The following creations show the fun side of being an Apollo enthusiast. Many of the offerings use Apollo images and scenes as a basis, but with unexpected additions. Some show members of the ALSJ/AFJ team having Apollo-like adventures here on Planet Earth. And still other offerings make use of Apollo material for various artistic purposes. Enjoy!
Your friendly ALSJ Editor mentioned to Ron that his LM brought to mind a Sumo wrestler, crouched and ready to charge. "I agree that the overdone large stance of the legs and the 'bent-over' forward face part of the lander give it a Sumo-like appearance - interesting comparison. The artwork is a drawing in the strict sense - colored pencils and china ink, a bit enhanced by CG.
Bob Farwell has created two composite visualizations of Charlie's dream: one in color and one in black-and-white. The first of these is set at Plum Crater. The second at Station 13. With regard to the latter, Bob writes, "I used AS16-106-17394 and 17395 as the background, enhanced the gray scale values, combined the two into one (almost) seamless image, and removed the reticules. I deleted the reticules because I wished to make the viewer feel as though they are an actual observer. The tire tracks were 'borrowed' from AS15-82-11056. The foreground rover is from KSC-71PC-777; foreground helmets are from AS17-134-20426; foreground Charlie Duke is from AS16-114-18423; the earth is from AS11-44-6568, the background John Young is from AS16-114-18388, background rover (and reflection in Charlie’s visor) is from AS17-140-21409."
Carlos's creation reminds me of the outrage expressed by some in the media and in Congress when they learned that NASA had spent 31m (US, 1970) developing the Lunar Roving Vehicle. After all, they said, perfectly good, new cars could be bought for under $4000 at any automobile dealership. Carlos shows us what might have happened had these worthies had their way. Ignoring such minor problems as the difficulty of getting even a small sedan to the Moon, the problem of running an internal combustion engine on an airless world, and the basic question of how a suited astronaut would gotten in the front seat and worked the controls, it seems to me that the real showstopper would have been this: having seen a rental car buried up to it hub caps in dry sand on a Hawaiian beach (no, I wasn't the driver, just the passenger), I don't think that a Ford or Chevy sedan would have handled conditions at Hadley, Descartes, or Taurus-Littrow very well. ;-)
Ed Hengeveld has completed a painting called Landing at Hadley. At the request of the person who commissioned the painting, Ed has exercised a bit of artistic license in showing the landing much closer to the rille than was actually the case. A full-size version is also available.
"This image is derived from one that I made as a serious, monochrome rendition of Tracy's Rock (0.5Mb), which is at Apollo 17 Station 6 in the valley of Taurus-Littrow. That image is in the Journal, too. It was based on a set of high-definition frames that were supplied by Mike Gentry at NASA Johnson and were scanned by Ron Wells. I downloaded and mosaicked them. By holding that resolution, I produced an enormous image; but scrolling across it is half the fun!""I saw that Jack Schmitt wasn't in frame, so I went to another frame, which was only 30-cm wide, in which he was present, and borrowed him. But he was the wrong scale, and he didn't blow up all that well; he looked a little fuzzy when I pasted him in, so I deleted him and went to bed in disgust, because without someone in the frame to provide a sense of scale, that block could be any size."
"Inspiration struck, however. Expanding Jack hadn't worked, but shrinking him might, so I leapt out of bed and hunted for another frame of that scene, with him in; but I hadn't downloaded much Apollo 17. I'd been working on Apollo 15 and 16, and was only just starting reading up on 17, so I didn't have that shot on file. As a joke, I stole a picture of Jim Irwin saluting Old Glory on the Plain at Hadley, a high-definition frame which I'd received in the mail a few hours earlier from Kipp Teague, as a swap for sending him the pan of Tracy's Rock, and I shrank him down and stuck him on top of the rock. It was magnificent! So I went back to bed feeling pretty pleased with myself."
"The next day, I took another look. It was still magnificent. So I borrowed a few more shots of those intrepid moonwalkers Dave, Jim, John and Charlie, and put them in too. It was truly hilarious! Over the last week or so, I've added some of Al (Shepard), Ed and Buzz. I belatedly sought out a few of Gene and Jack and put them in. I'll see about Pete and Al, and might even put in their Surveyor. There wasn't a Neil available, however; so, although he was the first to tread the lunar dust, he isn't represented here, but this is probably for the better because he never did like crowds."
"What started as an exercise in documentation (producing the serious pan), spun-off a nice bit of fun, but there's a serious side to this image, and that's the fact that it is an exceedingly good illustration of the difficulty of judging distance on the lunar surface. In the real pan, I had no difficulty in accepting that the valley is 10 km wide, and that the South Massif is 2,500 meters high. I would never have guessed that from looking at the picture, but I can accept it without it jarring. That's the problem that the guys faced. Only, in their case, there was nobody to tell them how far away things are. Of course, they knew from their maps that the valley was that wide, and that the massif was that high. But how large are those craters out there? And, hence, how far away are they? In fact, the big crater behind the rock is Henry, and it's a kilometer or so off. I know that because I have the map, too. But I couldn't have said without it. By placing a little Jack Schmitt on its rim (borrowed from a pan at Camelot, where he was caught running back to the Rover), that crater suddenly becomes a whole lot closer, and a lot smaller. In the real world, if he'd really been on the rim, he'd have been no more than a pixel high."
"Another point that is illustrated in this imaginary scene is that it seems remarkable that the lighting is so consistent. But think about it...all the missions landed at the same local time, so I didn't have too much trouble mixing and matching them. Where necessary, I reversed the images so that astronauts were lit from the right side; and, if they still looked out of place I added shadows, and, of course, I drew in the shadows on the ground too. It took a hell of a lot of work, so it wasn't an easy mosaic to make up. It was worth it though! What is truly amazing is that nobody's ever done it before."
David Harland
4 July 1998
Mauro Freschi has provided a B&W TV frame showing Neil unveiling the landing-strut plaque; and also a colorized version.
Mauro Freschi has provided a previously unknown Apollo 11 photos showing twin astronauts.
