Today is 40 years since Apollo 11 touched down on the moon. Is this the greatest accomplishment in human history? As for VW comparisons:

* The Saturn V moon rocket is still the most powerful machine, of any kind, ever built by humans. It is the tallest, heaviest and fastest flying machine ever made. At liftoff its five F1 engines were producing 120 million kW, or 160 million horsepower, consuming propellant at 18,000 litres (14.4 tonnes) per second. Each F1 fuel pump produced 55,000 hp. Each F1 engine was as powerful as 40 B747 engines, and more powerful than the Shuttle's 3 main engines put together. The first stage had five of them.

* The first stage contained 1.9 million litres of propellant (RP1 jet fuel and liquid oxygen), about an olympic 50m swimming pool full. That's enough fuel to fill 49,000 Volkswagens. The Saturn burned all of it in 150 seconds.

* At takeoff the Saturn V weighed 3,040 tonnes, as much as 3,475 Volkswagens (or 9 Boeing 747s). It was as long as 27 Volkswagens parked nose to tail, or 73 stacked on on tyop of another.

* The Saturn could lift 140 tonnes to orbit (160 Volkswagens), more than any other rocket before or since, and 4 times as much as the Shuttle can. It could lift 47 tonnes (53 Volkswagens) all the way to the moon.

* The ship's highest ever speed, 39,897 km/h (Apollo 10), is 312 times faster than the top speed of a VW.

great facts

did u know that Buzz used him ball point pen to activate the engines on the lunar lander so they could get off the moon

"Space may be the final frontier
But it's made in a Hollywood basement"
its californication

My dad worked on the Apollo Miissions for NASA as a technician at Honeysuckle Creek (outside canberra)..this was the station the located the first signals from the moon surface ..and relayed to parkes who forwarded to usa ..exciting stuff..have a massive archive of a couple of filling cabinet draws full of memorabillia from various stations around the world..must dust it off and revisit it all !!!..even find somewhere to archive/display it properly..any suggestions?

We can all be proud that Australia played such a major role in the Apollo program, Ray especially. Wow.

The Honeysuckle guys have put together a bit of a tribute page at http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/  and I'm sure they would be interested in all your Dad's stuff. I visited the Honeysuckle site about 10 years ago; nothing left now except a few concrete slabs. Tidbinbilla is fantastic though.