If you are the sort of geek that likes space travel, you have to be enamored by the manned missions to the moon in the 60’s and 70’s. Of all the missions slated to put astronauts on the moon, the one that famously didn’t make it was Apollo 13. Apollo 13 had an oxygen tank explode forcing the astronauts to turn around and limp home two days into their mission, and also was responsible for the infamous “Houston, we have a problem” line people still quote today.
The checklist calculations that commander James Lovell used to work out the spacecraft’s position and the angle to entry back into Earth’s atmosphere were hand written on this chart. One miscalculation and the astronauts would have been killed, so the data on this chart was instrumental in saving the astronauts’ lives.
This authentic original checklist recently grabbed over $380,000 (USD) at auction, making it the most expensive moon mission era item to never have landed on the moon.
[via The Australian]
