240,250 miles

(384,400 km)

The speed at which an object must travel in order to escape from the object which it is orbitting.

The Apollo 11 spacecraft had to travel at least 7 miles per second (11.25 km/s) to break free of Earth's gravitational field. This speed is 32.4 times as fast as the speed of sound ('Mach 32.4"). The fastest military plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, travels (only) Mach 3

Mare Tranquillitatis, more commonly referred to as "The Sea of Tranquility" is 542.5 miles (873 km) across.

The Grand Canyon is 280 miles long

1.5 feet/second

(0.46 m/s)

4.6 miles/second

(7.4 km/s)

Apollo 11 was powered by a Saturn V rocket which stood 364 feet (101.5 meters) tall. It weighed 525,500 pounds (239,725 kg), empty; and 6,100,000 pounds (2,766,913 kg), loaded.

The Statue of Liberty stands 152 feet (46 meters)

Apollo 11's Saturn V rocket required 4,325,132 lbs (1,965,969 kg) liquid oxygen; 1,432,662 lbs (651,210 kg) jet fuel (kerosene); and 202,851 lbs (92,205 kg) liquid hydrogen

Apollo's Saturn V's five boosters generated a total of 7.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

A Boeing Passenger 747 produces 188,000 lbs of thrust (four engines each producing 47,000 lbs). [The Apollo launch produced thrust equivalent to forty 747's.]

2300 miles per hour

(3,683 km/hr)

73 cubic feet per astronaut.

(4.2' x 4.2' x 4.2')

The Apollo 11 spacecraft was equipped for its mission to the Moon with a state-of-the-art on-board computer. The CPU ran at a pace of 1 Megahertz, and the system memory was 36K in size.

Currently, the typical home computer is equipped with a CPU running at least 800 MHz and many hand-held calculators contain more than 36K memory.