New artwork: “The Lonely Travelers”. Graphite on paper.
The crew of Apollo 8 in December 1968 were considered the ‘loneliest men’, being the first to travel into lunar orbit, some quarter of a million miles from all humans.
Mike Collins of Apollo 11 was the first of the “loneliest man’ category. He remained behind in the command module, Columbia, in lunar orbit while Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin took the first walks on the Moon in July 1969. Collins orbited 69 miles high and every two hours, for 20 minutes, he flew around the far side of the Moon, where he was completely cut-off from any other human (including his crewmates on the lunar surface.) No radio signals reach there… He wrote about that moment: “I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life.”
What time is it on the Moon? You’ll need the official ‘moonwatch’ to know for sure… 🌖 This is the @omega ‘Speedmaster’. Many watches were tested by @nasa in the early 60s. This was the only watch that passed all tests (things like temperature, pressure, vibration, durability, accuracy, etc). Besides being a watch of unparalleled notoriety, it also has a beautifully understated mid-century design style. I wear mine everyday. It’s truly a gem. In case you’re wondering what the numbers are going around the outside ring, those are markings to calculate speed. If you travel 1 mile and start the second hand at mile zero and stop the hand upon completion of the mile, wherever it is will tell you your MPH speed. For example, traveling 1 mile in 1 minute means you are traveling 60mph, traveling 1 mile in 9 seconds means you are traveling 400 mph.
40 years ago today I met Jim Irwin, the eighth man to step foot on the Moon. It was a fantastic thing for me as an avid ‘space-kid’. My mum was very supportive of my enthusiasm and was integral to this event, all those years ago, being such a great memory. @bfdcathedral has just posted a blog about it. It details the evening’s events, as well as my impressions, and also Jim Irwin’s religious awakening while on the Moon. I’d love for you all to read it. A link is in my bio and here: https://bradfordcathedral.blog/2022/05/16/american-astronaut/
The Rocketdyne F-1 rocket engine remains the most powerful single combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever developed. Five of them were clustered together at the bottom of the Apollo Saturn V moon rocket. Their job was simply to get the biggest rocket ever made (at the time) off the ground to an altitude of 42 miles and a speed of more than 6000 mph!
The Boy stands to its side for scale.
In the cathedral, while the boy listened to the astronaut talk, he scanned the audience. Seated in rows, facing forward, they looked like engineers at their stations in Mission Control.
Traveling 17,500mph at 200 miles altitude, the boy takes in the spectacular view of Earth from the end of the Space Shuttle’s payload bay robotic arm (built by Canada, in case you didn’t know…)
