Space Race
The bra makers who secretly built the Apollo spacesuits
Image: Jack Weir (1928-2005), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Did you know that Apollo 11 had just 25 seconds of fuel to spare when it made its historic 1969 moon landing? Or that a chimpanzee named Ham flew to space first to prove it was safe for humans? Behind the Apollo 11 flag, the spacesuits, and that giant leap sits a decade of secrets, near misses, and stories NASA never advertised. Here are 10 true stories from the Space Race that will change how you see those famous photographs.
1
Apollo 11 touched down with roughly 30 seconds of reserve fuel
As Eagle descended toward the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong looked out the window and realized the computer was guiding them straight into a field of car-sized boulders.
He took semi-manual control, tilting the module forward to search for a clearer patch of ground while Mission Control in Houston counted down the remaining fuel out loud . Sixty seconds. Then 30. Buzz Aldrin called out altitude and speed as dust kicked up by the engine made it nearly impossible to judge distance. Armstrong finally set Eagle down with somewhere between 20 and 25 seconds of fuel left before an automatic abort would have kicked in, a margin thinner than most people realize watching the calm broadcast years later.
2
The iconic lunar flag was an altered five-dollar store-bought banner
With less than three months before launch, NASA engineer Jack Kinzler was handed an unusual assignment: figure out how to make a flag look like it was flying on a world with no wind.
Kinzler, known around the Manned Spacecraft Center as Mr. Fix It, remembered watching his mother hang curtains as a child and sketched a horizontal rod that would run through the top of an ordinary nylon flag , letting it hang stiff instead of drooping.
3
Playtex seamstresses hand-stitched the Apollo spacesuits
In a former girdle factory in Dover, Delaware, women who had spent years sewing Playtex bras and girdles found themselves building the suit that would keep Neil Armstrong alive on the Moon.
NASA had tried stiff, engineered suits from aerospace contractors first, but nothing offered the mobility required for a human body. The International Latex Corporation, the company behind Playtex, won the contract instead, and its seamstresses stitched together 21 layers of nylon, Teflon-coated fabric, and rubber by hand, working to a tolerance of one 64th of an inch on ordinary Singer machines. No automated equipment could be trusted with a mistake that meant the difference between life and death in a vacuum, so the same hands that once sewed Cross Your Heart bras sewed history instead.
4
Ham the Astrochimp completed a suborbital flight in 1961
Three weeks of training at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico came down to one morning: January 31, 1961.
A three-and-a-half-year-old chimpanzee, known to engineers simply as Number 65, was strapped into a Mercury capsule atop a Redstone rocket that launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. His job was to pull levers in response to lights, proving an astronaut's mind could still function under the crushing forces of launch. A malfunction pushed the flight higher and faster than planned, reaching 157 miles and landing far off course in the Atlantic. He survived, tired and dehydrated but unharmed , and only afterward was given the name Ham, for the lab that trained him. Three months later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space.
5
Michael Collins became the most isolated person in human history
While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface, their crewmate Michael Collins circled overhead alone in the command module Columbia.
For roughly 47 minutes of every two-hour orbit, the entire body of the Moon passed between Columbia and Earth, cutting off every radio signal from Mission Control and from his two crewmates below. Flight commentator Charlie Duke described it on the air: "not since Adam has any human known such solitude." Collins later wrote that he never actually felt lonely during those blackout stretches, only quietly aware that he was, by any physical measure, the single most isolated human being who had ever lived, with three billion people on one side of the Moon and just himself on the other.
6
The Soviet Union made the first lunar impact in 1959
On September 12, 1959, a Soviet spacecraft the size of a large beach ball lifted off from Baikonur, deep in the Kazakh steppe. Two days later, Luna 2 slammed into the Moon near the craters Aristillus and Autolycus , becoming the first human-made object to ever touch another world.
Engineers in Moscow had built in a strange detail: the probe carried small metal pennants stamped with the hammer and sickle, meant to scatter across the lunar surface on impact. The timing stung in Washington. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev arrived in the United States for a state visit just days later, carrying a replica pennant as a gift for President Eisenhower, a not-so-subtle reminder of who had reached the Moon first.
7
Apollo 11 concluded the initial Space Race
In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before Congress and made a promise that sounded impossible: the U.S. would land a man on the Moon and bring him home safely before the decade was out.
Eight years, several deaths, and one nearly disastrous fire later, Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder of the lunar module Eagle on July 20, 1969 , and told millions watching on television that it was one small step for a man. Buzz Aldrin followed him down minutes later while Michael Collins orbited above in the command module. The landing settled a technological race that had begun with Sputnik in 1957, and for the United States, it closed the gap the Soviets had opened years earlier.
8
The lunar module was built without seats
Every extra pound sent to the Moon meant thousands of extra pounds of fuel needed to get it there, so NASA engineers stripped the lunar module Eagle down to its bare essentials, cutting anything that was not strictly necessary for survival.
One of the first things to go was seating. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin flew their roughly 60-mile descent to the lunar surface standing up , held in place by cables and foot restraints, much like subway commuters gripping a pole during rush hour. Standing also gave the astronauts a clearer view out the small triangular windows, which mattered enormously once Armstrong realized the automatic system was steering them toward a boulder field. The decision made purely for weight savings ended up helping save the landing itself.
9
Apollo 11 astronauts signed an official customs declaration upon return
After traveling nearly half a million miles round trip, the crew of Apollo 11 still had one more piece of paperwork waiting for them back on Earth.
On July 24, 1969, the day their capsule splashed down in the Pacific near Hawaii, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins signed a standard United States Customs form filed at Honolulu Airport. Under departure point, the document read simply Moon. Arrival was listed as Honolulu, Hawaii. In the cargo section, the astronauts declared moon rock and moon dust samples, treating a piece of another world the same way any traveler might declare a bottle of duty-free perfume. The form even asked about any condition on board that could spread disease, and the honest answer at the time was simply to be determined.
10
Apollo 8 astronauts captured the "Earthrise" photograph
On Christmas Eve of 1968, astronaut Bill Anders was aiming his camera at the gray, cratered surface below when something in the window caught his eye. Earth, blue and impossibly small, was rising over the lunar horizon.
Anders, Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell had just become the first humans to orbit the Moon, and none of NASA's flight plans had accounted for this moment. Anders grabbed a color film magazine and fired off the shot in a matter of seconds, later admitting the photo was never on the schedule. Back on Earth, the image ran in newspapers worldwide and is widely credited with helping launch the modern environmental movement, giving people their first real look at how fragile and alone their home planet truly is.
