Re: tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight

I counted 10, but I was counting Apollo 9, assuming they orbited the moon whilst 
testing the lunar module.  I see that you are correct though.   


And actually while checking yesterday I don't believe that NASA considers Apollo 
13 a lunar orbit, even though they did go around the moon in order to use the 
moons gravity to slingshot them back towards Earth.  It appears that an orbit 
must be a complete circumnavigation of the entire celestial body and from the 
diagram on Wiki they didn't do that.  They did figure 8 around but it looks like 
where the intersection of their paths occurred was outside of the Moon's orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_13_timeline.svg

So, it looks like there were eight technical orbits around the moon, Apollo 8, 
10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17.

Interesting stuff.  I know we have significant budget issues but I wish we were 
doing more space exploration, including a mission to Mars. 


Mike F.   




________________________________
From: Peter T. Chattaway <petert-LOVM4QxV+tDq6eQxt3vRmLDks+cytr/[email protected]>
To: DADL (off topic) <[email protected]>
Sent: Tue, April 12, 2011 2:35:22 AM
Subject: Re: [DADL-OT] tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the first human 
spaceflight

On Mon, 11 Apr 2011, Mike Findlay wrote:
> Nine sounded high to me and I checked we've only been six times.

Apollo 11 was the first one that actually landed on the moon, and Apollo 17 was 
the last American mission at least (I know this because there's a horror movie 
coming up next year called Apollo 18, which supposedly tells the "true" story of 
why the moon landings were called off), plus, as you note, Apollo 13's mission 
had to be aborted -- so, yeah, there have been six *American* landings on the 
moon, at least.

Were there any Russian landings? ... Nope, appears not:

  https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Apollo_program

   In these six Apollo spaceflights, 12 men walked on the Moon. These are the 
only times humans have landed on another celestial body.

Ah, but apparently there were three *orbits* around the moon, in addition to the 
six *landings*.  Those orbital missions were Apollo 8 (the one with the famous 
Christmas broadcast; also the one that produced the first-ever photographs of an 
Earthrise, and of the entire Earth from space), Apollo 10 (first manned flight 
of the Lunar Module around the moon) and ... I guess the 9th might be Apollo 13, 
which *did* fly around the dark side of the moon, if I remember the movie 
correctly.  (Apparently Apollo 9 was done to test the Lunar Module but didn't 
actually take it to the moon, while Apollo 13 is currently the only manned 
non-orbital lunar flight that has ever taken place -- but a lunar flight it is, 
apparently.)

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Manned_missions


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