Each Mercury astronaut named his capsule and added the numeral 7 to denote the teamwork of the original astronauts.

Prior to the manned Mercury flights, unmanned tests of the booster and the capsule, carrying a chimpanzee, were made.

The Mercury program used two launch vehicles: A Redstone for the suborbital and an Atlas for the four orbital flights.

The blunt end of the Mercury capsule was covered with an ablative heat shield to protect it against the 3000 degree heat of entry into the atmosphere.

The Mercury spacecraft was two meters (6 ft, 10 in) long, 1.9 meters (6 ft, 2 1/2 in) in diameter, with a 5.8 meter (19 ft, 2 in) escape tower was fastened to the cylinder of the capsule.

The first U.S. spaceship was a cone-shaped one-man capsule with a cylinder mounted on top. It was named Mercury.

The Internet is the fastest-growing communications tool ever. It took radio broadcasters 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million, television 13 years, and the Internet just 4 years.

The first two video games copyrighted in the U.S. were Asteroids and Lunar Lander in 1980.

Fifteen Saturn Vs were built. The National Air&Space Museum's collection includes three Saturn Vs exhibited at NASA visitor centers in Alabama, Florida, and Texas.

The Saturn V 1st stage could power the rocket to a height of around 42 miles and speeds of around 2.5km/sec. The 2nd stage took it to over 100 miles in height and achieved near orbital velocity. The 3rd stage was used in 2 steps: first to insert the Apollo spacecraft into an earth orbit. And then it was fired again to get it to the ‘escape velocity’ of around 11.2 km/sec, and onwards towards the moon.

The 1st stage of the Saturn V rocket consumed kerosene and liquid oxygen. The 2nd and 3rd stages consumed liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Unlike the space shuttle, or any of the rockets in the Indian Space Program, there were no solid fuel boosters. A majority of the 3000 tons liftoff weight of the Saturn V comprised of the propellant and liquid oxygen.

The noise levels and vibrations/shockwaves generated during lift-off of the Saturn V (or ‘blast-off’ as it is often and more appropriately referred to…) were so high that spectators were kept at least 3 miles away.

The thrust generated by each of the Saturn V first stage’s F1 engine was around 7.6 Million lb ft. Compare that with a supersonic fighter jet, F16: 23,000 lb ft and an engine of the Boeing 747: 60,000 lb ft.

The total lift capacity of the Saturn V for putting a payload in a ‘low earth orbit’ (LEO) was about 120 Tons. And the capacity for putting a payload in a lunar orbit was around 47 Tons. For comparison imagine putting an entire fully loaded Boeing 757 into a low earth orbit, or a Boeing 737 into a lunar orbit!

The fuel consumption of the Saturn V first stage was a staggering 15 Tons / sec of Kerosene. The fuel pumps that fed the engines alone consumed 100s of MW of power, enough to light an entire city.

The power generated by the 5 F1 engines of the Saturn V first stage was in excess of 150 GW (1 GW = 1,000 MW). That’s roughly equivalent to the entire installed power generation capacity in India! Or nearly 2.5 times of the power generation capacity in Texas.

The Saturn V rocket stood 363 ft. (over 35 stories tall) 33 ft. in diameter, and weighed around 3,000 tons. The height was about 2 times that of the space shuttle.

The Saturn V remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status from a height, weight and payload standpoint. (In the 1980s, the Soviets designed and developed a rocket that was slightly more powerful, but it was never fully operational.)

High speed passenger trains in China reach speeds of up to 350 kph (220 mph).

The word engineer comes from a Latin word meaning ‘cleverness’.

Engineers solve practical problems by applying mathematical and scientific knowledge.

According to Moore's Law, microchips double in power every 18 to 24 months.

220 million tons of old computers and other technological hardware are trashed in the United States each year.