Remember the closeup picture of Armstrong’s imprinted footprint on the moon? These struck me as ethereal echoes, anticipatory foot prints from the adventurous arc of exploration.
Something about it just draws me in. I can imagine them glowing from a diffused backlight.
A vintage 11”x 14” X-ray of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong’s lunar EVA spacesuit boots dated 7-7-69, only 9 days before the launch. Excellent condition. This X-ray was taken as a last minute check to see if there were any foreign objects that could compromise the integrity of the spacesuit during the mission, such as broken off tips of needles that were used in the stitching process. The X-ray was taken and inspected at the time by a man named Jack Weakland, who stored it for NASA during and after the Apollo program.
Jack Weakland was a member of the Nondestructive Evaluation Group (NDE) at NASA. Weakland worked in the X-Ray Lab from 1968-1979, where he tested equipment for a number of Apollo missions, including Apollo 7 and Apollo 11. In an oral history conducted in 2001, Weakland described the rationale behind this quality control measure: “We x-rayed all of the suits, we x-rayed all those things to verify that there were no sharp objects left in them during the manufacturing process, make sure the zippers, when they zipped them up, the seal would form perfectly into the zippered threads”
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