Neil Armstrong Explains His Famous Apollo 11 Moonwalk

[really?]

From Space.com

Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong may be notoriously private, but the first man on the moon recently reached out to a reporter to share some new details about his famous moonwalk with fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin in 1969.

It all started with a blog post that was published Tuesday (Dec. 7) on the National Public Radio (NPR) website. The post examined Armstrong and Aldrin's celebrated first moonwalk on July 20, 1969, and questioned why the first exploration of the lunar surface covered such a small distance.

Robert Krulwich of NPR looked at a map from NASA that marks all the locations on the moon's surface visited by Armstrong and Aldrin. He then superimposed that map onto a regulation soccer field and baseball diamond. In doing so, Krulwich determined that the historic moonwalk took the astronauts less than a hundred yards away from their lunar lander. Or, from the perspective of a baseball field, "Armstrong's longest, boldest walk took him about as far as Joe DiMaggio used to jog every inning — from home plate to about mid-center field."

The next day, Krulwich posted a follow-up, which featured an e-mail response from Neil Armstrong himself.

In his reply, Armstrong, who was commander of the Apollo 11 flight, explained the main reasons for traversing such a small distance, which include the extremely high temperatures on the lunar surface, uncertainties surrounding how the astronauts' spacesuits with their water-cooled interiors would hold up, and requirements from NASA that the two astronauts perform experiments in front of a fixed camera.
More http://www.space.com/news/neil-armstron ... 01210.html

[derrida]

i thought the moon landing was a hoax?

[really?]

So did I