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Moon Machines
2008 · TV series · documentary · 1 season
Moon Machines in the US and UK is a Science Channel HD documentary miniseries consisting of six episodes documenting the engineering challenges of the Apollo Program to land a man on the Moon. It covers everything from the iconic Saturn V to the Command Module, the Lunar Module, the Space Suits, the Guidance and Control Computer, and the Lunar Rover. It was created by the team who made In the Shadow of the Moon in association with NASA to commemorate the agency's fiftieth anniversary in 2008. It first aired in June 2008 and was released on DVD a year later in June 2009.
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19 comments on Hacker News
I highly recommend this documentary about the spacesuit…
https://youtu.be/wLiKo-Skt90?si=OD7zKWm__kYJSgoM
The whole moon machines series is fantastic.
The Moon Machines episode "The Navigation Computer" focuses a bit on Charles Draper's system based on gyroscopes and accelerometers. The show includes a segment on the software-development issues that led to Tindallgrams. I never thought to look them up. Thank you.
https://youtu.be/6syfevpG-1U?t=1410
Some movies about the Apollo missions are incredible:
- the recent Apollo 11 movie with restored footage
- in the shadow of the moon documentary (and the related Moon machines series), awesome music as well
- Moonwalk one
Look up the "Moon Machines" documentary series - it's great storytelling with amazing B-roll. The GNC episode has stuff about the core rope, and the "first stage" episode had the story of the surfers who worked on the tanks.
If you have any interest in the Apollo missions...
In the Shadow of the Moon [0]
The film follows the manned missions to the Moon made by the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The documentary reviews both the footage and media available to the public at the time of the missions, as well as NASA films and materials which had not been opened in over 30 years.
For All Mankind [1]
A 1989 documentary film drawn from original footage of NASA's Apollo program which successfully landed the first humans on the Moon from 1969 to 1972.
Moon Machines [2]
The miniseries features interviews with around 70 of the 400,000 engineers who worked on the Apollo program during the 1960s and early 70s.
These are variously available on DVD and YouTube.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Shadow_of_the_Moon_(film)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Machines
The Moon Machines documentary series states the rocket used to get off the moon could never be test fired to make sure that particular rocket engine worked due to the propellant used - the engine had to be rebuilt after each firing, so it was one use only for space vehicles. They compensated for this by using the simplest design possible with self igniting propellant (separate fuel and oxidizer sources).
While I can not from the top of my head think of all that many actual books, I would recommend considering a couple of tv series: From the to Earth the Moon [1] and Moon Machines [2]. The former is based on a book [3], but I have not read it.
There is a lot of information available on the American space programs all over the internet, but if you would like to read about their Soviet counterparts, give Rockets and People [4] a go.
Finally, to get an idea of what it is like to live in outer space nowadays, Chris Hadfield's autobiography An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth [5] is a good read.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_(miniseries)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Machines
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_on_the_Moon
[4] https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets_people_vol1_detail.html
[5] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18170143-an-astronaut-s-guide-to-life-on-earth
>I actually get choked up watching the appropriate episode of "Moon Machines", the one that covers the MIT team.
Watched this amazing episode on youtube couple of months ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YA7X5we8ng
Truly mind boggling achievement.
I actually get choked up watching the appropriate episode of "Moon Machines", the one that covers the MIT team. That project was an 0xCF. But it worked.
I was 9 when the moon lander landed, but I was still old enough to feel the Sputnik emphasis in tech. I grew up with that program. It was the era of EE programs with 50% washout rates.
We would go to Huntsville, Houston or Cape Kennedy on vacation. It was just like that then.
I don't know how anybody could have survived the first real test of a system like that being on national TV. That's the stuff of nervous breakdowns.
Ad then by '74 we killed it because nobody knew any economics back then. Or maybe because they did.
I want a Mad Men style show about the Apollo program. Oh, why not? Why not?
Apparently Science Channel did an episode on "MIT's work on the Apollo Guidance Computer" (episode 3):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Machines#Part_3:_the_navigation_computer
They are available on public torrent sites.
Well, to use our last space race as an example: several engineers who worked on Apollo said during interviews that they strongly suspected the consistently long hours they and many others worked directly contributed to later divorces. (My source is the excellent series Moon Machines, for those curious; I believe it was the Navigation episode.)
Excellent chapter from the documentary Moon Machines about the Apollo guidance software (worth getting the whole thing on Amazon if you like this sort of thing), told from the point of view of the people who built the machines, rather than the astronauts.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxxiij_moon-machines-2008-part-3-the-navigation-computer_tech
http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Machines-Robert-Seamans/dp/B0026IQTR2
Your statement couldn't be farther from the truth (or you forgot the /sarcasm tag?). Watch "Moon Machines" mini-series (6 episodes), with many interviews of the engineers behind the Apollo program. They were all working crazy hours, many divorced during the project because of work/family imbalance.
My theory is that Manhattan and Apollo both had exceptional, unicorn-frequency leadership. Both had flawed leaders - Tom Lehrer wrote a song about Werner von Braun, and Lesley Groves is a legendary ... figure, but it got done.
The software story in "Moon Machines" should be required for anyone who does software. The whole thing should be interesting to anyone; it's a great example of documentary filmmaking.
Look up the documentary series "Moon Machines" - it does an amazing job of telling numerous stories of the engineering feats behind the Appllo project, with first-hand accounts and some pretty awesome B-roll from the archives
"Moon Machines" -- an incredible series if you haven't seen it, with episodes on building the flight computer, etc -- has an excellent episode on the story behind the spacesuit:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxxikn_moon-machines-2008-part-5-the-space-suit_tech
I cannot recommend the Moon Machines series enough. There was a whole 45-minute episode just on the space suit; it goes over in detail the how & why Playtex got the contract. It's got interviews with people who worked on the project, testing footage I've never seen elsewhere, and some great anecdotes as well. It really gets down into the nitty-gritty design challenges they faced -- it's the Apollo program as the engineers saw it, not the astronauts.
This is another good time to remind those interested in the Apollo missions that the Moon Machines series provides a great look at the non-astronaut people and work that went into the effort.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1203167
http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Machines-Robert-Seamans/dp/B0026IQTR2
That's from the six-part series Moon Machines. It's a great look at the research and scientific work that went into the Apollo lunar program, and the focus is on the men and women behind the scenes, rather than the astronauts and other people at NASA. Well worth watching if the lunar program is a subject of interest.
http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Machines-Robert-Seamans/dp/B0026IQTR2/