Although it’s been 52 years since the Apollo 11 mission first took man to the moon and 30 years since Tom Hanks famously told Houston that he had a problem in the film Apollo 13, Vacaville residents captivated by lunar exploration were in for a treat Saturday afternoon at the Rowland Freedom Center.
Joe Martinez presented a seminar titled “The Engineering of Apollo” on Saturday at the Rowland Freedom Center. A model maker for films including “The Right Stuff,” “Robocop 2,” and “Die Hard 2″, Martinez used his own research and career experience to walk attendees through NASA’s space race era.
Martinez was 11 years old when men first landed on the moon, and called it “absolutely the coolest thing ever.” His fascination on that day carried him to his careers both in the Navy and in movies
Martinez explained the Apollo missions’ orbit patterns, as well as differences between the Saturn series of rockets, which ultimately culminated in the Saturn V. Some 400,000 people worked on the Apollo program, he said, a scale of effort which proved critical to the mission’s success.
“Almost like a war, that’s how we got it done, everyone was working on it,” he said. “That’s what we’re missing nowadays — the will to get it done.”
The first stage booster of the Saturn V was 33 feet across, he said, but carried mostly fuel. Through the course of 13 missions, he said, not a single Saturn V rocket failed, despite being the size of a destroyer battleship, weighing six million pounds but generating seven and a half million pounds of thrust to reach orbit.
The rockets were capped with a command module in the nose cone just large enough to carry three astronauts per mission.
“Basically in a minivan,” he said. “Would you do that?”
Still, he said, the module had room for working, sleeping and all other necessary functions of life. Aches and pains from stiffness were not a concern in weightlessness, he said, but the cramped conditions could not have been pleasant across the week long journey to the moon and back.
He called the lunar lander the “first purpose built spaceship,” because it was too fragile to work on earth. A dropped screwdriver would be enough to puncture the outside of the lunar module.
Engines on Saturn V rockets used 20 pounds of fuel per second and needed to be started 8.9 seconds before liftoff was intended. Rockets were launched eastward to follow the rotation of the earth, he said, rather than combatting it.
Joe Martinez, a retired U.S. Navy veteran and former video special effects modelmaker for several action feature films, spoke during the a seminar about engineering Apollo spaceships on July 12 at the Rowland Freedom Center in Vacaville. (Courtesy photo/ Rowland Freedom Center)
After launch, he said, stages of the rocket started falling off to cut weight, and final system checks took place during two earth orbits before the lunar module was sent towards the moon.
Once on the moon, he said, astronauts spent only two and a half hours on the moon. They conducted solar wind and seismic experiments while there, he said, as well as planting the American flag and leaving their seal behind on a plaque.
Across the seven successful missions to the moon, he said, all of them landed near the equator of the moon because it is easier to land on. The lunar rover they took was completely electric and foldable, he said, well ahead of its time in the 1960s and 1970s.
While two astronauts were on the surface of the moon, he said, a third would stay in the command module, taking a spacewalk and conducting experiments from lunar orbit. On reentry, he said, the nose cone served as a reentry vehicle with a heat shield on the bottom to avoid burning up in the atmosphere.
24 people have landed on the moon, Martinez said, 10 of which he has met. He hopes that people continue to discuss the Apollo program so that they are inspired to take care of the earth and continue exploring space.
“It’s a mark of us doing something so remarkable,” he said of the moon landing. Why can’t we do more remarkable things?”