Manned Space History | Apollo 11 Post Flight Press Conference | August 12, 1969

First Man on Moon | First Moon Landing | Neil Armstrong on the Moon | Apollo 11 Moon Landing | Moon Landing 1969 | Armstrong Moon | Neil Armstrong Moon Landing | First Man to Land on Moon | 1st Man on the Moon | Man Landing on Moon | First Lunar Landing | Armstrong Moon Landing | Walking on the Moon Neil Armstrong | Walking on the Moon 1969 | Apollo 11 Moon | Landing Site on the Moon | Armstrong Walking on the Moon | Moon Landing July 20 1969 | Buzz Aldrin | Mike Collins Look for us on FaceBook at @NASAMannedSpace   / 17kryo9zi6   On this edition of ‪@mannedspace1187‬ we recount the first postflight press conference held by the the three Apollo 11 astronauts - Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin. On August 12, 1969, Apollo 11 Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins held first postflight press conference at MSC, narrating 45-min film of mission and answering questions. On meaning of lunar landing, Collins said it was “technical triumph for this country to have said what it was going to do a number of years ago, and then by golly do it. Just like we said we were going to do. Not just . . . purely technical, but also a triumph of the nation’s overall determination, will, economy, attention to detail, and a thousand and one other factors that went into it.” To Aldrin mission meant “that many other problems perhaps can be solved in the same way by taking a commitment to solve them in long time fashion. I think that we were timely in accepting this mission of going to the moon. It might be timely at this point to think in many other areas of other missions that could be accomplished.” Armstrong said moon landing heralded “beginning of a new age.” He said moon was “stark and strangely different place, but it looked friendly . . . and proved to be friendly.” Astronauts had much less trouble than expected on lunar surface. Primary difficulty was that “there was just far too little time to do the variety of things that we would have liked to have done. . . . We had the problem of the 5 year old boy in a candy store. There are just too many interesting things to Armstrong said that during landing they “were concerned about running low on fuel on range extension we did to avoid the boulder field and craters. We used a significant percentage of our fuel margins and we were quite close to our legal limit.” On possibility of abort during period they were receiving alarm signals, Aldrin said procedure in preparation simulations had been always to “keep going as long as we could. . . . The computer was continuing to issue guidance . . . and it was continuing to fly the vehicle down in the same way that it was programmed to do. The only thing that was missing . . . is that we did not have some of the displays . . . and we had to make several entries . . . to clear up that area.” Armstrong added, “We would have continued the landing so long as the trajectory seemed safe. And landing is possible under these conditions, although with considerably less confidence than you have when you have the information from the ground and the computer in its normal manner available to you. Footage & Images: NASA via internetarchive.org (with special thanks to John Stoll for uploading the footage). Edited: Mitch Rothman