MIT Science Reporter — "Returning from the Moon" (1966)

Comments · 504

• MI

  @mindbodyexpert · 1 year ago

  Those old documentaries are so much more in any of the one produced in 21st century

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• BR

  @brianarbenz1329 · 1 year ago

  I love MIT Science Reporter and John Fitch. He knew just how to put the human, conversational touch in with all this technical info, but he didn't dumb it down. Some of the finest reporting and explaining ever.

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• BR

  @braniganblue · 2 years ago

  Can we take a minute to appreciate how smart these scientist were, not only in knowing what problems they would face, but in solving them as well.

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• TO

  @tomschmidt381 · 3 years ago

  I've watched this series multiple times over the years. I always come away in awe with how much research the engineers needed to do to successfully perform the mission.

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• XX

  @xx3868 · 7 years ago

  The CM/SM was incredible complex with so many parts that had to work perfectly for nearly 2 weeks and all shoehorned into a weight and size constraints. This kept being a problem as so many subsystems to include plus redundancy.  The rocket engineers were asked to ramp up the current power 12X!!!  where normally a twice increase would be a big ask and also they had to build ungodly pressures to deliver the propellants at enough pressures to make the sort of thrust they needed all without melting the available materials around the combustion chambers. Today the same guys who did this still shake their heads at the problems they faced and how they ever did it bit they did. Apollo 8 and 17 were the most reliable overall with little problems on the rest like engine cutouts and fogged windows and on 16, they really had some issues just before they were about to descend to the surface when a dish jammed and one of two systems on the SM main engine showed bad. The men orbited in the LM with the CM for some time before they were given the ok to head down to the surface and it was a bit close as they were drifting off the orbit all the time so any long wait, and they would have to cancel the landing and come back. This was all explained in Charlies Dukes book i have as he was LM pilot for 16.

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• RA

  @radaroreilly9502 · 7 years ago

  It’s amazing how much information they used to share.  These days, it’s all at the kindergarten level.

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• EC

  @ecktoplasmic · 3 years ago

  It's refreshing watching technical/engineering folks conducting demonstrations and explanations on camera as opposed to dedicated PR people. The presentations are matter of fact and concise like they're taking time away from their busy work to make these films for educators, the public, or whoever the films intended for.  It just seems more earnest than the coiffured media savvy world of today.

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• CK

  @ckruberg · 3 years ago

  The whole program from rocket tip to base was incredibly rigorous. Breathtaking in scope. Human endeavour, coordination and discipline at its grandest.

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• GH

  @GH-oi2jf · 7 years ago

  What I find interesting is all thos primitive 1960s automobiles at the start of the video.  This is a reminder of how advanced the Apollo technology was beyond engineering for everyday transportation purposes of the era.

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• VE

  @Vesalempinen · 8 months ago

  The era of thermosetting elastomers, binders and adhesives that we take for granted today.❤

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• DA

  @DavidG2P · 2 years ago

  They filled every single of like 400.000 honeycombs separately by hand 🤯

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• BL

  @blueskys8814 · 7 years ago

  I remember when I was in 5th grade going to school in Bedford Mass someone, whose parents must have worked at avco in Lowell, brought in a sample of the honey comb used in the heat shield. It was almost like thin cardboard yet you could stand on it and it would not crush or collapse.

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