linkmachinego.com

8 November 2021
[space] Unwrapped: Five Decade Old Lunar Selfie … A 1969 selfie of Neil Armstrong captured from the reflection in Buzz Aldrin’s helmet. ‘ The original image captured not only the magnificent desolation of an unfamiliar world, but Armstrong himself reflected in Aldrin’s curved visor. Enter modern digital technology. In the featured image, the spherical distortion from Aldrin’s helmet has been reversed. The result is the famous picture — but now featuring Armstrong himself from Aldrin’s perspective.’

Neil Armstrong Lunar Selfie

2 August 2021
[apollo] Here’s an unprecedented look at Apollo 13’s damaged service module / Apollo 13: Enhanced images reveal life on stricken spacecraft … Ars Technica and BBC News takes a look at a collection of digitally remastered photos from the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. ‘While working on Apollo 13 images, Saunders said he was struck by how calm Lovell and the other two crew members, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, appear. Much of the film he worked on was shot in the lunar module, after the oxygen tank exploded. The crew was exhausted, it was cold, and the astronauts found themselves in the gravest of situations. And yet they appeared to be in good spirits.’
21 July 2021
[apollo] Alan Shepard smacked golf balls on the Moon — and now we know where they landed … It turns out that golf on the Moon is harder than you’d imagine. ‘Image specialist Andy Saunders recently analyzed archival stills taken by the astronauts with their Hasselblad cameras, as well as video from the lunar ascent module as it lifted off from the surface. Saunders managed to identify not only Shepard’s golf balls, but also his footprints from his stance and his divots. By comparing these to more recent satellite images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Saunders was able to measure the distance on Shepard’s second shot. The result? A rather tame 40 yards (120 feet).’
20 July 2021
[lifehacks] The Simple Genius of Checklists, from B-17 to the Apollo Missions‘Checklists proliferated to every corner of habitable environment of Apollo 11 and became what astronaut Michael Collins called the spacecraft’s “fourth crew member” – and, for all intents and purposes, its real commander. Checklists even covered their spacesuits, for example, the left gloves of Armstrong and Aldrin.’
14 October 2020
[docu] 40 of the best documentaries you need to watch … A list from Wired of great documentaries available in the UK. ‘8 Days: to the Moon and Back – This is the story of the Moon landing, but told in a completely new way. Created by the BBC, 8 Days: to the Moon and Back uses original declassified audio from Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins as they made their trip to the Moon. In the recreation, which is a technically a “feature drama” but has enough realism to count as a documentary for this list, actors were filmed lip-synching the actual words that were said. The result? It’s a triumph and probably the closest we’ll ever get to recreating that fateful mission.’
23 July 2020
[moon] NASA and the Secrets of Moondust … What can moondust tell us about the origins of the Moon and Earth? ‘In the next year, Sehlke, along with other scientists and their teams, will receive tiny lunar samples, untouched for close to 50 years, that were collected during the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions. Some were frozen or stored in helium-filled containers shortly after arriving on Earth. One sample has never been exposed to Earth’s atmosphere; it was packed and vacuum-sealed on the moon by the last astronauts to walk on the surface, in 1972. Sehlke and other researchers still have many questions about the workings of the moon—even about the popular hypothesis for its creation, which doesn’t completely add up—and searching for answers within these pristine samples is a thrilling prospect.’
22 July 2020
[apollo] Bitcoin mining on an Apollo Guidance Computer … Using Apollo-era tech for bitcoins. ‘The Apollo Guidance Computer took 5.15 seconds for one SHA-256 hash. Since Bitcoin uses a double-hash, this results in a hash rate of 10.3 seconds per Bitcoin hash. Currently, the Bitcoin network is performing about 65 EH/s (65 quintillion hashes per second). At this difficulty, it would take the AGC 4×10^23 seconds on average to find a block. Since the universe is only 4.3×10^17 seconds old, it would take the AGC about a million times the age of the universe to successfully mine a block.’
21 July 2020
[apollo] 13 Minutes to the Moon [Series 1 | Series 2] … Outstanding BBC Podcast on the inside story of Apollo 11 and how Apollo 13 was saved.
20 July 2020
[apollo] Apollo 11: Mission Out of Control … The nail-biting story of Apollo 11’s descent to the moon’s surface. ‘ The computer automatically entered the next phase of the descent, followed by another reboot and another go command from Mission Control until finally, at less than 2,000 feet above the lunar surface, the computer had its worst crash yet.The alarm blared and the lander’s readout went dead. For 10 long seconds, the console displayed nothing—no altitude data, no error codes, just three blank fields. Armstrong’s heart began to race, rising to 150 beats per minute, the same as that of a man at the end of a sprint. With the moonscape zipping by outside his window, he was the closest any human had ever been to another world, but, like a distracted driver, his attention was focused on the computer. Finally the console came back on line. Mission Control confirmed: It was another 1202. “I never expected it to come back,” Armstrong later said.’
16 July 2020
[apollo] Moon landing 50th anniversary: why people like Steph Curry have supported conspiracy theories … A look at who benefits from moon landing conspiracy theories. ‘The belief that the moon landing was shot in a Hollywood studio actually seems sort of quaint. How cute, a theory that probably won’t end up hurting someone! Perhaps on the 50th anniversary of the NASA moon landing — which definitely happened — we can appreciate the moon landing conspiracy for what it was: a mostly harmless piece of entertainment that possibly also led to the normalization of conspiracies in general, which is harmful.’
14 July 2020
[apollo] How a long-gone Apollo rocket returned to Earth … The story of an asteroid that turned out to be a Apollo rocket from 1969. ‘They made a startling discovery: J002E3 appeared to be covered in paint — specifically, white, titaniumoxide (TiO2) paint. According to Kira Jorgensen Abercromby at California Polytechnic State University, who also studied J002E3 while at the Air Force Maui Optical & Supercomputing observatory, “What we saw were features in the spectral data that matched other upper-stage rocket bodies launched during a similar time frame [to the Apollo missions] and the data also matched typical features found in organic paints that looked like TiO2.” This information pointed toward a very specific object as the identity of J002E3: a spent third stage from an Apollo-era Saturn V rocket, which were historically covered in this specific kind of paint.’
12 February 2020
[apollo] Apollo 11 vs USB-C Chargers … Comparing the CPU of the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C wall chargers. ‘I claim that we would only need the compute power of 4 Anker PowerPort Atom PD 2 USB-C chargers to get to the moon…’
6 September 2019
[kubrick] How Stanley Kubrick Staged the Moon Landing … Analysing the classic conspiracy theory that Kubrick left cryptic messages about staging the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in the Shining. ‘The clincher comes when the Danny gets up from his tricycle and walks down the corridor, following a mysterious call, the sort that a government might make to a filmmaker in a time of crisis. The caretaker’s son is wearing an Apollo 11 sweater—weird, huh? It shows a rocket over the words Apollo 11. When he stands, it seems as if the rocket is blasting off, whereas of course it isn’t because it isn’t real. Danny walks, thus the rocket flies, until he finds himself outside Room 237. Danny, who stands for the child in Kubrick, the artist, has traveled to 237, that is, all the way to the moon. Only he hasn’t. Is any of this real? Of course not. It’s a face in the clouds.’
21 July 2019
[apollo] Classified Apollo 11 anomaly threatened to crash first moon astronauts … How a problem with the Service Module almost killed all the Apollo 11 Astronauts close to home. ‘About 15 minutes before the astronauts splashed into the Pacific Ocean, the CSM fully separated into its two parts. This was necessary because only the command module (which held the crew) had a heat shield. The heat shield protected the astronauts by deflecting and absorbing the scorching energies created by plowing through Earth’s atmosphere at about 25,000 mph — more than a dozen times as fast as a speeding bullet. The service module became useless and posed a collision risk after the two parts separated, so it was supposed to skip off Earth’s atmosphere like a stone thrown across a pond. But it did not.’
20 July 2019
[apollo] Huge gallery of Apollo Program Photos … To celebrate the anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon here’s a collection of pictures NASA have uploaded. (Previously)

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon...

19 July 2019
[apollo] The Underappreciated Power of the Apollo Computer … Alexis Madrigal on the Apollo Guidance Computer. ‘To maximize the built-in architecture, Hamilton and her colleagues came up with what they named “The Interpreter”—we’d now call it a virtualization scheme. It allowed them to run five to seven virtual machines simultaneously in two kilobytes of memory. It was terribly slow, but “now you have all the capabilities you ever dreamed of, in software,” O’Brien said.’
18 July 2019
[apollo] Apollo 11 Landing: Norman Mailer’s Loony Account … Norman Mailer on Apollo 11. ‘This is the glory of Of a Fire on the Moon—the fidelity of Aquarius to his apprehensions; his space-operatic heebie-jeebies; his perverse, obsessive sense that under the achievement, something is dying. Plenty of people regarded the moonshot as a monstrous misallocation of resources. Aquarius alone—or alone in mass-market magazines—was ready to declare it a metaphysical catastrophe. In his stagy rhetoric, his mangled-by-moonbeams prose, he laments the lunar trespass by “strange, plasticized, half-communicating Americans,” and what it portends down here on Earth. Apollo’s success, he declares, “set electronic engineers and computer programs to dreaming of ways to attack the problems of society as well as they had attacked the problems of putting men on the moon.” Horrific prospect.’
17 July 2019
[apollo] Astronauts Falling on the Moon

16 July 2019
[conspiracy] One giant … lie? Why so many people still think the moon landings were faked‘If you have ever been to the Science Museum in London, you will know that the lunar module was basically made of tinfoil. Apollo 8 had orbited the moon in 1968, but, as Armstrong remarked, correcting course and landing on the moon was “far and away the most complex part of the flight”. He rated walking around on the surface one out of 10 for difficulty (despite the problems he had with the TV cable wrapping around his feet), “but I thought the lunar descent was probably a 13”. That is until you compare it with the difficulty of maintaining a lie to the entire world for five decades without a single slip from any Nasa employee. You would also have to imagine that 2019-era special effects were available to Nasa in 1969 and not one of the 600 million TV viewers noticed anything amiss. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a decent indication of what Hollywood special effects could do at the time – and it’s extremely shonky. It genuinely was simpler to film on location.’
4 April 2019
[space] Apollo astronauts left their poop on the moon. NASA ought to go back for that shit. … Is there life on the Moon feft behind in astronaut’s excrement that was jettisoned from Moon Landers? … ‘After Neil Armstrong descended from the Eagle lander, becoming the first human to set foot on the moon, the very first picture he took on the surface shows, yes, the moon’s cratered surface, but also a white jettisoned trash bag (or jett bag). I can’t confirm there are feces in this particular bag (Buzz Aldrin declined to comment for this story), but there’s definitely one like it on the moon that contained or still contains human waste, according to the NASA History Office.’
5 September 2017
[apollo] How Verbs and Nouns Got Apollo to the Moon … a look at how the Apollo Guidance Computer worked … ‘An entire mission to the Moon was run by the Apollo guidance computer, from checking the guidance platform alignment and firing the engines. All told, it took about 10,500 keystrokes to get to the Moon and back, and every one of them was entered into the guidance computer’s “display and keyboard” interface, affectionately referred to as the DKSY (pronounced like “diss-key”). There were three on board — two in the command module and one in the lunar module — and all three offered information simply and concisely in numeric coded messages or by a series of warning lights.’
4 January 2017
[moon] The Dark Side of the Moon … go read this powerful profile of Buzz Aldrin …

You smile at him, your face opening the way every single face in the entire world opens when it encounters him. Because he is: Buzz Aldrin. And we are: mankind.

He takes note of your smile, and just as quickly looks past you. It’s the same way with everybody. It’s your pregnant anticipation: I can’t wait to hear the amazing synthesis of moon wisdom you are about to bestow upon me.

He has no idea what to do with that. None. He’s turning 85 this month. He went to the moon when he was 39. Mankind has been coming at him with your same smile ever since. What do you expect him to do with that?

11 August 2015
[space] The Sculpture on the Moon… fascinating story of the only work of art on the Moon…

‘At 12:18 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on Aug. 2, 1971, Commander David Scott of Apollo 15 placed a 3 1/2-inch-tall aluminum sculpture onto the dusty surface of a small crater near his parked lunar rover. At that moment the moon transformed from an airless ball of rock into the largest exhibition space in the known universe. Scott regarded the moment as tribute to the heroic astronauts and cosmonauts who had given their lives in the space race. Van Hoeydonck was thrilled that his art was pointing the way to a human destiny beyond Earth and expected that he would soon be “bigger than Picasso.”

In reality, van Hoeydonck’s lunar sculpture, called Fallen Astronaut, inspired not celebration but scandal. Within three years, Waddell’s gallery had gone bankrupt. Scott was hounded by a congressional investigation and left NASA on shaky terms. Van Hoeydonck, accused of profiteering from the public space program, retreated to a modest career in his native Belgium. Now both in their 80s, Scott and van Hoeydonck still see themselves unfairly maligned in blogs and Wikipedia pages—to the extent that Fallen Astronaut is remembered at all.’

17 July 2015
[space] Well-Aimed and Powerful … more thoughts on the meaning of the Apollo space programme …

Buzz Aldrin once told me that he envies writers their ability to put things into words. Yet one of his first utterances after stepping out of the lunar module, in an attempt to describe the landscape to Mission Control, was the phrase “magnificent desolation.” This is surprisingly poetic for an astronaut, and it has stayed with me ever since I noticed it in a NASA transcript years ago. Every minute of the astronauts’ time on the moon was planned, and they wore printed copies of their schedules on their wrists to keep them on track. But I have to imagine that, once in a while, Neil and Buzz looked up at the far-off mountains at the edge of the Sea of Tranquility and thought to themselves, I am on the moon. This is all happening, right now, on the surface of the moon. Buzz Aldrin said many years later, “Every step on the moon was a virginal experience. Exploring this place that had never before been seen by human eyes, upon which no foot had stepped, or hand touched—was awe-inspiring.”

Neil, Buzz, and Mike traveled farther than anyone ever had and were gone only eight days. The images they brought back are among the most beautiful ever produced—all the more so, perhaps, because none of it was particularly intended to be beautiful. The jettisoned interstage adapter of the Saturn V tumbling, on fire, in a slow-motion ballet toward the gorgeous blue of faraway Earth. Buzz Aldrin smirking in a shaft of pure sunlight streaking through the command module window. Neil Armstrong overbundled in his space suit like a child dressed for cold, standing on the ladder and cautiously dangling one boot above the dusty surface of the Sea of Tranquility. The three astronauts confined to an Airstream trailer for quarantine after their return, smiling out at the president through a picture window. The perfect blue earth, thumb-sized, hanging in a deep black sky.

21 April 2015
[apollo] 45 years after Apollo 13: Ars looks at what went wrong and why… Ars Technica on what caused the explosion on Apollo 13?‘For Apollo 13, keeping calm and working the problems as they appeared allowed three astronauts to escape unharmed from a complex failure. The NASA mindset of simulate, simulate, simulate meant that when things did go wrong, even something of the magnitude of the Apollo 13 explosion, there was always some kind of contingency plan worked out in advance. Controllers had a good gut-level feel for the limits of the spacecraft’s systems when trying to work through emergency problems.’
8 April 2015
[apollo] The Armstrong Purse: Flown Apollo 11 Lunar Artifacts … fascinating look at a bag of miscellaneous “trash” Neil Armstrong brought back from the moon and kept in a closet till he died. ‘…they would describe to mission control the container with the “odds and ends” as, “10 pounds of LM miscellaneous equipment.” It was important they account for the amount and distribution of any added weight so that the return trajectory and entry parameters could be calculated with precision. As far as we know, Neil has never discussed the existence of these items and no one else has seen them in the 45 years since he returned from the Moon. (I asked James Hansen, Neil’s authorized biographer if he had mentioned the items, and he had not.) Each and every item has its own story and significance, and they are described with photographs in extraordinary detail in an addendum to the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. But two of the items are especially timely. Both have been placed on display as part of the recently opened temporary exhibition Outside the Spacecraft: 50 Years of Extra-Vehicular Activity. The first is the 16mm Data Acquisition Camera that was mounted in the window of the lunar module Eagle to record the historic landing and “one small step” made by Armstrong as humankind first set foot on another world…’ [via Kottke]
25 July 2014
[apollo] Twenty Awesome Covers From The US Space Program‘Manuals, guidebooks, press kits, reports, brochures – all with cool artworks and typography. Enjoy!’

Apollo Mission Book Covers

22 July 2014
[apollo] Moondoggle: The Forgotten Opposition to the Apollo Program … turns out a majority of Americans did not think going to the Moon was worth it in the 1960s … ‘The race to the moon may not have been wildly popular among scientists, random Americans, or black political activists, but it was hard to deny the power of the imagery returning from space. Our attention kept getting directed to the heavens — and our technology’s ability to propel humans there. It was pure there, and sublime, even if our rational selves could see we might be better off spending the money on urban infrastructure or cancer research or vocational training.’
21 July 2014
[comics] Explorers on the Moon 1969 … Tintin and Gang greets Neil Armstrong on the Moon …

Tintin and Gang greet Neil Armstrong on the Moon

20 July 2014
[apollo] The First Men on the Moon: The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing … remarkable webapp allowing you to experience the Apollo 11 moon landing minute-by-minute as it happened… ‘Eagle, Houston. If you read, you’re GO for powered descent. Over.’
17 July 2014
[moon] A Stowaway to the Thanatosphere: My Voyage Beyond Apollo with Norman Mailer, Rex Weiner… Gonzo-esque tale of two stowaways on a cruise ship voyage to watch the last Apollo Moon launch in 1972 …

Nixon was president, Watergate was still a third-rate burglary, and Tom and I were left feeling anxious, paranoid, and bored. We were both admirers of Mailer—the tough little reefer smoker, contrarian wordsmith, libertarian politico, and no-nonsense ladies’ man—so the story about the Voyage Beyond Apollo stirred our interest.

“They’ve cleverly organized this thing on a ship, you dig, that way no one can crash it,” mused Forcade. He theorized that the cruise was just a cover for an elite conclave conspiring to jettison Earth once they’d totally ravaged it, and establish an exclusive colony for the rich and powerful in space. Everyone else would be left to fight over dwindling resources and perish in the terrestrial ruins. “Mailer is either in on the scam or they’ve suckered him into it. We have got to get on board that ship,” Tom said, “find out what these motherfuckers are up to, blow their cover, and rescue Mailer before it’s too late.”

Under the influence of a fresh shipment of Tom’s Columbian import, I thought it seemed like an entirely reasonable plan…

26 September 2013
[apollo] The Family that Went to the Moon … How a picture of a family ended up on the moon …‘The portrait shows Charlie, his wife Dorothy, and their two sons Charles and Thomas. It looks like they are sitting on a bench in the summertime.The family photo, gingerly wrapped in clear plastic and slightly crumpled from being stashed in the pocket of a space suit, was left on the Moon. It presumably still sits there today…’

A Family Photo Left On The Moon In 1972

20 July 2013
[comics] Explorers on the Moon 1969 … Tintin and Gang greets Neil Armstrong on the Moon in 1969 …

Tintin and Gang greet Neil Armstrong on the Moon

4 September 2012
[space] Gizmodo: All the American Flags On the Moon Are Now White

According to lunar scientist Paul Spudis: For forty-odd years, the flags have been exposed to the full fury of the Moon’s environment – alternating 14 days of searing sunlight and 100° C heat with 14 days of numbing-cold -150° C darkness. But even more damaging is the intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the pure unfiltered sunlight on the cloth (modal) from which the Apollo flags were made. Even on Earth, the colors of a cloth flag flown in bright sunlight for many years will eventually fade and need to be replaced. So it is likely that these symbols of American achievement have been rendered blank, bleached white by the UV radiation of unfiltered sunlight on the lunar surface. Some of them may even have begun to physically disintegrate under the intense flux.

1 January 2012
[best_of_metafilter] A few things we learned on the way to the Moon … nice collection of links on the Apollo program …‘What about the 800 plus pounds of rocks and dust brought back from the Moon? Surprisingly, they’re similar to Earth rocks, giving weight to the Giant Impact Theory. But the most amazing fact is that with no true atmosphere, there’s no erosion. The Moon rocks, laying on the surface for billions of years, contain information about the universe from early era of the universe, which also reveals the conditions of Earth shortly after it was formed.’
22 March 2011
[space] Spacelog … linkable and searchable NASA transcripts of early space exploration … Apollo 11: ‘Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed. ‘ [via Kottke]
26 January 2010
[conspiracy] Secrets of The Shining … a totally loopy conspiracy theory involving Stanley Kubrick and the Shining … ‘The truth is that The Shining is the story of how Stanley Kubrick cut a deal with the U.S. Government to fake the Apollo moon landings.’ [via Metafilter]
11 September 2009
[apollo] A List Of The 106 Objects That Apollo 11 Left On The Moon’33. Defecation Collection Device (4)’
7 August 2009
[funny] NEIL BEFORE ZOD!

neil before zod

3 August 2009
[moon] To the Moon – with extreme engineering … a look at the story behind The Lunar Orbiter programme – a series of missions which mapped the moon’s surface before the Apollo landings … ‘The Lunar Orbiter astonishes even today. It had to take pictures, scan and develop the film on board, and broadcast it successfully back to earth. Naturally, the orbiter had to provide its own power, orient itself without intervention from ground control, and maintain precise temperature conditions and air pressure for the film processing, and protect itself from solar radiation and cosmic rays – all within severe size and weight constraints. This was far beyond the capabilities of the newest spy satellites, which back then returned the film to earth in a canister, retrieved by a specially kitted-out plane. The Orbiter challenge was the Apollo challenge in miniature.’
20 July 2009
[apollo] The Giant Apollo 11 Post … Kottke does a big round up of Apollo 11 links of interest on the internet.
19 July 2009
[apollo] How Michael Collins became the forgotten astronaut of Apollo 11 … profile of Michael Collins and his experience of Apollo 11‘Minutes later, Columbia swept behind the Moon and Collins became Earth’s most distant solo traveller, separated from the rest of humanity by 250,000 miles of space and by the bulk of the Moon, which blocked all radio transmissions to and from mission control. He was out of sight and out of contact with his home planet. “I am now truly alone and absolutely alone from any known life. I am it,” he wrote in his capsule. […] Such solitude would have unnerved most people. But not Collins. He says the emotion that he experienced most during his day alone in lunar orbit was that of exultation.’
17 July 2009
[apollo] Remembering Apollo 11 … fantastic – as always – photo gallery from The Big Picture.
12 July 2009
[apollo] Haynes Owners’ Workshop Manual To Apollo 11 … fun idea – a Apollo 11 manual done as a DIY Car Maintenance Guide … More on the manual from the Register: ‘Of course, the book doesn’t actually invite you to wander down to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC and pop the spark plugs out of the original command module, but it does offer “an insight into the hardware from the first manned mission to land on the moon”.’
3 July 2009
[apollo] Apollo 11 Moon Landing … another collection of material on the Moon Landing – this time from the Guardian … Tim Radford: ‘Above all, it was a moment of human drama, played out with fragile, gleaming technology against a backcloth of infinity.’
25 June 2009
[moon] The Moon Landings … The BBC Archive looks back at the Apollo Moon Landings … ‘This BBC Archive collection tells the story of the Apollo moon missions, how they got off the ground and why the missions came to an abrupt end. Through over 40 years of radio and TV broadcasts, we meet some of the men who made that incredible journey and the reporters who brought their stories into our homes.’
24 April 2009
[what-if] Nixon’s Undelivered Moon Disaster Speech … What would Richard Nixon have said if disaster had trapped the Apollo 11 Astronauts on the moon? … ‘In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.’
15 April 2008
[apollo] Hollywood Hunts Star to Play First Man on the Moon‘[Neil] Armstrong was 38 when he and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. Matt Damon, star of the Bourne trilogy, will be 38 this year, while Eric Bana, whose credits include Hulk and the next Star Trek movie, is 39. Christian Bale, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jake Gyllenhaal could also be in the running.’
8 April 2008
[space] YouTube: Buzz Aldrin punches Lunar Landing Conspiracy Theorist Bart Sibrel in the Face.
3 March 2008
[apollo] The Moon Museum — Apparently, there is a small museum of art on the Moon hidden in the leg of the Apollo 12 lander … ‘[Andy] Warhol’s contribution, which is obscured by the thumb above, is described as “a calligraphic squiggle made up of the initials of his signature. Actually, it’s a drawing of a penis.’ [via Kottke]