Whilst hunting around for background images for Bowie karaoke at the Insync party, I came across this *fantastic* NASA resource: the Apollo lunar journals offer a pretty much complete transcript of all the Apollo moon missions, with pictures, audio and video. Check out this extract from the introduction to the site:
There is, of course, at least one important difference between the
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and its historical counterparts. Entries
in the journals of Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, Lewis and Clark,
Captain Cook and the others were usually a few paragraphs of summary
written at day's end. On some days, there was little to record but the
routine of the journey, little more than a series of events familiar to
anyone who had spent much time at sea or on an extended overland
journey. For such days, the journal entries usually were only a few
lines to record the weather and the progress made. In preparing the
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, we have had, of course, almost an
embarrassment of riches. Except for intervals when the astronauts were
inside the Lunar Module with their microphones turned off, virtually
every word they spoke on the Moon was broadcast to Earth and recorded.
Similarly, television cameras were deployed on all of the missions and,
therefore, a substantial proportion of the astronauts' activities were
recorded on video tape. Never before in the history of exploration has
there been so detailed a record. But then, too, never in the history of
exploration has so much expensive and unfamiliar activity been crammed
into so short a span of time.
Because of the Kennedy deadline and the overall cost of the project,
NASA necessarily designed the sparest set of spacecraft that would let
astronauts land on the Moon and then return safely to Earth. When, in
the early 50s, Wernher von Braun and his colleagues described their
vision of the first lunar landing, they imagined a fleet of three
vessels carrying a total of fifty people and nearly three hundred tons
of cargo. There was equipment enough for the assembly of a permanent
lunar base and, indeed, von Braun had the members of the first
expedition spend six weeks on the Moon before returning to Earth.
Clearly, Von Braun and his colleagues were a bit optimistic about the
scale of operations that would be possible on the first lunar voyages
and, at least in the context of Apollo, all that was really possible
was a series of one-day, two-day, or three-day visits by crews of two.
Although NASA had hopes of developing an unmanned, cargo-only version
of the Lunar Module, a vessel which would have permitted the
accumulation of supplies and equipment at a base camp, political
realities prevented Apollo from developing into a lunar base program
and short stays were necessarily a fact of life. Except for the hours
the astronauts spent resting and trying to sleep, they were constantly
working, trying to maximize the return from these all-too-brief
opportunities for exploration. In all, the Apollo crews spent about 24
man-days on the Moon and, although some activities were repeated from
day-to-day and from mission-to-mission, the learning curve was steep
and the frequency of novel experiences was high.
Consequently, we have decided to incorporate the entire transcript in
the Journal; and, indeed, as we have reviewed the transcript and tapes,
we have found the series of sometimes similar events to be helpful in
jogging memories and in establishing the richness of the experience.
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