Check Out Apollo 11’s Flight Plan

If you’re interested in traveling to the moon, here’s a chance to (literally) take a page out of Apollo 11’s handbook: the National Archives has this snippet of the Apollo 11 flight plan, and it’s basically a how-to for a successful space flight!

If you can figure out how to read it, that is, which would indicate you already know a bit about rocketry. (So many acronyms! And what do those doodles mean???) Thankfully the Archives put together a small guide to reading at least some of it:

This page is one of 185 pages in the plan. Each page represents one hour of the Apollo 11 flight. …

1st column

• CSM = Command Service Module

• CMP = Command Module Pilot

• This column lists tasks for CMP Mike Collins

2nd column

• (1530 EDT)=elapsed time

3rd and 4th columns

• LM = Lunar Module

• CDR = Commander of the Mission

• LMP = Lunar Module Pilot

• These columns list tasks for CDR Neil Armstrong and LMP Buzz Aldrin

5th column

• MCC-H = Mission Control Center-Houston.

• This column lists tasks for Mission Control

So this is just a single page out of 185 pages–but you can probably just guess at the other 184.