The late Neil Armstrong is known to the world as the first man to have walked on the moon on 20 July 1969. What many don’t know, however, is that Armstrong and his fellow astronaut on the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin, were both wearing their Omega Speedmasters during the mission. The Speedmaster is the only watch to have been approved by NASA or EVH for extra-vehicular activities. In other words, the confidence in this watch was so high that even NASA said it would work on the moon.
It’s not just a theoretical claim, though. Buzz Aldrin actually wrote in his 1973 book, Return to Earth, that he did indeed wear his Omega Speedmaster on the surface of the moon. Prior to being used on the Apollo 11 mission, the watches underwent a barrage of testing at NASA. These tests included simmering the watches in boiling water for a number of hours then immediately freezing them at -18c. They then steeped the watches in pure oxygen for 48 hours, took hammers to them and put them through compression and decompression chambers. They subjected them to immensely high speeds and vibrations and carried out a number of extreme tests on the Speedmaster and a number of other watches. The allowed deviation of accuracy during the tests was five seconds per day. The only watch to beat this was the Omega Speedmaster.
Even today, the Omega Speedmaster is the choice of astronauts the world over. In fact, the watch can handle pressure more than five times that experienced in space. Before heading to the moon, the Omega Speedmaster was used by Gus Grissom and John Young on Gemini 3 on 23 March 1965, as did Ed White during the first American Space Walk. Having been produced by Omega since 1957, the watch is still being manufactured today, with the modern line including a number of other models, such as analog-digital and automatic mechanical variations of the watch. A number of limited edition versions of the watch have also been launched, with sales remaining impressive throughout.
The technology of the watch is what allows it to survive under such extreme conditions. A clamp ring is attached to the glass of the Speedmaster, as the internal pressure of the watch must always remain constant. If it does not, the lubricating oil can leak, which means the moving parts will no longer work properly and the glass could be obscured, rendering the watch unworkable. If a vacuum were to develop inside the watch, it would not run at the same speed due to the balance wheel not working effectively under vacuum conditions. In addition, the glass of the watch has to be thick enough and have enough elasticity to withstand huge temperature differences in space. To cut a long story short, the margin for error is incredibly small, which just goes to show the engineering ingenuity which has gone into designing the Omega Speedmaster.
The accuracy of the Omega Speedmaster is absolutely vital. When an astronaut exits his space module, his oxygen supply begins to deplete. This happens at a steady rate, and can only be measured using time. For this reason, it is vital that his watch is incredibly accurate in space so he knows how long his oxygen supply will last. The Omega Speedmaster really is the difference between life and death.
Omage Speedmaster
For the discerning watch buyer who really does want only the best, there is no other option than the Omega Speedmaster. The technology still remains completely unrivalled after almost sixty years, with the watch being one of the most popular and sought-after in the world. After all, how many people can actually say that their watch is the same model as the first watch worn on the moon? If you choose to buy an Omega Speedmaster, you can.
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