Frank Borman, the man that paved the way for Apollo 11’s moon landing

Last week, more precisely Tuesday 7 November, saw Frank Borman leave this planet for a final time, commander of legendary Apollo 8 mission in late 1968, at the age of 95 after a distinguished life and instrumental contribution to space exploration.

On 24 December 1968, Christmas Eve, Borman led a crew that also comprised Jim Lovell and William Anders as the first manned mission in history to engage lunar orbit and circle the moon for a total of eight times in about 24 hours, highlighted by the monumental Earthrise picture taken by Anders.

That was actually a late assignment for Borman, initially named on Apollo 9 that was to follow in early 1969, as he was offered a bold mission only four months out after original commander of Apollo 8 James McDivitt declined following a dramatic shake-up of plans from a low Earth orbit to Lunar orbit in a tense Space Race against then Soviet Union.

In doing so, he set the stage for Apollo 11 to set foot on the moon the following July as the Command/Service Module he captained was successfully tested in lunar orbit for a first time earlier than originally scheduled. He apparently also emerged as first choice to lead the first mission to land on the moon but himself had already made up his mind on Apollo 8 to be his last flight before retirement.

Two years earlier, on top of that, Borman distinguished himself in space for a first time as he spent a record fourteen days of spaceflight endurance along with Lovell on Gemini 7, having been originally earmarked for Gemini 4. He was also part of the NASA panel that probed the disaster of Apollo 1 that same year.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de’ Galilei (1564 – 1642), or simply Galileo, was a Florentine astronomer, engineer, physicist and very much a polymath who has been called the father of observational astronomy, modern science and the scientific method.

He was born and raised in Pisa, lying in the Duchy of Florence at the time, as the eldest child of lutenist and composer Vincenzo Galilei with Giulia Ammannati before he moved to Florence at the age of ten to rejoin his family, having spent a couple of years under the care of Muzio Tedaldi.

His name traced all the way down to Florentine doctor and politician Galileo Bonaiuti, an ancestor of his, who lived over a century earlier with Galileo meaning ‘of Galilee’ (a region in the Levante) and he fathered three illegitimate children with Marina Gamba, with both his daughters eventually joining a convent out of necessity.

Although he initially entered the University of Pisa in 1580 looking for a medical degree he gained a keen interest in mathematics and physics on the way to shift track in these pursuits, publishing a work on a hydrostatic balance he invented himself, as well as studying design before he was appointed an instructor at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence in 1588.

A year later, he earned the chair of mathematics in Pisa and a further three years on he moved over to the University of Padua to teach geometry, astronomy and mechanics until 1610 while making significant discoveries in fundamental research, including kinematics of motion and astronomy, and applied science on the side.

He invented the thermoscope and various military compasses while he contributed greatly to the field of (observational) astronomy by way of telescopic (he fashioned his own telescope on vague descriptions of Hans Lipperhey’s original instrument) confirmation of the phases of Venus and analysis of the moon’s craters and sunspots as well as observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter and the Saturn’s rings.

Yet, him advocating the Copernican Heliocentrism (namely that the Earth rotates daily and revolves round the Sun) brought him at odds with quarters of the Catholic Church and some astronomers with an investigation of the Roman Inquisition ruling that the concept and model in question was foolish, absurd and heretical as it contradicted the Holy Scripture (1616).

Having kept a distance from the matter for over a decade, Galileo came out to publish the “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” in 1632 that, albeit sanctioned by both the new Pope and the Inquisition, eventually came across the wrong way as an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and advocating the Copernican heliocentrism that drew a wider friction with the church.

He was trialled in Rome from February through to July 1633 where the Roman Inquisition ruled that “he was vehemently suspect of heresy” (though never formally charged with heresy), sentenced to formal imprisonment and that his book was banned.

Galileo was forced to spend the rest of his life under house arrest during which time he worked up the renowned book titled “Two New Sciences,” published in Holland (1638) to evade censorship, on Kinematics and Strength of Materials that was highly praised later by Albert Einstein among others.

The Meteor Crater, Arizona

The striking Meteor, or Barringer, Crater is a meteorite impact formation that lies slightly west of Winslow and east of Flagstaff in Coconino County, northern Arizona.

The crater lies at an altitude of about 1720m above sea level while it measures around 1200m in diameter and is around 170m deep, bordered by a rim that rises some 45m over the surrounding plains.

It was created about 50000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch, when the Coconino Plateau enjoyed a considerably cooler climate and was an open grassland set with woodlands at the impact of a nickel-iron meteorite that measured about 50m in width.

The name Barringer is owed to mining engineer and businessman Daniel M. Barringer who obtained ownership of the crater by way of a land patent signed by then president Theodore Roosevelt Jr. in 1903.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the crater was employed as training ground for NASA astronauts building up for the well-known Apollo missions to the Moon.

You may have seen it in the climax of the fabulous movie “Starman” (1984), starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen.

54th Anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon

Today marks an unbelievable 54 years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the very first men to set foot on the moon, more precisely at 02:56 and 03:15 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) respectively on 21 July 1969.

That was the peak of NASA’s Apollo 11 spaceflight spearheaded by the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle that landed on the surface of the moon at 20:17 UTC on July 20, that is a good 6:39 hours before Armstrong first took what he instantly described as “One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Armstrong and Aldrin spent about two hours and a quarter probing the site, which they named as Tranquility Base, and taking pictures of the lunar surface around, setting up several scientific experiment packages in the process, as well as collecting about 21.5kg of dirt and rock samples thereof.

The third man on the mission, which was launched by means of a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in eastern Florida on July 16 at 13:32 UTC, was Michael Collins there has to be said.

The three stayed on the lunar surface for a total of 21 hours and 36 minutes before the lifted off, leaving behind the descent stage of the lunar module, at 17:54 UTC on the same day.

Aldrin is actually still in life, the only among the three on the mission, and turned a strong 93 last January.