CathInfo.com

It wasn't the first attempt. They were 10 previous flights in just the Apollo program. Apollo 10 went into orbit, orbited a couple dozen times, detached the lander, retrieved it 4 hours later, and returned - everything but touching down. Several things were learned on just that one flight that affected Apollo 11.

But I suppose you're right. Despite the video evidence, it is simply impossible that Bob Beamon could have jumped almost 2 feet beyond the world record in 1968. That was more than a 7% improvement, and anything more than a 2% improvement in a track and field world record is considered suspicious.

The latter is true, by the way. Increases in track and field world records over 2% are highly suspect. In many cases they find the wind gauge malfunctioned. In one case (with the long jump, if I recall correctly) a video surfaced showing someone standing too close to the wind gauge, which made the gauge invalid for record purposes. In other cases it's frequently suspected performance enhancing drugs were used but not caught.

No, Apollo 11 was the first attempt to land on the moon, transmit live 2-way video to/from the landing site, and re-launch the men back to earth. Complete success on the 1st try. Nothing went wrong!

You're talking about a 7% improvement in track & field? Hey, apparently it happens. I have no problem there. But we're talking about a 1000-fold (+100,000%) increase in distance traveled in space. That's a 100,000% improvement, not a 7% improvement!

PLUS nasa says they destroyed the technology to go to the Moon ("how convenient") and today they talk about the Van Allen belts as being this huge obstacle to manned space exploration -- astronauts were on film saying the furthest we can go is Low Earth Orbit (see the end of the country song video in the OP). Double-U Tee Eff?

Statistics, and data, just don't work this way:

Fastest 100-meter dash:   1.5 seconds
Second fastest 6.05 seconds
Third fastest: 6.13 seconds
Fourth fastest: 6.35 seconds
...
etc.


You NEVER, EVER have a datum "in a whole different league" than the runner-up and the 2nd runner-up. It just doesn't happen. If anyone wishes to prove me wrong I'm all ears!

Or phone processors:

Fastest 5,000 GHz
2nd fastest: 1.8 GHz
Third fastest: 1.7 GHz
etc.

Wayne Gretzky https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NHL_players_with_50-goal_seasons

You're talking about a 7% improvement in track & field? Hey, apparently it happens. I have no problem there. But we're talking about a 1000-fold (+100,000%) increase in distance traveled in space. That's a 100,000% improvement, not a 7% improvement!

There's not much to do between sub lunar orbit and the moon. It's not like voyages across the atlantic. You have fishing boats go out 100 miles and come back a bunch of times. Then you have some intrepid explorer go out and land in North America. If there's nothing to do in between, there's nothing to do. There were no intermediate flights across the Altantic - just short flights over water and back, and then Lindberg.

Beamon's long jump was really astounding. It wasn't like the high jump which improved with new techniques, or various swimming records that improved with suit technology. The previous record was 27' 4.75". He made a good jump and people thought he might have been close to 28'. He had hit 29' 2", an almost 2 feet increase in the world record of a simple human performance where increases had typically been a couple inches. This was 7% when even drug-based improvements in track records were between 2-3%. And while he did continue to jump 25' and 26', I'm pretty sure he never jumped over 27' again (and nobody jumped past 28' for about a decade). If it wasn't on video it would be a difficult one to believe.

PLUS nasa says they destroyed the technology to go to the Moon ("how convenient") and today they talk about the Van Allen belts as being this huge obstacle to manned space exploration -- astronauts were on film saying the furthest we can go is Low Earth Orbit (see the end of the country song video in the OP). Double-U Tee Eff?

The loss of technology has been answered many times on the internet, and even on cathinfo. You must be aware of this, no?

The radiation belts were not a significant issue for a brief trip. It might be a problem if people were going to be in a radiation environment for a long time. A Mars mission, for example, would take a few years, and Mars has little in the way of magnetosphere or atmosphere to protect the surface from radiation. (The ISS is in LEO, within the earth's magnetosphere, which provides protection.)