{"id":11122,"date":"2019-07-18T10:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T15:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=11122"},"modified":"2019-07-13T17:15:06","modified_gmt":"2019-07-13T22:15:06","slug":"apollo-11-at-50-the-command-module","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2019\/07\/apollo-11-at-50-the-command-module\/","title":{"rendered":"Apollo 11 at 50: The command module"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11123\" alt=\"OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA\" src=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/apollo11CM.jpg\" width=\"680\" height=\"510\" srcset=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/apollo11CM.jpg 680w, http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/apollo11CM-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px\" \/><em><strong>June 28, 2009:<\/strong> Apollo 11 command module &#8220;Eagle&#8221; at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC. The heat shield after re-entry kind of looks like the surface of the moon, doesn&#8217;t it?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The command module is the one piece of the Saturn V rocket, one of America&#8217;s greatest engineering triumphs, that remains at the end when the astronauts came home. I have seen at least four of them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Apollo 11 at the Smithsonian on June 28, 2009 (above).<\/li>\n<li>Apollo 12 at the Virginia Air and Space Center on July 10, 2008.<\/li>\n<li>Apollo 14 at Kennedy Space Center on May 29, 2009.<\/li>\n<li>Apollo 16 at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, October 27, 2016.<\/li>\n<li>Apollo 17 at Johnson Space Center in Houston on December 30, 2005.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I might have seen Apollo 8 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago when I was much younger.<\/p>\n<p>Major parts of the National Air and Space Museum are\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/smithsonian-institution\/national-air-and-space-museum-says-pardon-our-renovation-come-anyway-180971434\/\">closed for long-term renovations<\/a>, crowding out a chance to mark\u00a0the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing. We&#8217;re finally getting updates to an exhibition hall that, a decade ago, stopped the space timeline in 1981. (I covered some of this ground in a\u00a0<em>Des Moines Register<\/em>\u00a0column after Neil Armstrong died, but it has vanished into the ether.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>June 28, 2009: Apollo 11 command module &#8220;Eagle&#8221; at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC. The heat shield after re-entry kind of looks like the surface of the moon, doesn&#8217;t it? The command module is the one piece &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2019\/07\/apollo-11-at-50-the-command-module\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11122"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11157,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11122\/revisions\/11157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}