How do you land on the moon?
There’s a book for that. And it’s up for auction.
The Apollo 11 Lunar Module Timeline Book sat between Neil Armstrong and “Buzz” Aldrin owhen they made their moon landing on July 20, 1969. Fifty years after the historic event, the auction house Christie’s is putting the instruction manual up for sale.
The manual helped the two astronauts land the Eagle lunar module down on the lunar surface, landing with only 25 seconds of fuel left. Inside, besides a healthy dose of technical jargon, you’ll find Aldrin’s handwritten notes (turn to page 10), annotations and checkmarks made by Aldrin and Armstrong, along with pretty much the entire story of the Apollo 11 journey, including inspection, undocking, lunar surface descent and ascent and the rendezvous with Michael Collins back on board the Command Module in orbit.
Plus, bits of lunar dust on the transfer list pages.
There’s no video recording and very little audio of the two lunar explorers while they were in the Eagle, so this is pretty much the only diary of their journey. As a description on Christie’s auction site notes, “No more significant document of space exploration history is ever likely to be created, because future manned missions will be more fully digitized and not leave a comparable human trace.”
The book will be on view at various Christie’s locations throughout the month. The auction takes places at the auction house in New York on July 18. The estimated sale price is $7-9 million… a lot, but far less than waiting to become a space tourist on your own.
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