Today is the anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing.
My father was one of the people who worked on the lunar landers. He was not an engineer, but he worked on the management side of things at Grumman Aerospace.
The photo was taken by Michael Collins on board the command module, as the lunar module with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descends toward the surface.
And I will give my response in advance, to any who might reply with claims that the landing was a hoax:
@DrWatson They used to give out these mission coins at the gas station and you'd collect them...I'd bug my dad to go get gas just so we could get the coins! That's very cool about your dad!
That's awesome! My question is, if it's a hoax, how do we explain the retroreflectors? Nothing natural on the Moon's surface can reflect a laser with such accuracy.
@SW-User No it wasn't a hoax. They even left mirrors on the surface you can "ping" with a sufficiently powerful laser and get back a "response". Were it a hoax, any observatory in any country of this world, in particular countries that don't see the U.S. really well, could easily disprove the claims.
@Elessar And NASA shared some of the moon rocks -- which contained some minerals not found on Earth -- with scientists in the Soviet Union. The Soviets had been competing with the USA to become the first on the moon. So, if Soviet scientists determined that the rocks were actually of terrestrial origin, they certainly would have cried foul.
