dramatic accident of Apollo mission 13 was a well-known event and many people from around the world witnessed the magical return of the Apollo 13 crew members. However, the mission was not a very popular event during its launch, and TV ratings were at their historical low for space mission launches. ABC was showing the Dick Cavett Show when the Apollo 13 incident happened. That night Dick Cavett mentioned the mission on his show, saying how 3 million fewer viewers watched the launch compared to the last mission, even comparing it to the first few missions. ABC switched from the talk show to a "Special Report on Apollo 13". Then the TV screen displayed a special message on the Apollo 13 spacecraft and its failure. Apollo 13 made headlines for every newspaper and TV programs.^{[citation needed]}

Being uncited (and thus OR), alone is enough to remove it. Besides that, this much detail about Apollo 13 might belong in that article, but is way out of scope of cultural impact of the entire program. (One suspects that the writer's source was the Apollo 13 film.) The writing style is poor, and I'm not sure if it's appropriate to call "the magical return" peacock wording, but it's certainly not encyclopedic tone. I'm frankly surprised this stayed here for so long.

If someone feels it's appropriate to mention that Apollo 13 marked a turning point in waning public interest in the Moon shots, one or two sentences should do it (with appropriate citation.) JustinTime55 (talk) 21:12, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The majority of heat during re-entry is due to compressing the air ahead of the re-entry vehicle. The air "cannot get out of the way" as the vehicle is entering at supersonic speeds. Calling it "air friction" is somewhat of a misconception. This is discussed in the atmospheric entry article under the real gas section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_entry, and is also discussed on the space shuttle page. WikiDrPizza (talk) 18:16, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

It amazes me that this article and scientists in general never discuss what one of the main purposes of the APOLLO missions were or what even 'APOLLO' stands for - it is by far the best way of shooting down the conspiracy theory. The "Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser Operation" placed retro-reflectors on the moon so that we could accurately measure the distance to the moon. Measurements such as this are very important for geodesy and are fundamental to designing systems such as GPS etc., we measure distances to these reflectors to this day and any thought of placing one without a manned mission in those days is quite ridiculous. Jonny2vests (talk) 02:03, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation says that experiment started operation in 2005, whereas we all know the Apollo manned program was named in 1960. Indeed, the observatory APOLLO is based at, Apache Point Observatory didn't even exist before the mid-80's. Furthermore, we'd been soft landing instruments on the moon since the Surveyor Program in 1966, and could have put anything we wanted on them. The Soviets placed a lunar laser reflector without a manned mission in 1970 (eventually did this twice, actually). So, you're being silly. APOLLO for the laser program is an after-the-fact made-up acronym. Rather like MESSENGER for the Mercury spacecraft. Nice troll post, tho. SBHarris 03:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we should change the "Partial Failure" listed by Apollo 13 to "Successful Failure". Many people including Flight Crew members refer to it as such. The phrase is well known, and is more commonly used to describe the result as opposed to "Partial Failure". Lilly (talk) 00:59, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

• Edit found an official NASA website backing me up so I am changing it.

"Classed as "successful failure" because of experience in rescuing crew." http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/apollo/apo13hist.html Lilly (talk) 01:23, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Although the term "Successful Failure" is used by nasa, I feel like "Partial Failure" is a more neutral and accurate term. The mission's goal was to send a crew to the moon and return them safely. While they did return safely, we cannot ignore the fact there was a very serious failure on board. I am not trying to discredit the incredible ingenuity and the fantastic story of the Apollo 13 crew and engineers at NASA, but the fact of the matter is the mission did not go as planned due to a failure during the flight. To keep wikipedia as neutral and academic as possible, the term "Partial Failure" should be used to describe the Apollo 13 mission. NASA can label the failure however they wish, however, that does not change the facts concerning the mission. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.190.174.107 (talk • contribs) 21:51, November 29, 2010 (UTC)

In the spirit of neutrality, I don't believe it is necessary at all to place success/failure ratings in this mission table; it's not our obligation to make such judgements (WP:OR), and the fact that it raises a controversy shows it's not a good idea. Also, I don't believe you'll find this in the equivalent mission list tables in most other encyclopedias or space program reference books. We are not in the actuarial business.

We also should remember that during the Apollo program, space travel was (and even to this day should be considered) largely developmental (forgetting this was suggested as contributing to the Challenger tragedy at the time), and not everything could be expected to succeed 100% on every mission. The only real failures were the Apollo 1 tragedy and Apollo 13. Even the engine failure on Apollo 6 didn't stall the program, and there were many little bugs and glitches that had to be worked around in the successes.

Therefore, I would like to simply remove the color-coded designations; the failures can be easily noted in the "Mission Result" text (which we might want to think about renaming.) JustinTime55 (talk) 17:37, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Make judgments? The entire point of Apollo 13 was to land on the Moon and it failed to do so. There is no "original research" at play here in just mentioning the fact that the mission did not meet NASA's own stated goals for it. Propaganda and spin aside, there is no real controversy over what Apollo 13 was: a failure.--172.190.41.63 (talk) 03:03, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Partial success would be a lot better Ash :) (talk) 19:50, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

User Soerfm has added a generic infobox to this article, similar to how he changed the infoboxes in Project Mercury and Project Gemini to refer to the programs themselves rather than the spacecraft. I think a Template:Infobox space program would might be a good idea, but this requires some careful thought and design. It perhaps could be used on all programs (at least the "real" ones), e.g. Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, Skylab, Space Shuttle, Shenzou, etc. Until this is done, I don't think it represents a net value added here (unlike in Mercury and Gemini), so I have reverted it.

Some might not agree that this infobox is necessary, and maybe some technical expertise is required to create a new template (I've only done some editing to existing ones.) I think this should be discussed in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:29, 28 September 2011 (UTC) Comment revised JustinTime55 (talk) 16:32, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I have created the template, Template:Infobox space program. I am not going to transclude it on any articles at this time. I will be posting this on the WikiProject Spaceflight talk page so that it can be reviewed. The template does include an example that uses all of the parameters I have defined in the template using the Apollo Program as the example. Feel free to check it out. MasterSearcy (talk) 01:45, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Please direct all discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight#Space Program Infobox 192.249.47.179 JustinTime55 (talk) 16:32, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

"Sending the three-man Apollo Command Module directly to the lunar surface and back would require an extremely large launch vehicle, the Nova, which could send over 130,000 pounds (59,000 kg) to the Moon. While the Saturn V was less powerful than the Nova would have been, it still holds the record for largest payload capacity (260,000 lb/120,000 kg to LEO or (220,000 lb/100,000 kg to the Moon) of any rocket developed as of 2012."

Anyone see the totally obvious contradiction? 100,000 kg to me clearly isn't "less powerful" than 59,000 kg. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.196.68 (talk) 20:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm tempted to say "vandalism", but maybe someone just got confused. The correct Saturn V lunar payload is 100,000 pounds (not kg). It's fixed now. (BTW: your heading is wrong; that's payload, not thrust. There's a lot of lay confusion about what "rocket power" means.) JustinTime55 (talk) 15:47, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Due to the extensive rewrites made over the last several months by an ambitious, well-meaning, but I suspect slightly English-writing-challenged newbie, I've downgraded the quality rating from B to C, in light of how good it was before and how close we were, shooting for a featured article. I appreciate the spirit of WP:BOLD and some of these updates, but I just feel the goal is now a bit farther rather than closer, and it will take a lot more work to clean up and move ahead.

The style and grammar should be obvious to those following the edits to this, Project Mercury, Project Gemini, and Apollo 11 (this last a real problem, since it was GA and now I feel merits a reevaluation.)

As for structure, my major complaint is that it is oriented too much around "missions" (a word I believe not always fully understood.) I've believed for a while that an area of improvement was to structure the history of the program a bit better around the actual development history of the initial unmanned tests, the initial plan for manned flight, which got tragically blown away by the Apollo 1 fire (something I feel has gotten neglected), and then the recovery to the testing of the real lunar hardware and the resumption of manned flight planning.

Also, the editor mentioned added an artist's conception of the lunar mission profile to Apollo 11, something which I believe better belongs here and this article has been lacking. JustinTime55 (talk) 20:43, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

How about having a table of the missions? Or a table of the unmanned missions and a table of the manned missions? For manned missions, the first column would be the mission, then the launch vehicle, the then three astronauts, then perhaps the backup crew, and finally a comment. For unmanned, list the mission, launch vehicle, and objective. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:17, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Similar to Project_Gemini#List_of_missions and Project_Mercury#Manned flights. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:32, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

The lead says "Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower as a follow-on to Project Mercury, which put the first Americans in space, and Project Gemini, which developed the space travel techniques needed,...". This sounds like Gemini was conceived during the Eisenhower administration, but I think it was later. As I understand it, Gemini was started after Apollo. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:03, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

According to Project Gemini, Gemini was conceived in the Kennedy administration. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:31, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

This sentence was recently edited to say it was a follow-on to Gemini as well as Mercury, which I agree is grossly incorrect and should be changed. (In fact, there was a debate somewhere, I think it may be in the archives here, whether Gemini was the "second" or "third" US manned program.) What really happened was, that Apollo was conceived as a multi-man program to follow Mercury. The Mercury contractor, McDonnell, was pushing (and NASA was thinking about) extending Mercury to a bigger, two-man spacecraft, called "Mercury Mark II". This fell by the wayside, but after Apollo was assigned to Kennedy's Moon mission, the two-man Gemini was invented to help support Apollo, and McDonnell's "Mark II" design was the ideal starting point for it. (Of course, that all is way too much info for Apollo's intro here.) JustinTime55 (talk) 15:41, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the way it is now isn't exactly right either. It makes it sound as if the manned lunar landing program were conceived during the Eisenhower administration. It began as a spacecraft program with several tentative missions, until Kennedy focused it on the Moon. And it's not accurate to say it followed Gemini if it began the planning stages first; it ran concurrently with Gemini and only the manned flights followed it. I'm going to try another pass. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:15, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

The article says "After Apollo 12 placed the first of several seismometers on the Moon...", but Apollo 11 left a seismometer, right? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:53, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

That's right. I think I've been getting this confused with the crashing of the LMs starting with 12. Not sure why they didn't crash 12's S-IVB, since they already had two seismometers in place then; this would have to be researched. I'm going to fix it. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:44, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

In the article, it says that only 24 people have been beyond Low-Earth Orbit. What about the Hubble serving missions? Or any others? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.179.235.96 (talk) 23:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Low Earth orbit is defined as below 2,000 kilometers (1,200 mi). The Hubble orbits at only 559 kilometers (347 mi), so is not beyond LEO. The region of space immediately above LEO is in the Van Allen radiation belt, and would be dangerous for a human stay for any length of time with current spacecraft/spacesuit technology. The Apollo astronauts passed through and did not linger in it. JustinTime55 (talk) 13:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Is there additional discussion of the science legacy of Apollo anywhere? I expected to see something in this article, but all I found are a few sentences in the "Samples returned" section, while the "Legacy" section doesn't specifically address scientific discoveries at all. There was a nice article on arxiv today (http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.6768v1) that summarizes some of the key science results. James McBride (talk) 06:04, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

In the subarticle List of Apollo missions it says: The Marshall Space Flight Center, which designed the Saturn rockets, referred to the flights as Saturn-Apollo (SA), while Kennedy Space Center referred to the flights as Apollo-Saturn (AS). This is why the unmanned Saturn 1 flights are referred to as SA and the unmanned Saturn 1B are referred to as AS. Except that this does not explain why the manned Marshal flight with the fire (never launched) was indubitably named AS-204 not SA-204.

Later-- never mind, this is indeed all screwed up. I did find both AS and SA designations for Apollo 4, 5 , and 6 in the period literature. Even though 4and 6 used Saturn V and 5 used the IB originally intended for the manned AS-204 of the fire, and was thus even flown by the same name at the time. Sigh.SBHarris 20:26, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

This page is not a forum for general discussion about Apollo program/Archive 3. Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to the improvement of this page. You may wish to ask factual questions about Apollo program/Archive 3 at the Reference desk.

I understand that we went there for the glory, the demonstration of strength against the soviet and also a little for science... but why did we go several times? I don't get that. I thinks it's a gap in the explanation. --Jules.LT (talk) 22:42, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

We didn't go for a "little science." We went for all the science we could get. The moon is a very complicated place (see Geology of the Moon), with rocks of all kinds of different ages, with the really old stuff overlain with younger lavas/basalts and over that, even younger regolith breccias (see moon rock) and dust. Hard to tell age "by eye," and yet if you get back to Earth and have just another piece of the same dust, breccia, and lava you got the previous time, you've failed. And it's hard to dig-- the really good stuff is scattered around impact craters where it's been excavated for you. You've got to survey this gigantic place and you have little time and oxygen. Even with the rover (last three missions) you dare not go farther than you can walk back from. It's amazing what they got done with only six mission (the first of which was just a land, salute, grab a few rocks, and leave). SBHarris 23:14, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

This is not a random forum discussion: the reasons behind the Apollo program are very important to this article. The scientific knowledge we gained from these expeditions might be very interesting, but it is not the reason why we embarked on this multi-billion adventure. So once we had reached the goals of the project that are represented in the "background" section of this article had been achieved? (mostly, a demonstration of strength against the soviet), what kept us going? This should be investigated, sourced, and included in the article. --Jules.LT (talk) 13:11, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Just because the "original / public intent" for the Apollo program was something sold to President Kennedy as "an achievable milestone that the program could have a chance at delivering before the Soviets", doesn't mean that that was the "sole intent" of the Apollo program. The Apollo program itself had a far reaching goal or why else plan to go all the way up through Apollo 20? So there's no gap in the explanation - there's simply a gap in your pre-conceived notion / initial hypothesis that the goal of the Apollo program was somehow ONLY to be first to the moon.

Don't get me wrong - if you are saying that the WIKI PAGE is lacking and needs additional text sourcing to the program's goals, that's one thing (and the short thumbnail sketch on this page seems to indicate the the major goal of Apollo was to get to the moon first), but if we are simply discussing the program itself and its overall intent, we are getting into forum / axe-grinding territory. Ckruschke (talk) 17:37, 2 April 2013 (UTC)Ckruschke

I do think that the page is lacking, because the goal I get from it is insufficient to account for Apollo 12-20. You say that there was some far reaching goal, so I'm guessing that you know what it was. Could you please include it in the page and source it? --Jules.LT (talk) 08:30, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Right from the beginning, the article makes sure to name all the directors who were involved in management ans such... But information about those who really made this happen (the chief scientists) is vague, diffuse, or missing. For instance, who were behind the design of the shuttle? Who were those involved 1st hand into conceptualization, engineering and design at each stage of the programs? We know about Von Brown and Kurt Heinrich Debus, both Nazis (we could say "former" after the fall of the Nazi, although intentions and perceptions are of individual matters whatever the final issue of WW2 since they did not flee Germany like Einstein, and served Hitler until the end), but that's about it. For instance, it's not because a rocket is more spectacular than a shuttle, that it's then "more difficult" to design, it's just more dangerous for the technicians (the term "Rocket science" is only a populist figure). Why should only Nazis be rewarded with stardom more than other scientists? Because that's how it looks, and too many amongst those "negationists" regarding the walk on the Moon, are using that argument as some "ad hominem" judgment over the whole program. So, who were they? Unfortunately I don't have this information. --HawkFest (talk) 22:02, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Nazi: 1. A member of Adolph Hitler's political party that controlled Germany from 1933 to 1945; 2. an evil person who wants to use power to control and harm other people especially because of their race, religion, etc.

From your POV tirade, which seems to be focused on deriding von Braun and Debus as "Nazis" (utter slander in von Braun's case, IMO), I'm having a hard time seeing what glaring omissions exist in the article. It's strange that you seem to criticize the term "rocket science" as "a populist figure" (what does that mean?), yet you seem to be misled yourself by it as you ask for "the chief scientists" who made this happen, not recognizing the difference between science and engineering.

The preliminary Apollo capsule design, which ended up being used, was made by Maxime Faget, who perhaps should be mentioned here. (The Apollo spacecraft feasibility study could also be summarized here, with a little more info on the spacecraft contractor selection process. The chief engieers at the contractors (North American Aviation and Grumman, Boeing and McDonnell) were responsible for the detailed design and engineering work; with a significant contribution from the Marshal Spaceflight Center for the Saturn V integrated design; these are covered in the space vehicle hardware articles. Perhaps they could be summarized or wikilinked a bit better, but nobody's trying to "only reward Nazis with stardom." JustinTime55 (talk) 21:45, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

(political stuff) Yes. I also would like to know about the decision after Kennedy's address to the congress: Any resistance? Any discussion? It is assumed that the congress accepted Kennedy's proposal, but did they really? When then? Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 08:55, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

You bring up a good point which probably should be covered. At the beginning, there was such a fear of the Soviets (see Space Race) that I'm sure there was not much opposition at the start, when we were so far behind and it was perceived as a national security threat (Congress approved the required funds, after all.) I'm sure the liberals would have much rather spent the money on social welfare programs, but political blowback didn't really start until NASA started getting into trouble (see reaction to Apollo 1.) On the day of the Apollo 11 launch, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy led a protest outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center, and Administrator Thomas Paine spoke to him. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:45, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Well then ... sources? Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 07:51, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

I know... right? JustinTime55 (talk) 13:00, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

(science spin-off stuff findings) I know that the Apollo program influenced the theories of the early solar system and the origin of the moon very much (Geology of the Moon, Origin of the Moon, Late Heavy Bombardment, etc..) but some article text is needed for that, up to and including academic sources making the syntheses. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 07:51, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Found some sources for science findings:

• ianridpath.com: What did we learn from Apollo?,
• nasa.gov: Top Ten Scientific Discoveries Made During Apollo Exploration of the Moon,

Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 08:27, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. This is probably the biggest outstanding deficiency (see Science legacy above). Two points:

• What's there seems to be limited to technology spinoffs, and doesn't really cover the lunar geology and cosmology. Unfortunately those aren't my strong suits, nor apparently of the others heretofore interested in this article. JustinTime55 (talk) 13:26, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
• I really don't like lumping the "science" and culture impact together under the heading "Legacy". I think this should be considered a word-to-watch (don't know whether to call it peacock, weasel, or euphamism when overused). I think science and culture should be two separate main sections, with science subdivided into "Lunar science" and "Cosmology".

I think I'll try to solicit some help on the Spaceflight project page. JustinTime55 (talk) 13:26, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

The purpose of this image montage is to illustrate the basic steps in the lunar mission, but not every detail of the mission. They are taken from the single montage image shown here. It's nice that you found and uploaded a line-drawing image of the LM sleeping arrangements, but that's an internal detail that's out of scope of the mission profile, which is not intended to answer such interesting questions as "How did the astronauts sleep?". Note that all the images are from outside the spacecraft. There is no similar picture of the astronaut's sleeping arrangements in the Command Module, or other internal mission details such as using the navigation sextant, toilet facilities, etc. Where would it end?

The informational value of your image is appreciated, and I put it in the Apollo Lunar Module article, where I think it fits best. We have summary sections here on the spacecraft, but to add it there I think would still be trying to cram too much. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:56, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

This article reads the following, "...while the final Apollo 17 mission marked the sixth Moon landing and the ninth manned mission beyond low Earth orbit". What are the other three then? The Low Earth orbit article tells a completely different story, "With the exception of the manned lunar flights of the Apollo program, all human spaceflights have taken place in LEO (or were suborbital)." I'll change this article to six but feel free to revert/discuss if I'm wrong and there indeed were nine manned flights above LEO.--Adûnâi (talk) 11:47, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 were manned missions that orbited the Moon without landing. -Fnlayson (talk) 15:07, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

And Apollo 13 flew past the moon without landing after a malfunction in the service module. Those are the three instances in which manned craft flew out of LEO without landing on the moon. Since all three flew to the vicinity of the moon, all can still be reasonably called "lunar" flights in the LEO article. VQuakr (talk) 22:10, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@Tdadamemd sioz:, this is inappropriate for several reasons:

• Inappropriate use of photo: does not illustrate the speech, and carries an implicit memorial. Images are supposed to be used to illustrate the text in the article.
• A caption is supposed to be a brief description of the photo. The text did not describe the half dollar, and (again, inappropriately in a POV way) was used to sneak in the prose you wanted to add with Kennedy's statement.
• Again, the point of this article is not to memorialize Kennedy and say what "a grand sales pitch" he gave. There is a Costs section; if you feel his comment is appropriate, put it in there. JustinTime55 (talk) 13:01, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

There are plenty of space historians who point to Kennedy's Rice speech as having been a grand sales pitch. But the article does not say that, so I find it curious that you will quote something I wrote in the article summary as a basis for your objection.

As for the appropriateness of the image, it was the US Congress that decided to memorialize JFK on that coin. Not me. So what you are objecting to happens to be an historical fact. And guess how else Congress memorialized JFK? By naming an entire space center after him. The Wikipedia Policy does not prohibit articles from including what the US Congress has decided to be an appropriate memorialization.

JFK kicked off Project Apollo. He was memorialized on a coin. The flights were launched from a space center named after him. Appropriate, appropriate, appropriate ...as I see it. Clearly an NPOV account of history.

His speech mentioned the cost being on the order of 50 cents, and so I included a photo of a 50 cent piece. Is that really a huge problem? I'll suggest you take a fresh look at Wikipedia policy to see that it gives absolutely no prohibition against accurate history.--Tdadamemd sioz (talk) 15:08, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

You must be off your meds if you are so hyped up on your admiration of Kennedy that you can't properly interpret what I'm saying. I'm going to take a deep breath, and try to explain slowly and patiently, as clearly as I know how, so you can understand:

I never said that putting Kennedy's face on the half dollar was inappropriate. Please read the hyperlink I made above to WP:IMAGE RELEVANCE. That says "Images must be relevant to the article that they appear in and be significantly and directly related to the article's topic." The topic of this article is the Apollo program, not how great a President (communicator) he was, or the appropriateness of memorializing him on a coin. I do not object to the historical fact of JFK's face on a coin. I do not object to "space historians describing the Rice speech as a great sales pitch". The linking of the half dollar memorial to the Apollo program would be WP:OR on your part. There are obviously other reasons besides Apollo which led to the issuance of the coin. The "50 cents" is purely a coincidence; using the picture would amount to WP:SYNTHESIS.

Using this or any other Wikipedia article (even his biography) to highlight what a great communicator he was,

It is also poor form to write a paragraph of text (which you desire to place in the article) in an image caption; that is not what a caption is for; it is to simply describe what the image shows. This image shows the Kennedy half dollar, which you don't say in the caption (and is not the point of the article.)

I have no objection to your adding text saying something like, "In his Rice University speech, Kennedy compared the cost in terms of what citizens were paying for cigarettes". This of course has to be put in context of the prose which is already there; Kennedy and the cost of the program (in terms of absolute estimates) are already mentioned.

Please remove the photo, leaving the text. I would be happy to assist you with this. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:28, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Am I missing something or is this not mentioned anywhere in the articles for the Apollo program? Here's the Apollo 10 lunar module onboard voice transcription, recorded on the lunar module onboard recorder data storage equipment. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/AS10_LM.PDF And a youtube video discussing it. Al Worden is featured in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjLZBrQ-Oq4 --RThompson82 (talk) 07:43, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Why would you expect Wikipedia to have covered this, when the story was just reported on by CNN two hours ago (NASA releases recording of 'outer-space type music' from far side of the moon) and NASA has been quiet about it for 39 years? Since the transcripts and tapes were declassified and released in 2008, I find it curious that it didn't hit the popular media's radar until this weekend.

We could consider adding it, but take WP:FRINGE into account, not painting it as "ufology" and including the likely natural explanation, which is interference between the CM and LM radio systems. YouTube is certainly not a reliable source in this case. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:30, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Yesterday I had replaced a blurry image of an Apollo 16 sample with a clear photo of exactly the same rock, although from a slightly different angle and lighting. Just curious why the edit was reverted. Jstuby (talk) 14:02, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

The most glaring thing is that the new photo has a different aspect ratio, 1.333 height to width, versus 1.1455 in the old photo; this causes it to not line up with its mate in the Template:Multiple image. The two need to be displayed at the same height. If you can figure out how to adjust the inputs to fix this, I have no objection to the replacement. (I know, it's complicated and the instructions seem a bit confusing.)

The other thing that stood out was that the older one had less color; I found the color more visually striking than the focus, which I failed to catch. I guess the focus is more important than the color (since Moon rock just looks grey, after all).

I just did your work of adjusting the template so they're the same height. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:12, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Nice job! Jstuby (talk) 01:11, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@2601:190:402:3150:213e:f031:d8a7:bb55: Apollo 13 is considered by NASA to be a complete mission failure, because it failed in its major objective to land two astronauts on the Moon, not just to get them back alive. Jim Lovell's and Gene Kranz's rhetoric about a "successful failure" notwithstanding. Failure does not necessarily mean the astronauts die. They did not complete a "partial mission" by flying around the Moon; they were too busy trying to survive. The only mission objective which was a success was crashing the S-IVB into the Moon for the seismic experiment; that is an extremely small percentage of success. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:46, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

NASA defines "partial mission success" (or at least did in 1970) as the achievement of at least one primary mission objective. Please check page 2–39 of the Apollo Program Summary Report. The primary objectives of Apollo 13 were:

1. to perform selenological Inspection, survey, and sampling of materials in a preselected region of the Fra Mauro formation;
2. to deploy and activate an Apollo lunar surface experiments package;
3. to develop further man's capability to work in the lunar environment;
4. to obtain photographs of candidate exploration sites.

It is pretty obvious none of these was achieved, and I believe it would be original research to call it a partial failure (which necessarily implies partial success). JustinTime55 (talk) 18:35, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

These statements badly understate American inflation - a glaring mis-statement to my eye:

"Landing men on the Moon by the end of 1969 required the most sudden burst of technological creativity, and the largest commitment of resources ($25 billion; $107 billion in 2016 dollars)"

And related sidebar:

"Cost $25.4 billion (1973)[1] ($107 billion 2016)[2] "

(BTW the two cost figures for 1969 and 1973 imply that about one-billion was spent on Apollo during those four years - another problem)

Let's first stipulate that "GDP deflators" are appropriate (instead of the commonly used CPI-U). The calculation is still significantly incorrect.

Go to the link below (from the reference 2):

https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/usgdp/

Use US NOMINAL GDP for a data series greater than 1963-2016

Nominal GDP's , 1963-1969 is about $0.8-Trillion - $1-Trillion for 1963-1973.

In 2016 the Nominal GDP is about $18.6-Trillion - the resulting ratios are 18 to 23 (!)

Using "REAL GDP" the ratio is the stated 4 plus a small fraction.

This is a misapplication of GDP data.

One could argue CPI is more appropriate.

Using CPI the range of CPI ratios (2016:1963, 2016:1973) is 7.8 to 5.4. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jsusky (talk • contribs) 21:07, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

How about a table listing current locations and of the Apollo Command Modules, and other associated hardware still in existence? (perhaps better as a separate article. Perhaps also another article listing splashdown locations and U.S. Navy's support ships involves. Wfoj3 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:08, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

yes agreed

i personally have the psa test point adaptor

https://www.flickr.com/photos/1ajs/sets/72157705166193482

also curiousmarc on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU&list=PL-_93BVApb59FWrLZfdlisi_x7-Ut_-w7 is restoring a AGC computer back to working condition at this time

1ajs (talk) 17:40, 21 May 2019 (UTC)