105 days in isolation and you give these guys DAISIES?

After105 days in a human-sized hamster Habitrail, four Russians, a Frenchman and a German (walk into a bar) announced it was no big deal to be cooped up for so long without access to updates on Paris Hilton. Heck, these guys might not even know yet that The King of Pop has died.

While they were monitored constantly to help us better understand the impact the cramped conditions had on them, they were also kept very busy.

The delay in communications for actual astronauts meant the volunteers also had to problem solve for themselves and make decisions without the help of ground control. And because they knew how important the mission was, they didn’t fall apart bickering with each other. It’s not like the Russian space program pulled five guys off a bus and told ‘em to stick it out for 3 months, either.

One significant stress absent from the simulated ride to Mars, however? The crew knew they could leave if there was an emergency.

This unfortunately wasn’t the case for the Apollo 1 astronauts working on putting a man on the Moon. The command module was destroyed by fire during a training exercise in January of 1967 while sitting on the launch pad. Commander “Gus” Grissom, and fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed.

Shortly after landing, Apollo 11 Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin privately took Communion. Neither NASA nor the elder at Webster Presbyterian Church told anyone for years. The church's pastor, Reverend Dean Woodruff prepared the communion kit. Today, the chalice used on the moon gets brought out for Lunar Communion each year on the Sunday closest to July 20th.

The lessons learned through all 13 Apollo missions, including 11 and 12 which actually landed on the Moon, will be applied to our return to Earth’s largest satellite. And NASA is taking a page from the Apollo program — literally. When the Bush Administration ordered the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2010 (allegedly to pull out of the International Space Station), NASA reverted to the same spacecraft concept pioneered by Apollo: a small capsule mounted on the top of a big fire cracker.

The Space Shuttle program had a big target on its back anyway: the Shuttles were not the low-cost reusable vehicles as promised and suffered the fatal flaw of disintegrating upon re-entry if struck by the equivalent of a few tonnes of Great Stuff™ spray-foam insulation.

The Apollo spacecraft, however, dodged some major bullets — Apollo 13 being the one that comes to mind thanks to Tom Hanks’ child-like wonder for everything NASA and a big budget movie.

Apollo 12 almost didn’t make it into orbit. 36.5 seconds after blast-off in a rainstorm, it was struck by lightning. It wasn’t the zap that disabled the instrument panel or the power grid, it was the fact the electricity traveled down the body of the rocket, then maintained a connection to the ground by the ionized plume of smoke, completing the circuit. If it wasn’t for the elephantine memory of the lunar module pilot Alan Bean, nobody would have known how to execute the “Try SCE to aux” order from ground control. While the guys on the ground were furiously flipping through manuals looking for the procedure called out by Booger Hollow, Oklahoma native and flight controller John Aaron, Bean recalled a simulation the crew had done a year earlier and flipped the necessary switches.

Bean saved the day — and Aaron ended up playing a critical roll in saving Apollo 13 thanks to his understanding of the rocket’s innards.

The Apollo 11 plaque wrapped around the leg behind the ladder of the lander module (Click to enlarge)

Apollo 11 itself had a few close calls. It almost landed on the moon in a massive crater after a computer failed. Turned out it was operator error: they left a secondary radar system turned on, flooding the onboard systems with too much information. Had Neil Armstrong not taken partial control (he never “switched to manual”) they could have ended up in the bottom of a large hole — or run out of fuel.

The Eagle landed with a mere 25 seconds of gas left in the tank. The fuel gauges malfunctioned, too. The sloshing around led to faulty readings. It turns out NASA didn’t take into consideration the Moon’s micro gravity and its effects on sloshing. Pfft. Amateurs. But they learned from their mistakes: future tanks had baffolds in them to help keep the fuel from moving around too much.

Learning from Apollo’s mistakes will be critical to the Space Shuttle’s replacement.

Project Constellation will use an Ares 1 (with a maximum payload of 25,000 tonnes) to put astronauts on the Moon. The Ares V with its 188,000 tonne payload will carry more luggage than a bleached blonde New Jersey trophy wife on a 2 day trip to Vegas. (Click to embiggen)

Project Constellation has a tag line, “The Next Giant Leap Has Begun.”

The Ares-Orion-Altair rocket system scheduled to put Americans back on the moon by 2020 works much like Apollo — what will by then be a 60 year old concept: a small capsule on top of a big firecracker. The capsule separates and heads to the moon. Once there, it splits again into a lander module and an orbiter that circles the Moon looking for cheaper parking.

Roberta Flack's 1972 single "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was the #1 song at the same time astronauts spent a record 3 days on the Moon. Coincidence? Hardly.

What makes Project Constellation a giant leap from the last small step for [a] man is freedom. This next generation tin can will be able to land anywhere — not just the Moon’s equator — and the program aims to build a longer term presence that could see astronauts live on the satellite for up to 3 months. The best Apollo accomplished was 3 days in 1972. But 72 hours probably felt like an eternity had NASA beamed that year’s #1 song into the astronaut’s helmets. Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face just seems to go on forever.

Perhaps unlike the Apollo team, NASA’s new brains on the trip to the Moon will work together more effectively. Armstrong and Aldrin had a heck of a time getting out of the capsule at all after one team shrunk the size of the exit hatch without telling the team that made the big bulky backpacks. Health monitoring gear registered the highest heart rates as the pair were going in and out of the lander. Not only could they not see their feet as they tried to step onto the ladder, they risked getting permanently wedged in the door.

Project Constellation also better put more effort into the build-quality of the lunar lander. Aldrin actually broke off the launch button for the module, risking stranding the pair on the Moon forever. The solution? Push the button in with a felt-tipped marker.

The 21st century Moon program set up 3 years before the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression will be reviewed in August of this year by U.S. President Barack Obama over cost-overrun concerns.