Amazon Moon Delivery #shorts #history #space
May 31, 2025
Here's the best, quick resource about the ALSEP if you want to know more! https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/HamishALSEP.html
Okay, am I really weird on this one?
Probably. But I found this picture today
while organizing some Apollo stuff, and
it really made me laugh, especially when
I realized it goes in sequence directly
after this picture. These two pictures
taken together, for some reason, just
created the image in my head of like a
mom in the 80s going through a slideshow
after vacation and narrating it. And
it's like, here's your father arriving
at the hotel and here's his bags
arriving at the hotel. Either that or it
looks like an Amazon proof of delivery
picture. And you know what? Fair because
they had to prove that this box got to
the moon. This is part of the Apollo 12
ALEP. The ALEP is the Apollo lunar
surface experiment package. And in this
case, it's specifically package number
two. And this is the first mission that
had a full ALEP. It was basically a bevy
of science instruments arranged around a
central station that had a
communications package so that engineers
on the Earth could control it and also
gather the data. There were leads going
out to the different instruments, all of
which were powered by the Snap 27 RTG
that was sitting next to it. An RTG is a
radioisotope thermmoelectric generator,
basically a little plutonium power
source. In the case of Apollo 12, there
were six experiments. The lunar passive
seismic experiment, the lunar surface
magnometer, the solar wind spectrometer,
the super thermal ion detection, a cold
cathode ion gauge, and a lunar dust
detector. One of the weird things the
astronauts found when they finally set
this thing up on the moon was that the
cables connecting the instruments to
that central station didn't lie flat. On
Earth, they lay flat under their own
weight. But on the moon, it's like the
16th gravity didn't affect them at all.
They might as well just be floating
because all of the knots and tangles in
the wires just kind of stayed. So, as
the astronauts are walking around, they
had to make sure not to trip all over
it. Anyways, this picture made me laugh.
I decided to share it and figured I
might as well tell you a little bit
about what it