ckck:
Still from a video of Apollo 16’s Lunar Module Orion taking off from the moon on April 22nd, 1972.
Whenever I see this, I always think it looks like a party on the moon. I think it’s actually just an artefact of the camera. All the debris kicked off from the ascent module’s booster move so fast, it seems to be caught in different “passes” of the camera, so the red, green and blue elements are seen as clearly separate. There’s a big chunk going to the right of the module, heading off the screen, and you can see it caught in all three colours.
Also, it’s worth noting how much easier it is to make orbit from the moon. On Earth, a three-man capsule needs a big rocket with a dedicated launch pad underneath it to get to orbit, with months of preparation. Here, the launch pad is the fragile landing legs of the Lunar Module, and a single small engine is enough to get the ascent module up into orbit.
