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RELEASE NO. 99-062
NOTE TO EDITORS: APOLLO 11 30TH ANNIVERSARY
Langley's Contribution to Lunar Landing Available On Videotape,
Photos
 In
his 1961 address to a joint session of Congress, President Kennedy
proposed putting a man on the moon before 1970. Within a few years
of that incredible announcement, NASA Langley Research Center
would create the way and the means.
 Langley researchers devised the
lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR) concept that was as important as the
Saturn V rocket in enabling a manned lunar landing. Langley also
built training simulators for Apollo astronauts to practice landing
on the moon.
 Two major simulation facilities designed,
built and operated by Langley were used to prepare for rendezvous
and landing. The Rendezvous and Docking Simulator enabled pilots of
both the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and command module to fly
scale-model vehicles in a three-dimensional environment. Later,
astronauts prepared for the final 150-foot descent to the
moonճ surface at the Lunar Landing Research Facility (LLRF).
In addition, the Reduced Gravity Simulator, part of the larger
LLRF, simulated one-sixth gravity astronauts would encounter during
moonwalks.
A 15-Minute BETA-SP Apollo 11 highlights resource tape, print
materials, and photographs are available via the NASA Langley
Research Center. Please direct requests and questions to Chris Rink at (757)
864-6786.
  Archive
footage filmed at NASA Langley includes a LEM and command module
docking sequence; the LEM research prototype and trainer landing at
the Lunar Landing Research Facility; Neil Armstrong standing in
front of the LEM; a man walking in simulated one-sixth gravity; an
Apollo capsule model being tested at the Vertical Spin Tunnel and
splashing down in the Hydrodynamics Research Facility.
 The footage also features recent
interviews with Dr.
John C. Houbolt, former Chief Aeronautical Scientist, and
Lee Person, a retired research pilot from NASA Langley Research
Center. Houbolt discusses how he and other Langley researchers and
engineers were the first in NASA to identify the advantages of
lunar orbit rendezvous over other alternatives. Person talks about
flying the LEM simulator and training Apollo astronauts on it at
Langley's LLRF.
 The
footage concludes with President Kennedy's speech to a joint
session of Congress in which he declares "that this nation should
commit itself" to landing a man on the moon, and Apollo 11 mission
ighlights.
Two Langley fact sheets, "NASA Langley Research Center's
Contributions to the Apollo Program" and "The Rendezvous That Was
Almost Missed: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous and the Apollo Program" are
available to members of the news media.
Also available are photographs featuring Apollo 11 astronauts
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin with Langley's Lunar Landing
Research Vehicle, a young Walter Cronkite harnessed in Langley's
Reduced Gravity Simulator, a model of the Saturn V and its launch
tower in a Langley wind tunnel, a multiple-exposure image of a 1967
LLRV night test and the well-known Apollo 17 photograph of the full
earth.
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