By now we are used to doing the countdown when we are preparing to attend a space launch, including the latest launch of Artemis 1 to the Moon. But where does this tradition come from? To find out, we have to go far back in time, celebrating the history of a historic piece of the Kennedy Space Center.
On December 1, 2014, in fact, NASA retired the analog countdown which allowed the personnel to organize the operations for the launch – and you can see it in the photograph on the cover of the news. Unfortunately, this wonderful memorabilia is no longer physically present, but remains in the hearts of enthusiasts who, even today, know very well that you have to count from ten to zero every time you get close to an important deadline.
However, the origin of this sequence of numbers is cinematic, and do you know where it comes from? From the silent film Frau im Mond by Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, who wrote the screenplay: the Austrian director produced this science fiction film in black and white by introducing, in the moments preceding the launch of the rocket, the count from “Minus 10 seconds” to “JETZT” (aka “Now”) with full-screen images, just as you can see at the bottom of the news.
It was certainly not the first appearance of the countdown, but it was the first time that this practice was associated with the launch of a space rocket. NASA adopted it from 1958with the launch of Explorer 1 documented in newsreels.
