(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) "Everywhere there were people doing their very best to accomplish John Kennedy's vision," said Jim Taylor, 86, Stansbury Park resident and retired physicist, who helped chart a topographic map of moon's surface so astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission could land the lunar module safely.
Stansbury Park • Before astronauts could land safely on the moon — a feat that happened 50 years ago this week — NASA officials needed to pick a nice flat spot to aim at. But they couldn’t do that without a very accurate map of the lunar surface.
It was a project that took two and a half years, required mathematical and scientific genius and, according to Utah resident Jim Taylor, “miles of Scotch tape.”
A physicist, who now lives in Stansbury Park, Taylor and two other scientists mapped the moon while working at Data Corporation. NASA approached the Ohio-based company because it had been making maps from aerial photographs for high-level reconnaissance and surveillance missions.
With the moon, though, “we had to solve problems that had never been solved before,” the 86-year-old explained during a recent interview. “And once one problem was solved, another popped up. It was like opening the layers of a Russian [nesting] doll."
Taylor said the landing site had to be wide enough so the module had room for error when landing; flat enough so it wouldn’t tip over; solid enough so it wouldn’t sink into the dust; and free of large rocks and craters that could interfere with the landing or takeoff.
It was no easy task as the moon is covered with obstacles, he said. “If they had landed on a spot that wasn’t flat enough. They’d be there still.”
At the time, there was no such thing as digital photography or digital printing — Kodak launched its first digital camera in 1975. So creating the map was a complicated process using what today seems like outdated technology.
Lunar orbiters were sent into space to take photos about 30 miles above the surface of the moon. The images were transmitted to Earth via analog signal and recorded on 35 millimeter film. A microdensitometer was used to digitized the photos, “but they came out distorted,” he said, “and we had all kinds of problems.”
Eventually, Taylor and his team — which included Richard Pratt and David Behane — were able to reassemble the images to match the originals. That allowed for 3D versions to be made and printed in long sections, with dots and squares and white splotches indicating the terrain.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jim Taylor, Stansbury Park, saved an early version of a topographic map of the moon's surface
Like a giant puzzle, the scientists had to figure out a way to put all the pieces together to create one single map, Taylor said. They went to a nearby elementary school, spread the pieces out in a large assembly area and then used Scotch tape to put them together — ultimately creating a 20-foot square.
A photographer then climbed the bell tower and took pictures of the map from above, Taylor said. It was from those photos, that the actual maps that the astronauts used were made.
Taylor left Data Corp before July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 astronauts first stepped on the moon’s surface. But he saved a newspaper from the day as well as an early version of one of the map sections covered in tiny black dots and lines.
He had forgotten about the piece of history until he started hearing talk of the 50th anniversary.
The memories are bittersweet, he said, because the excitement about space and new frontiers seems to have dwindled in America over the past five decades. He pointed to explorers such as Columbus and Lewis and Clark who may have been looking for gold or land. “But were also doing it for the adventure," he said, "America was created that way.”
The Apollo 11 project was an exciting time, he added, and people involved “were just wildly enthusiastic" about going into space.
“We were taking baby steps on the road to the stars,” Taylor said of the experience. Unlike science fiction authors who could only imagined what the surface of the moon looked like, “we were really, really doing it.
"We are part of something that is going to last for thousands of years,” he added. “Starting with going to the moon, then Mars, then the outer planets. And then we’re going to go to the stars and that’s the future of humanity.”
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