Buzz Aldrin shown standing beside the US flag (Image: SSPL via Getty Images)
This is definitely worth the read!
Neil Armstrong climbed out of the lunar module simulator at NASA HQ after a particularly harrowing practice session for the upcoming Apollo 11 moon landing, promptly lit up a cigarette and announced, "Well, that's my one cigarette for the year."
"It was the only time anyone saw him smoke anything but the occasional cigar," says author Jim Donovan, whose new book Shoot For The Moon contains the definitive account of that momentous mission.
"When the primitive Apollo Guidance Computer – with just 72kB of memory and a processing speed millions of times slower than today's average smartphone – began to blare alarms at 40,000 feet it took incredible skill on the part of the controllers not to abort the entire mission."