On the anniversary of the first man on the moon, and with the final space shuttle mission set to end Thursday, Wired.com takes a look back at the extraordinary amount of training astronauts go through before they are mission ready.
Apollo astronauts practiced every second of their mission, even planting the flag (above), many times, indoors, outdoors, in space suits, underwater, in planes, in centrifuges, in pools, in the ocean and anywhere else NASA saw fit. They were prepared for every contingency and trained for water planned landings as well as desert and jungle survival in case their capsule missed the ocean and hit land. They learned geology, how to withstand g-forces, maneuver in low- and zero-gravity conditions, and how to drive electric rovers and land the lunar module.
Here are some of the most memorable photos of the rigorous Apollo astronaut training from NASA's image archive.
Planting the Flag
The Apollo 14 flight crew practices planting the flag during a lunar walk simulation.
One Small Step
Neil Armstrong practices reaching the first rung of the ladder to climb back into the Lunar Module Eaglein this image from July 9, 1969, one week before Apollo 11 launched.
Reduced Gravity Walking Simulator
Suspending a person at an angle and having them walk along a wall let them experience one-sixth of their weight, the equivalent to walking in reduced gravity on the moon. Scientists studied subjects as they walked, jumped or ran to learn about speed, fatigue limits and energy use.
Lunar Landing Research Vehicle
This free-flying vehicle was designed to simulate landing on the moon's surface. It was built by NASA and Bell Aerosystems out of tubular aluminum with A General Electric turbofan engine with 4200 pounds of thrust. The engine needed to get the vehicle up to 1500 feet elevation and then throttled back to support five-sixths of the vehicle's weight to imitate the moon's lower gravity.
Water Landing
The Apollo spacecraft were designed to return to Earth by landing in the ocean, which meant extensive water egress training for the astronauts. This involved practicing with model spacecraft in pools and the Gulf of Mexico. Above, the crew of Apollo 1 practices in a swimming pool in 1966. Astronaut Edward white is in the life raft in the front of the image, astronaut Roger Chaffee sits in the hatch and astronaut Virgil Grissom is inside the spacecraft.
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