North American’s engineers began with a blunt-end cone: 12 ft 10 in wide at its base, 11 ft 5 in tall, just enough room for three astronauts and the gear to keep them alive from Earth orbit to lunar return. They divided the shell into three zones: a forward nose packed with parachutes and two steering jets, a pressurized middle for people and controls, and an aft skirt ringed by ten more thrusters, water and propellant tanks, and the umbilical that linked the capsule to its service module.The pressure vessel took shape in Downey, California, as an aluminum honeycomb sandwich—stiff, light and airtight—then slipped inside a stainless-steel honeycomb outer shell and a fiberglass blanket. Over that went a 3,000-lb ablative heat shield of phenolic resin: two inches thick at the base where re-entry heat roared hottest, tapering to half an inch near the hatch.Behind the silver-mylar forward cap sat the Earth-Landing System. At 24,000 ft the cap blew away, twin drogues popped to slow and steady the fall, then three mains ballooned out to drop the command module at 22 mph. If one canopy failed, two were still enough; four crushable ribs under the nose soaked up whatever shock remained when ocean met aluminum.The guidance computer kept the cone offset a foot from its center of pressure, giving it just enough lift to steer across continents while holding peak g-loads near a survivable 4 g. Twelve hydrazine-fed jets—ten aft, two nose—let the pilot roll, pitch and yaw for docking, re-entry trim or slow stabilizing spins. Up front a spring-loaded probe latched into the lunar module’s drogue, reeled the two craft together, then blew free with pyros when the crews parted ways for Earth.Inside the 210-cu-ft cabin a seven-foot wide crescent panel wrapped around the crew: velocity and attitude readouts to the commander’s left, navigation computer at center, electrical and life-support gauges to the right. Three shock-mounted couches folded and shifted for launch, work and splashdown; lockers, cameras, food and medical kits filled six equipment bays; five triple-pane windows—two square, two triangular, one round—gave the only views of blue planet, black space and the gray Moon beyond.

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Apollo 11