Eli5.. how did they blast off from the moon to get back to earth?
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In short, a smaller rocket. The Apollo missions followed a structure that’s now named after them, Apollo-style landings. That’s where you have one stage (the cylindrical shiny chrome part with the really big engine bell, called the Command Module or CM), and a small lander carried by it (called the Lunar Module or LM).
The rocket, the Saturn V, exists to fling both of these modules, together, towards the Moon. Once there, its the CM’s engine that does the manuevre to slow down into Lunar orbit. The LM then detaches, and goes down to the surface with two astronauts while the third stays in orbit with the CM.
The LM consists of two stages, two parts attached together. The first stage, or descent stage is the lower portion, everything that’s covered in gold foil. It contains fuel, engines, and the landing legs. That’s the bit that lets them land. Once they’re ready to depart, they detach the second stage, the ascent stage, from the descent stage and fly it up on its own, as it also has fuel and engines. It functions like its own mini rocket, but it doesn’t need to be pointy or aerodynamic because there’s no air on the Moon to worry about. There are two stages because the landing legs, landing engine and the empty fuel tanks from landing are no longer needed and would simply be dead weight, meaning they can just be thrown away. In this case, they just stay on the surface.
The ascent module takes the two astronauts all the way up back into Lunar orbit, where they meet up with the third astronaut who stayed on the CM. They dock, everyone gets into the CM, they detach the lander and its the CM that takes them back to Earth. The cone shaped tip of the CM is the capsule where the astronauts stay, and it too can detach. Once ready to enter the Earth’s atmosphere, it detaches and only the capsule makes it to the ground as its the only bit that has a heatshield to protect it from the hell of atmospheric entry. It deploys parachutes once slow enough, and if everything has gone right the astronauts splash down in the Pacific ocean safe and sound.
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