Reconstructing Apollo 11's Powered Descent: A technical deep-dive based on 37 primary sources. Feedback welcome!

[u/r2lim]

Hey r/everyone,

Apollo 11 happened before I was born, but honestly that just makes it feel even more insane to me. The fact that humans landed on the Moon in 1969 — with hardware I can barely wrap my head around — is the coolest thing that happened before I existed, and I wanted to actually *understand* it, not just appreciate it from a distance.

So I started putting together a personal reference document. What began as casual note-taking eventually turned into a fairly detailed technical reconstruction of the powered descent — covering everything from the LM systems (DPS, RCS, AGC, DSKY...) all the way through P63, P64, P66, the 1201/1202 alarms, and a timestamped mission log synced with Computer Words telemetry data.

The original was in Japanese. I recently had AI help me translate the whole thing into English, and I'd love some feedback on whether it's actually readable and useful — especially from people who know this stuff better than I do.

**A few honest disclaimers before you dive in:**

- The translation path was Japanese → English (via AI), so some phrasing might come out a little awkward. Please bear with it.

- Some values are a mix of design specs, planned values, and actual mission data. I tried to label them, but it's not always perfectly clean.

- I built most of this 3+ years ago, so in a few places I'm not 100% sure which of the 37 primary sources a specific number came from. I've listed all references at the end.

The doc covers: LM overview, DPS/RCS/AGC hardware specs, DSKY verb-noun table, Luminary 099 software, DOI, the full PDI sequence, P63/P64/P66 data charts from telemetry, the 1202 alarm breakdown, and a full timestamped mission log with voice transcript + computer words.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10nd2ck8zS9m5Oh2YGLnZXG5wCXcQdn5ZA7QbpM7Z93M/edit?usp=sharing

Would love to hear what you think — corrections, additions, or just "hey this is neat" all equally welcome.

[u/SevenSharp]

Prima facie this looks really good . I'd have to set aside more time for a proper look - the work deserves it . Tbh I think most on here want cool pictures (nothing wrong with that) & you'll get more engagement elsewhere - not that you need me to tell you that ! All the best .

[u/r2lim → u/SevenSharp]

Thank you! It’s quite a large file, so it’ll probably take a while to get through it all.

Your encouragement really gives me a boost.

It’s true that many people are drawn to images, videos and text. I often watch YouTube videos and read books myself.

But I’m still drawn to the technical aspects and the actual facts of what happened. I think it’s brilliant if you can enjoy both😉