The space between the command module and the service module. The service module is a prop; boilerplate built to emulate the final design.

photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

This photo is licensed under a Creative Commons license. If you use this photo within the terms of the license or make special arrangements to use the photo, please list the photo credit as "Scott Beale / Laughing Squid" and link the credit to laughingsquid.com.

photo of the fulls-ze prop/mockup of the ANSA Icarus/liberty 2 spacechip from Planet of the Apes

Edited Apollo 11 image of the Command Module orbiting the Moon, seen from the Lunar Module. Color/processing variant.

The Virginia Air and Space center Museum in Hampton Roads, Virginia. This museum contains the original Apollo 12 command module, along with famous historic airplanes , bombers and jet fighter planes.

David Scott flew aboard Gemini 8 which was the first ever docking in space, he was also the Apollo 9 Command Module Pilot which was the mission that first flew a manned lunar module, and his final flight was as Commander of Apollo 15, when he bacame the 7th man to walk on the moon, and the first man to drive on it, using the lunar rover.

photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

This photo is licensed under a Creative Commons license. If you use this photo within the terms of the license or make special arrangements to use the photo, please list the photo credit as "Scott Beale / Laughing Squid" and link the credit to laughingsquid.com.

photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

This photo is licensed under a Creative Commons license. If you use this photo within the terms of the license or make special arrangements to use the photo, please list the photo credit as "Scott Beale / Laughing Squid" and link the credit to laughingsquid.com.

Museum of Flight

The two bell shaped objects are canisters for the drogue parachutes. The main parachutes were stowed on the other side of the LM access tunnel.

There's a pair of pitch motors below the curved pipe.

Yup, real thing.

Fernbank Science Center

Before you is the Command Module of the Apollo 6. If you look under the capsule you will see a series of holes. These holes were drilled to investigate how the heat shield held up after this capsule re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.

The Apollo 6 mission provided a second rehearsal for launching the massive Saturn V rocket. Scientists and engineers were testing the "staging" of a giant rocket to be sure each section would work properly. An important mission objective was to check out all systems before sending astronauts into space. The vehicle carried a full payload, including a mock-up lunar module, and was to test the capsule's heat shield to see if it could withstand re-entry speeds.

Initially, the launch seemed to be fine. But approximately two minutes into the flight, the first stage's five F-1 engines developed serious thrust fluctuations that caused the rocket to bounce like a pogo stick for 30 seconds. These oscillations were so intense that an airborne chase plane's cameras recorded pieces of the adapter stage (housing the lunar module) falling off of the vehicle. Such low-frequency vibrations (known as "pogo effect") exceeded the engineering/safety design criteria of the Apollo 6 Command Module. Had astronauts been onboard the spacecraft, the mission would have been aborted by jettisoning the capsule away from the failing rocket.

Although the oscillations stopped once the first stage was discarded, the vehicles second stage performance was also less than perfect. Two of the stage's five J-2 engines failed, causing the remaining three engines to burn for a longer period of time than planned. As a result, the second stage ran out of fuel before reaching the desired 100 mile circular orbit.

To compensate the Saturn's third stage burned longer and placed the spacecraft into an unplanned 110 by 230 mile elliptical orbit. NASA engineers left Apollo 6 in this "parking orbit for two revolutions around the Earth to assess the situation and perform various system checks. When flight controllers attempted to fire the third stage again, to simulate the flight to the Moon, the J-2 engine failed to restart.

The issues with the Saturn V's three stages altered the mission, and it was decided that after separation from the third stage, the Service Module's engine would burn for seven minutes, pushing the Apollo 6 capsule to an altitude of almost 14,000 miles. At such an altitude, enough re-entry speed could then be acquired to simulate an Apollo spacecraft returning from the Moon. The capsule's heat shield withstood the fireball created by a 22,000 mile per hour plunge into the Earth's atmosphere. Apollo 6 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, completing its 10 hour perilous space odyssey, and was recovered by the crew of the U.S.S. Okinawa.

Edited Apollo 9 image of the Command Service Module seen from the Lunar Module, both in Earth orbit.

Edited Apollo 9 image of the interior of the Command Module, brightly light by the sun.

Dick Gordon performed on of the early Gemini EVA's and somehow managed to fall asleep during one of them ! He also flew as Command Module Pilot on the Apollo 12 mission and orbited solo around the moon.

Inside the Saturn V Center visitors are presented with an array of exhibits from the Saturn and Apollo missions. Walking round the giant Saturn V rocket, laid out on its side, was surreal and yet the tiny Apollo XXIV Command Module - spot-lit, just beyond a low fence - was very real. The setting, against the pitch black backdrop, somehow made imagining being inside it out in space very easy.

Edited Apollo 17 image (taken from the ascending Lunar Module) of the Command Service Module in a lower lunar orbit than the Lunar Module. This was to let the CSM catch up with the Lunar Module (lower orbits are faster than higher orbits which leads to the weird (but true!) situation in orbital mechanics: if you want to go faster around a planet (or moon), you need to brake). Color/processing variant.

Here's a better angle on the heat shield. Or, more correctly, what's left of it.

Jim Lovell first flew aboard Gemini 7 wich lasted a record two weeks and conducted the first space rendezvous. His next mission was as Commander of Gemini 12 which was the final Gemini mission and gave him the record for the most time space in space by any human. His next mission was Apollo 8, the first time any humans had left the vicinity of the Earth and travelled to another heavenly body. His final mission was as Commander of Apollo 13, a triumph of teamwork over adversity considered to be NASA's greatest hour.

Gene Cernan first flew aboard Gemini 9 and performed a highly risky EVA, his next flight was as Lunar Module Pilot aboard Apollo 10, which flew the Lunar Module to within a few miles of the lunar surface in preparation of the Apollo 11 mission. His final mission was as Commander of Apollo 17, when he became the last person to leave his footprints on the surface of the moon.

The spacecraft that took astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon in July 1969, on exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Here's even more detail, showing the complex linkage system needed to manipulate multiple dogs from a single handle.

This is the Kitty Hawk command module at KSC.

Carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the Moon and back during their historic Apollo 11 voyage in July 1969. Detailed here is the ablative heat shield.

The lunar module adapter. The manned command spacecraft would detach and pull the lunar lander out from this.

Edited Apollo 12 image of strange lines on one of the windows of the Command Module. Ordinarily I'd say this was water running down the window, but in zero-G, water will not run down anything. Maybe the astronauts were culturing bacteria on the window...

They must have been so glad to get out of that door... Apollo 13's Command Module. Day trip to Kennedy Space Center. Ref: D817-132

No - not an obscure reference to the early 2000s TV series "Lost", but more importantly, this is the hatch to the Apollo 15 command module - on display at the Museum of the Air Force.

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42

The Apollo Command Module from the Skylab 3 mission (which was the second crewed flight to the Skylab space station) located at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

Charlie Duke was the Apollo 16 Lunar Module Pilot, and became the 10th man to walk on the moon. (and he has a great taste in clothes !)