July 16, 1969 – Countdown, launch, Earth orbital phase, TLI tracking and docking with the lunar module, S4B ejection and TV broadcast.
This video will cover all of these events with air-to-ground/flight director loops and audio from the crew on board with available film and photographs taken by the crew. The video begins with the crew having breakfast and ends at a GET of 14h 26m.
Video timeline:
00:00:30 Breakfast
00:03:16 Get dressed
00:08:04 Departure
00:21:55 At 39h
00:55:08 Closing the hatches
03:04:12 Takeoff
03:06:55 S1C SEPTEMBER
03:13:20 until September
03:15:51 SECO
05:12:46 TLI
05:26:39 ALS SEPTEMBER
05:33:15 LM Mooring
06:54:54 Television
Our thanks go to Robin, Pat, Ben, Stephen, Dwight, Britt, Vinny and Ed without whom this project would not have been completed or would not have been as comprehensive in terms of coverage.
Thanks also to my amazing channel subscribers who have encouraged and supported the channel over the past 10 years.
All video/audio/photos courtesy of NASA
I highly recommend following the series while reading the Apollo 11 Flight Journal – https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap11fj/index.html
and the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal – https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/
Other great sites I looked to for information or materials for making the series:
The Apollo Audio Collection – https://archive.org/details/nasaaudiocollection
Apollo Guidence Virtual Computer Homepage – https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/
Orbiter space flight simulator – http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/
Apogee Books – http://www.cgpublishing.com/
Dave Schloms' podcast series makes for a fascinating record and can be found here https://www.npr.org/podcasts/503170458/blue-dot
Ben Feist's exceptional work on the Apollo 11 mission in real time can be viewed here https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/
Facebook Groups
Mercury, Gemini and Saturn/Apollo era!! Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/groups/MercuryGeminiApollo/
Apollo 11 Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/groups/Apollo11Celebration/
Space Hipsters Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/groups/spacehipsters/
The following books were invaluable in the making of the series
Apollo 11 NASA Mission Reports (Parts 1, 2 and 3) – Robert Godwin
Footprints in the Dust – Colin Burgess
A Man on the Moon – Andrew Chaikin
Carry the Fire – Michael Collins
Failure is not an option – Eugene Kranz
Leading Man – James Hansen/Neil Armstrong
Forever Young – James Hansen/John Young
The last man on the Moon – Eugène Cernan
Rocket Men-Robert Kurson
The Man on the Moon – Peter Fairley
Invasion of the Moon – Peter Ryan
Chariots for Apollo – Courtney Brooks/James Grimwood/Loyd Swenson
LEM Lunar Excusion Module Bridging Manual – Grumman
How Apollo flew to the Moon – David Woods
Apollo – A Timeline 1 to 4 – NASA
Growing up with spaceflight – Apollo Parts 1 and 2 – Wes Oleszewski
Live TV from the Moon – Dwight Steven-Boniecki
Moonwalker – Charles and Dotty Duke
Digital Apollo – David Mindell
From the trenches of Mission Control to the craters of the Moon – Lunney/Bostick/Reed/Deiterich/Kennedy/Von Ehrefried/Boone/Stoval/
If you would like to donate to this and other future projects (any money donated will go towards purchasing hardware/software to use on these series) paypal.me/Lunarmodule5 – all donations are received with gratitude and thanks !
The Production of the Full Mission Series – An Explanation of the Process
Production began in February 2018 with the intention of releasing the film on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's launch day (subsequently, pre- and post-flight press conferences were added). Each video took between 1 and 3 months to produce, with approximately 10 hours of work per week.
Full mission videos begin with editing the audio available for that particular day, sometimes split into 3 audio tracks (air-to-ground loop/flight directors/onboard crew tape). Once this process is complete, available TV transmissions or other associated videos are positioned with the 16mm film taken by the crew. Photographs are placed in the mission timeline approximately where they were taken during the mission. Captions are then added to provide relevant information. The spaces left visually are filled with screenshots of the spacecraft from the Orbiter space simulator. Spacecraft positions are approximate to what would have been seen during the mission, but during TLI, CSM RCS and SPS (LOI, etc.) burns, the orientation is as close to reality as possible (with wise advice from RW). Once these screenshots are in place, the Apollo Guidence Computer (Virtual AGC) screens are captured. This involves setting the AGC time of PAO announcements during the flight, capturing them on screen and then transferring them to the timeline. Finally, the title sequences are added.
The final editing of the entire video takes place with a walkthrough of the entire thing before the video is rendered. Video sizes range from 4 to 48 GB.
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