13

To Land on the Moon

1960-July 1969

 

 

 

When Apollo 11 stood on its launch pad in July 1969, NASA and contractors engineers had done everything they could to make sure it was ready for a lunar landing. In the eight years since President Kennedy had issued his challenge, thousands of persons had designed, developed, and figured out how to use the millions of pieces that made up the launch vehicle and spacecraft.1 Confidence in this hardware had come from several flights, one of them to within a few kilometers of the target. By and large, then, worries about the last stage of the journey should have been few. Such an expectation, however, did not prove true.

Many of the prelaunch activities were peculiar to the Apollo 11 mission. Landing on the moon, walking on its alien surface, and then leaving it (all new experiences) affected other areas. For example, the lack of knowledge about the problems a crewman might encounter as he moved about in low gravity in the “third spacecraft”—a bulky suit and backpack—raised numerous questions. What would he do? How long would he stay? How far would he explore? And what kind of experiments would he set up for scientific interests? Some scientists worried that the astronauts might bring back pathogens to contaminate the earth. So the Lunar Receiving Laboratory became a quarantine facility as well as a place in which to store and study lunar soil and rocks. A precise protocol was drafted to keep the astronauts isolated from other Earthlings and to move them and their cargo from a Pacific splashdown to a special building in Houston with dispatch.

Crew training, already complicated by the need to master the controls of two different and very complex spacecraft, took on new dimensions, principally in learning how to set a 14.5-metric-ton lunar module safely down on the moon. The astronauts practiced this task on fixed-base lunar module simulators in Houston and at the Cape, on a swinging suspension device at the Langley Research Center, and on a free-flight apparatus called a lunar landing training vehicle—a set of rocket motors laced together and supported by an odd-looking arrangement of pipes—at Ellington Air Force Base, Texas.

Landing men on the moon raised national and international issues never before faced in space flight. In the past, an explorer had implanted his country’s flag on new soil to symbolize a territorial claim. When an astronaut raised the banner of the United States over lunar ground, would he be claiming the moon for America? Other symbolic acts and articles also prompted questions about man’s first visit to the earth’s moon. What tokens should he take with him, what should he leave there and what should he bring back, what memorable words should he say, and what ceremonies should he enact? NASA public affairs officials, more accustomed to responding to queries than to using the high-pressure selling tactics of public relations promoters, realized that they would have to answer these new questions almost before they were asked. They also recognized that public interest in Apollo might wane after the first landing. Apollo 11 must, therefore, tell NASA’s story aggressively while a worldwide audience watched and listened.

From almost any vantage point, Apollo 11 was unique—a totally different venture from any the earth’s people had ever embarked upon. But the men and women most directly responsible for this flight focused on mission techniques, crew training, space vehicles, and qualification of an extravehicular mobility unit, with only fleeting thoughts for what this mission might mean to the world.

SOME SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS

NASA officials used only a dozen words to list the primary objectives of Apollo 11: “1. Perform a manned lunar landing and return. 2. Perform selenological inspection and sampling.” 2 They had worked many years to be able to write these objectives for a mission rather than a program. Ever since Apollo was named in 1960, groups scattered throughout the country had studied and planned the segments of that mission. Through 1965, this planning had helped design the hardware. After that, with the exception of rework caused by the fire in 1967, the mission planners had analyzed the spacecraft capabilities and used this information to draft the most minute details of the flight plan, which appeared in “final” form on 1 July 1969, to be followed by “revision A” seven days later.³

Chris Kraft’s flight operations team in Houston designed and evaluated most of the mission techniques. When the lunar landing flight became the letter “G” on the chart of the progressive steps to land the first men on the moon, Rodney G. Rose had already presided over 21 monthly meetings on how the crew would operate when it reached its goal. The Rose team held 20 more meetings before being satisfied that it had done all it could to smooth operations for what turned out to be Apollo 11. The 41st and final (summing-up) session was held in April 1969, after a flight operations plan had been issued to outline in detail the duties and actions to be performed at precise times.⁴

Rose’s group served two specific purposes. First, its members were observers, acquiring and passing on information about the spacecraft, about flight crew operational procedures tried and either adopted or rejected, and about engineering and development progress in qualifying the suit and backpack for the lunar walk. The committee was, second, a forum before which the mission planning and analysis team could air computer-checked trajectories and techniques that affected the interactions of hardware, crew, and fuel. Mission planners relied not only on theoretical plans run through the computers, but also on actual experience. Apollo 8, for example, needed only 2 periods of onboard navigation during translunar and transearth coasting, rather than the 10 previously planned. But past experience was set aside in one case. As far back as Mercury, the crews had dumped any remaining fuel before landing, as a safety precaution. What should be done about the propellants in the lander’s descent and ascent propulsion systems? Should one be burned to depletion before lunar touchdown and the other before redocking with the command module? The Apollo office objected to this. It would be safer for the lunar module pilots to land as soon as they reached the selected site than to cruise around burning up fuel, with the possibility that they might have to touch down in an undesirable site as a result. And it would be much better to go ahead and dock than to fly around until they were low on fuel and then find, if an emergency arose, that they had no way to return to the command module. Firing to depletion in either case would be a last-ditch action to ensure crew safety.⁵

Rose’s team also helped Donald Slayton’s support personnel decide how many lunar revolutions should be flown before undocking and descent, to make sure a well-rested crew would land on the moon with the sun angle at 6 to 20 degrees, for the best lighting. Apollo 10 supplied the answer to this question. But the planners and trajectory plotters could not set a specific flight path in concrete. With the possibility that delays could cause them to miss a launch window (determined by the moon’s position in relation to the earth), they had to plan for one mission in July, for another in August, and for a third in September.⁶

Closely allied with Rose’s work were the activities of Bill Tindall. Long an associate of John Mayer in mission planning, Tindall had guided Gemini efforts while Mayer had concentrated on early phases of Apollo planning. When Gemini ended in 1966, Tindall had jumped in to help out on the complex Apollo task, first as Mayer’s deputy and then as data coordination chief in the Apollo office. After 16 January 1968, the day he assumed his new duties, his barrage of “Tindallgrams” continued to enliven interoffice mails. Although he was now the liaison between spacecraft and operations people, Tindall had been and still was a mover of information and an assigner of tasks to specialists, either to devise or to solve some mission technique. His memoranda, sometimes addressed to hundreds of persons, often contained admonitions to one, such as, “Bob Ernull please take note.” ⁷

Three areas of the mission demanded the toughest scouting by Tindall, Rose, and other mission planners: descent, surface operations, and ascent. Judged by the sheer weight of paperwork, descent seemed to be the engineers’ chief worry. Yet nobody wanted to set mission rules so narrow that the crew could not land. Tindall and astronaut Harrison Schmitt even discussed whether it was absolutely necessary for the pilots to see exact landmarks. A touchdown outside the targeted area might be quite satisfactory. They decided to leave the pilots some options: “quit and come home, go another revolution and try again, or don’t worry about it and press on with the landing.”⁸

Much of the concern about hitting a precise spot stemmed from uncertainties about trajectory dispersions caused by the moon’s strange gravity fields. As more information was gathered about the mass concentrations, called mascons, the Landing Analysis Branch fed the data into computers for run after run (205 on just one study), trying to evaluate fuel use and the probability of mission success based on varying degrees of mascon influence on the descent trajectory. Tindall’s group also found guidance system faults that might result in unwanted excursions. Flight controllers would have to help the crew decide whether to go on or return to the command module. But returning to the mother ship would be tricky, Tindall said. Dispersions had to be severely contained to prevent the crew from flying a “dead man” curve—an aimless trip across the lunar sky far out of range of the command module’s rescue capability.⁹

Constantly looking for clear explanations of how to guide a spacecraft safely down to the moon, Tindall pounced on a lucid description by George W. Cherry of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and arranged to have it reproduced and distributed to flight controllers, managers, and astronauts. Cherry numbered each step of the descent phase and outlined the guidance in finite detail, including how the spacecraft should react and what the pilots should do. Cherry said that, during “program 63 (P63) ” (braking) , the crew should steer out any errors in attitude. During P64, as the lander tipped over to give the crew a first look at the landing site, the thrusters that turned and tilted the spacecraft should be carefully checked to make sure they were working properly for the landing. From there to touchdown—P65, 66, and 67—a maze of procedures would take the pilots through this most critical step in the mission.¹⁰

When the Sea of Tranquility appeared the possible target for Apollo 11, Tindall alerted planners to some unusual conditions in that location. Although the lunar module would begin its descent from an orbital station 18 300 meters above the mean surface of the moon, its altitude above the landing zone would be much less than that. Tranquility, he said, was 2700 meters above the mean average, and even more in its hilly area. So the landing approach would start low. Moreover, it would be uphill because there was a one percent upward grade in the direction of the flight path. These numbers, too, were fed into the computers to check the crew’s responses as they flew the trajectories in the lunar module simulator. All through June and early July, memoranda and notes about descent—propellant margins, use of the guidance system, and even the views to be seen out the windows—continued to flow.¹¹

In March 1969, Tindall had reminded his colleagues that the “lunar surface stuff [was] still incomplete.” Even the proper terminology had not been decided. For example, Tindall said, the past practice of continuing or aborting a mission by making a “go/no go” decision seemed inappropriate; once the lander had settled on the lunar surface, this might confuse the pilots. Tindall suggested something like “stay/no stay,” and that phrase became standard.¹²

There were other lunar surface worries. Suppose the vehicle landed at an angle? That possibility did not worry the planners very much, because the LM was designed to take off with as much as a 30-degree list, but the guidance system did not know that. In flight, the attitude thrusters fired automatically to keep the lander on an even keel, and they would do the same thing on the ground. But nobody wanted these engines to fire while on the lunar surface. George Cherry had the answer. “Just joggling the handcontroller will not necessarily ... stop the firing,” he said; the crew would have to cycle the guidance switches to off and then to attitude hold to prevent the thrusters from doing their programmed job.

The two hours after landing were critical. The pilots—who would act as their own launch crew—had to go through a countdown after landing to be prepared to leave the moon in a hurry if anything went wrong. They would do the same thing the last two hours before their scheduled departure. One crucial task in both these exercises was aligning the guidance system’s inertial platform. Most mission planners agreed that the moon’s gravity could be used for this reading, but Tindall worried that the lander might be so near “one of those big damn lumps of gold” that the alignment might be wrong and the lander might take off on an incorrect course. Two days before launch, however, he reported that “the various far-flung experts predict that mascons should have no significant effect.”¹³

Ascent from the moon also raised questions about trajectory dispersions. Fairly small deviations could cause the lunar module to crash back into the moon or miss the rendezvous with the command module. That was not as big a worry, however, as the possibility of a failure in the guidance system. The chances of the crew’s taking off in the lunar module and finding the command module would be extremely poor if all the guidance equipment failed.^cw Planners had been studying manual takeover and steering of the lander even before Grumman was selected to build the machine in 1962; in 1969 the computers were still grinding away, trying to find a satisfactory solution. The consensus appeared to be that controlling the lunar module manually was only slightly better than doing nothing.

And a launch from the moon had to be exactly on time. If the crew fell behind in the schedule, it would have to delay the launch until the command module circled the moon again. It was also important that the command module’s path be precisely in line with the lunar module’s ascent trajectory (that is, “in plane”) . The command module pilot was responsible for tasks such as altering the command ship’s flight path—not just watching from his window. He would participate actively by keeping a close eye on the lunar spacecraft while it was on the surface and by being ready to help deal with whatever contingencies the lander might encounter. To be prepared for any abort situation, the command module pilot had a “cookbook” of 18 different two-page checklists to cover all envisioned rescue operations.¹⁴

Landing, surface work, and ascent were going to be difficult, complex, and demanding tasks. George Mueller, the manned space flight chief in Washington, had therefore urged in mid-1968 that the first lunar landing crew be selected as soon as possible.¹⁵

TRAINING MANKIND’S REPRESENTATIVES

Chief Astronaut Donald Slayton established a leapfrog pattern of assigning a crew to back one mission, skip two, and then fly the next. When Neil Armstrong, with Fred Haise to pilot the lunar module and Edwin Aldrin the command module, was named to back up Apollo 8, it seemed likely that his team would make the first lunar landing, if the two intervening missions were successful. Then, in late 1968, after Michael Collins recovered from a bone spur operation, Slayton moved Haise to backup lunar module pilot, put Collins in as prime crew command module pilot, and shifted Aldrin to the lunar module pilot slot. Completing the backup teams were James Lovell (commander), William Anders (command module pilot), and a support team made up of John Swigert, Ronald Evans, William Pogue, and Thomas Mattingly (Slayton assigned Mattingly as a fourth support crewman after President Nixon nominated Anders as Executive Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council).16

One member of this lunar module crew would be the first man to walk on the moon—the first human being to step onto any celestial body besides the earth. The road leading to the determination of which pilot would have his name so registered in the annals of time was long, winding, and, in places, hard to follow.

In mid-1963, when the lunar module began to take on its final shape, NASA outlined the mission sequence to the news media in conservative tones. Emphasis was on the probability that one man would remain aboard to tend the lander’s systems. There appeared to be no interest at the time in who would stay and who would get out. The following year, the agency identified the lunar module pilot to Congress and newsmen as the man who would take a two-hour hike on the surface, while the commander waited for his return. But the same year—1964—the Grumman-led Apollo Mission Planning Task Force study indicated that both men could safely leave the craft, one at a time, for up to three hours apiece. This group had no interest in which man went out first; it was merely looking at the mission sequence to ensure adequate hardware designs.¹⁷

During the succeeding years, Apollo officials Joseph Shea and George Mueller frequently spoke publicly on lunar surface operations. Shea said in July 1966 that the crewmen would take turns at the three-hour walks, perhaps going out as many as three times during an 18-hour stay. Mueller, speaking to an Australian audience two weeks before the fire in January 1967, made it sound rather as though both men would go out, arm in arm, when he remarked that “the two astronauts will disembark through the docking door and begin the manned exploration of the moon.”¹⁸ So far as is known, no one asked who would do these things—or how they would be done. With nearly 50 astronauts to choose from and with the names of most of them unfamiliar to the public, people found it difficult to conjecture about the identity of a moon-walking crew. In fact, after all the centuries of science fiction and all the years of Apollo’s existence as a viable program, it was still hard to envision someone’s actually landing on the moon.

By late summer of 1968, it was time to find out if the astronauts could unload and set up the experiments in the Apollo lunar surface experiments package (ALSEP), put together by The Bendix Corporation. NASA Headquarters asked the Manned Spacecraft Center to schedule a demonstration on 26 and 27 August. Schmitt and Don Lind were the test astronauts for the occasion, and Schmitt was not happy with the results. He said there was too much activity during the first period outside the spacecraft and there were no clear procedures for the second. At a review the next day, Apollo Spacecraft Program Manager George Low suggested that the first landing mission include only one walk on the surface. He listed priorities as he saw them: taking a sample of lunar material in the immediate vicinity of the lander, inspecting and photographing the vehicle to make sure everything was in order, gathering at least one box of selected lunar surface soil and rocks, and setting up either a “partial ALSEP” or an erectable antenna and a television camera. Low proposed that the planned field geology investigation be eliminated.¹⁹

Apollo Program Director Samuel Phillips, from Headquarters, had realized after watching the demonstration that plans for the lunar surface walk would need close attention and some sensible decisions. He asked Houston Director Robert Gilruth to poll that center’s key leaders and forward their views so Mueller’s management council could study the pros and cons of the proposed surface activities. At that time, Rose reported to his flight operations planning group on 30 August, the first landing mission had two flight plans. The first called for one crewman to leave the lander (although both would have the equipment for surface expeditions) and the deletion of the experiments package; the second plan required both the commander and the pilot to get out and set up the six experiments in the package. Houston knew that Phillips favored sending only one man out on the moon, but Gilruth wanted both crewmen to go, so they could assist each other, if necessary. Gilruth’s managers also suggested deleting both the experiments package and the lunar geology investigation.²⁰

Phillips passed Houston’s recommendations on to the council, with the reminder that descent, landing, and ascent maneuvers were new tasks and that the astronauts needed all the training they could get. Eliminating the experiments package would give them an additional 180 hours to train for the more basic chores. Gemini experience had demonstrated the wisdom of proceeding step by step, with very light workloads on the early flights leading to more crowded schedules in later missions. This plan would mean a very small return in scientific data from the first lunar landing and would invite criticism from the scientific community. Wilmot Hess, in Houston, was already urging that at least some easily handled contingency experiments be included.

Phillips also told the management council of Houston’s preference for a single period of exploration outside the spacecraft. Although he still did not agree that both pilots should get out, he conceded that more data would be gained from the interaction of two men with the lunar surface. Phillips added that the psychological effect on a crewman of landing on the moon and then being forbidden to step out on the surface must be considered. In its October meeting, the council approved the use of a scaled-down experiments package—an “early Apollo scientific experiments package”—consisting of two subpackages: one containing a passive seismic experiment, a solar cell array, an antenna, and two plutonium heaters; the other, a laser ranging retroreflector.²¹

Apparently the council sided with Houston in its views on activities outside the lander, because the center began planning for a two-man exploration at a mission review meeting on 1 November. The second astronaut would disembark after the first had been on the surface for an hour, and the total time outside would be three hours. Low asked his engineers to make sure that the control center was prepared to watch over the lander’s systems while both men walked on the moon.

When Houston began work on the two-man scheme, the planners used a 1964 concept that called for the lunar module pilot to emerge first. Armstrong and Aldrin began concentrating on Apollo 11 as soon as they finished their backup duties for Apollo 8 in December. Almost immediately, on the 20th, a procedures document listed the commander as the first crewman to leave the lunar module. On a summary minute-by-minute work chart, issued in January 1969, the crew positions—commander and lunar module pilot—were crossed through and the letters A and B were penciled in. A lunar surface operations chart, using these letters, was then published, but without any identification of either A or B.²²

Collins wrote in Carrying the Fire that Armstrong had “exercised his commander’s prerogative” and that Aldrin’s “basic beef” was this switch in who crawled out first. But Slayton later took the credit (or blame) for making the change. “I observed the procedures under the old plan one day,” he said, “and they appeared awkward to me.” Slayton told Raymond G. Zedekar, in charge of preparing a lunar surface operations plan, to change the sequence. At the 15th lunar surface operations planning meeting on 14 February, Zedekar said that Aldrin would follow the commander to the lunar surface in less than the hour listed in the old plan, to assist Armstrong with the outside tasks, and that the lunar module pilot would return to the lander first. “If the CDR returns last,” Zedekar remarked, “the crewmen will be in their proper respective positions in the LM.” Since the portable life-sustaining backpacks were stored directly behind the lunar module pilot’s crew station, getting out and then back in this sequence made crew movements in the cabin easier.²³

Aldrin (left), lunar module pilot for Apollo 11, sets up a solar wind experiment during a practice session. Mission commander Armstrong, opening a lunar sample box, rests it on the lunar module’s modular equipment stowage assembly (MESA) hatch.

Surprisingly, Mueller did not inform Administrator Thomas Paine^cx that the two men would take a 2-hour 40-minute walk, nor did he tell him that the order of exit had changed, until 7 April—at least, that was the date of his written report. Even more surprising was the fact that it was not until 14 April that a newsman asked Low, “Who will be the first out to the moon?” Low replied that, from “the present way that we’re working, ... the Commander gets out first.” The change later roused a small furor. Low was awakened in the middle of the night on 27 June by a call from an Associated Press reporter, who told the Apollo manager that the wire service had a story “that Neil Armstrong had pulled rank on Buzz Aldrin.” (Armstrong, incidentally, was a civilian and Aldrin a colonel in the Air Force.)^cy24

Regardless of crew sequence, training was going to be rough. Although the scope of the mission had been reduced, many still wondered whether the astronauts could be ready by July. Until James McDivitt got his Apollo 9 crew off on its mission in early March, Armstrong’s group had only third priority on the training simulators. Armstrong might have used the time to sharpen his lunar module piloting skill, but the lunar landing training vehicle—the apparent cross between a Rube Goldberg device and a child’s tinker toy machine that was called by some observers the “flying bedstead”—had been grounded. The Apollo 11 commander himself had ejected safely from a similar vehicle just before it crashed on 6 May 1968. Soon after completing that accident investigation in November, Joseph S. Algranti, head of Houston’s Aircraft Operations Office, had bailed out of another crashing trainer on 8 December. The accident board reconvened, presenting its findings in mid-February 1969. Some of NASA’s top officials thought the crew could get sufficient training on the static simulator and on the tower suspension facility at Langley. But the astronauts and their support personnel insisted that this free-flight vehicle was essential to provide the experience they needed before flying the last 150 meters to the lunar surface.²⁵

In March, after two sessions, the Flight Readiness Review Board decided to resume the training flights. Harold E. Ream, who had flown these machines 35 times, was ready to put the trainer through a dozen hops in early April. Mueller agreed to let Ream test the craft but, he told Gilruth, he wanted another evaluation before any astronauts flew it. The next month, Slayton summarized for Gilruth and his top staff the aerodynamics and handling characteristics of the trainer, which had been modified to overcome its unstable tendencies. Gilruth’s group was satisfied, and Mueller consented to the resumption of astronaut flights. During three consecutive days—14—16 June (eight times on the final day)-Armstrong successfully rehearsed lunar landing operations with the free-flight machine.²⁶

Although practicing the landing was critical, the crewmen did not stand around and wait to fly the trainer. They had plenty of other work to do. Armstrong and Aldrin polished procedures for their lunar surface activities, and they watched with keen interest the final push to qualify the extravehicular garb and life-sustaining systems. Collins, meanwhile, concentrated on those 18 rendezvous recipes in his cookbook, learning how to cope with all the different situations that the simulator personnel dreamed up to test his abilities.

In an attempt to simulate lunar surface conditions, Max Faget’s group set up a model of the lander in a thermovacuum chamber in Houston. The chamber was not big enough for the pilots to move a hundred meters away from their craft as they planned to do on the moon, but the engineers did provide the desired lighting—a 15-degree sun angle—and the proper temperature range. The crew crawled out of the lander, pulled a package from the MESA (modular equipment stowage assembly) section in the descent stage, and deployed the experiments. During one of these sessions, Armstrong had to report: “Mission Control this is Apollo 11, we can’t get the hatch open.” ²⁷

While the chamber tests were going on, two dozen engineers, mostly from Faget’s directorate, held monthly meetings on the status of the extravehicular mobility unit. James Chamberlin, one of the nation’s top space vehicle and equipment designers, led the group, which operated much as Rose’s flight operations planning team did. The Design Review Board studied the system, piece by piece, and then assigned Crew Systems Division specialists to work on specific problems and submit their resolutions for board approval. For example, Thomas Mattingly, the astronaut representative on the board, reported that the reflective gold coating on the helmet visors peeled after several cleanings with solvent, allowing light to leak through.

Another area under study was how well the crew could grasp lunar samples with gloved hands. During a chamber run, the systems people coated one of Armstrong’s gloves with silicone and left the other uncoated. Armstrong reported that the treated glove worked better, and the board approved the change, which upset the scientists. Hess complained that the silicone would contaminate the lunar samples and pointed out that his group would have enough trouble with contamination by the fumes from the descent engine exhaust and the attitude thruster fuel. “Can’t we get rid of [the silicone]?” Reminding Hess that time was too short to look for a substitute, Low refused. Crew Systems Chief Robert E. Smylie added that silicone was basically inorganic and that the tips of the glove fingers and the lunar boots were already made of that substance, so coating the gloves should not make much difference.²⁸

Chamberlin’s board also investigated suit fit and mobility. In chamber sessions on 27 March and 7 April, Armstrong complained that his sleeves were too tight and asked that some of the bulky material be removed from inside the elbow. When he bent his arms, he said, some of his capillary blood vessels ruptured. Aldrin, too, wanted adjustments, such as shorter suit arms. There was some discussion about how hard it would be to walk on the lunar surface wearing the big 85-kilogram pack on their backs—even though the moon had only one-sixth the earth’s gravity. Using Don Lind as a test subject, Crew Systems discovered that there would be a small shift in the center of mass. The crewmen could compensate for this by leaning slightly forward. If they bent over too far, however, they might overbalance and fall.²⁹

Throughout the training period, people worried about the crew’s moving around on the moon. In March 1969, Phillips wrote Low that it bothered him that there was no way to measure energy expenditure or carbon dioxide production during the lunar walk. Low replied that the measurements already planned—oxygen and water consumption and heart rates—would tell what was happening and the systems monitors would watch the display indicators very closely.³⁰

In February 1969, NASA officials decided to construct a one-sixth gravity simulator in the centrifuge building to get a closer look at lunar locomotion. A pathway, with a simulated lunar surface, around the periphery of the 46-meter-diameter rotunda would provide a walkway of unlimited length. Dressed in full regalia and with umbilical lines attached to the instruments inside the centrifuge checking biological and metabolic data, an astronaut, suspended by a harness that would bear all but one-sixth of his weight, could practice for walking and working on the lunar surface. Since the simulator was completed too late in their training to be of much use to the Armstrong crewmen and since they did not plan to venture as far away from the lander as later crews, Armstrong and Aldrin would check out and evaluate the facility after their flight rather than before. Physicians were getting some of the desired data during underwater training (where locomotion was similar to that experienced in space) and in KC-135 aircraft Keplerian trajectories (which duplicated weightlessness for a few seconds at the top of the flight arc).³¹

During February, Mueller asked Gilruth to hold a lunar surface dem-onstration similar to the one given in August 1968. Gilruth arranged the exhibition for the latter part of April 1969, and Phillips’ Certification Review Board would study the exercise to check on the status of that part of the mission. An extravehicular activity committee set up by Gilruth under his special assistant, Richard S. Johnston, had already conducted many reviews of the plans, procedures, and equipment. Mueller was pleased with the session, telling Paine that the simulation was smooth and the crew was “ready for the first lunar landing.” Phillips was disturbed when the demonstrators used a rope pulley to haul equipment and samples up and down from the cabin to the surface and back. He suggested that the astronauts carry the materials in one hand. Low explained that the first rung on the ladder was 65 centimeters from the surface, and the crewmen could lift their legs only 30 centimeters with any ease. The astronauts would have to hop or pull themselves up, using both hands, which they had done successfully in water and on KC-135 aircraft. By the end of June, the final version of the lunar surface operations plan was completed.³²

Training for Apollo 11: Collins (above) practices tending the command module alone; on the mission, crewmates Armstrong and Aldrin will leave him in lunar orbit and descend to explore the moon’s surface. Armstrong (right) practices in the lunar module simulator. To train for walking on the moon, a harness (below left) rigged to support all but one-sixth of a man’s weight was used by nearly all the astronaut corps. For several years they also trained on the lunar landing training vehicle. (below right) at Langley Research Center, to simulate landing the lunar module.

Armstrong and Aldrin also trained at other places, especially at Langley Research Center, where they worked on the suspended lunar landing trainer equipped with realistic surface views and lighting. On 12 June, NASA senior management agreed that the crew was ready for a 16 July launch. Less than a month later, on 7 July, Mueller told Paine that “if Apollo 11 continues to progress on plan, the first men will set foot on the moon two weeks from today.” ³³

AFFAIRS FOR THE PUBLIC

The coming flight of Apollo 11 captured more worldwide attention than any previous mission. Countless numbers of persons tried to identify with, seek a meaning for, and fashion or obtain some keepsake of mankind’s first visit to a celestial neighbor. These desires were expressed in poetry, in prose, in symbolic articles, and in pictorial evidence. Whole issues of journals, sections of newspapers, brochures, television and radio specials, books, bric-a-brac, stamps, medallions, photographs, pieces of clothing, record albums, and magnetic tape records commemorated the occasion. Some persons made suggestions, some bluntly demanded a piece of the moon, and some sought to get as close as possible to the launch and flight control sites. Most of the millions relied on radio, television, and newspapers for a firsthand account of the manned lunar landing experience.

NASA officials moved carefully and deliberately in meeting the demands brought on by Apollo 11. Early in 1969, Julian Scheer, Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs in Washington, wrote Gilruth, stressing past policy and operational philosophy. The agency, Scheer said, did “not seek coverage of space but [would] break our backs making our facilities and our people available,” with “no free rides, no free meals, no glad-handing.”

The crux of Scheer’s letter was his determination to get Gilruth’s Public Affairs Officer, Paul Haney, out of a dual role as full-time mission commentator and as supervisor of the whole range of public affairs activities in Houston. When Scheer first came to NASA in 1963, he found that John A. Powers appeared to be favoring the television industry in the coverage of Mercury events; Scheer also disliked the identification of Powers as the “Voice of Mercury Control.” The Headquarters leader sent Haney to Houston to replace Powers. In the ensuing years, although he trained a team of mission commentators, Haney seemed to be emulating Powers, becoming known as the “Voice of Gemini” and then moving into a similar role for Apollo. Scheer then gave the Houston public affairs leader the choice of remaining as mission commentator or confining himself to his duties as head of the Public Affairs Office. When Haney chose the former, Scheer changed his mind. He asked Gilruth to transfer Haney to Washington. Instead, Haney resigned. Scheer then sent Brian M. Duff from Headquarters to run the Houston activities. Duff did not talk from “Apollo Control” at all. The new voice became voices—John E. McLeaish, Terry White, John E. Riley, and Douglas K. Ward—from the public information section of Houston’s Public Affairs Office. 34

Scheer then turned to another objective—making the Apollo 11 astronauts more available to the news media than past crews had been. He wanted the public to see the pilots as human beings, to foster a better understanding of their training and goals. In a letter to Slayton, Scheer warned that there would be changes. The practice of allowing one stilted crew press conference with each network, for a limited time and in sparse surroundings, had presented the astronauts as stereotypes. Scheer wanted each crew member to spend at least a full day with each of the networks, with the wire services participating, in backgrounds selected by the media. If, for example, they wanted the commander in Ohio, his home state, then he should go to Ohio and give the reporters a more intimate glimpse of Armstrong, the man, rather than Armstrong, the space flight technician. Scheer asked for more time with the astronauts for still and motion pictures. He also suggested that the wives of the Apollo 11 crews might attend a tea given for the women of the press corps. Scheer reminded Slayton that the networks, on occasion, would cover the mission for 24 hours at a stretch and would need many human interest stories as fillers. The public would be better able to share in the ventures of these men on the moon if it knew who they were, why they were there, and what they were doing, a knowledge that could be achieved only through more time with the men and better training documentation, films, and taped reports of the progress to the launch.³⁵

Slayton gave in on a few points—some parts of training, for example—but dug in his heels on the other demands. “Homes and wives are personal,” he snapped, “and landing on the moon does not change that.” Slayton remarked that he did not think any “hard sell” was necessary for Apollo 11, adding that “one rose does not make a summer (or something like that).” He went on, “This is just another mission which may land on the moon first, but definitely will not go anywhere on schedule if we cannot keep the crew working instead of entertaining the press.”

Scheer did not give up, however. Low wrote Gilruth that 30 members of the press would attend a rehearsal of the lunar surface extravehicular demonstration requested by Headquarters on 18 April; but there would be no news coverage of the formal session four days later. Scheer fought that decision and won. Phillips notified Low that Mueller and Scheer had agreed to let a five-man news media pool watch the formal session. In May, Slayton and Duff worked out an understanding for more extensive reporting of various phases of training. And on 5 July, only 11 days before launch, the crew talked with the press about the mission. Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin were shielded from other than visual contact by a plastic booth, to preserve the integrity of their prelaunch quarantine, but the “armor” had been pierced.³⁶

Scheer also suggested that top-level officials from both Headquarters and the field elements—most of whom were more used to writing memoranda, notes, and papers for technically oriented audiences—participate in drafting articles directed at the public for a New York Times project. In April, he asked these managers to make out invitation lists for the next two launches and to choose a cross-section of guests who had no direct connection with aerospace activities and who had never seen a launch.³⁷ With the approach of Apollo 11, Scheer assumed a stronger, more aggressive role in NASA’s public affairs, and he used the pressures of the mission as a lever to get the agency to accept his thinking.

One item of worldwide public impact—television—raised no issues whatsoever on this flight. Slayton even urged the need for some kind of erectable antenna. The crewmen could not, after all, be expected to wait patiently in the lander until the earth moved Goldstone, California, and its 64-meter radar dish into line with the spacecraft—before they climbed out onto the surface. There was also some question whether the Goldstone facility would be available, since it was needed for a Mariner flyby of Mars in July. At a management council meeting in March, the prospect of doing without the big California dish, as well as a similar one at Parkes, Australia, forced agreement on a contingency plan for a portable antenna. Eventually, both Goldstone and Parkes were free to cover Apollo 11, but proper alignment with Goldstone was still a problem. Low decided to delay the lunar module’s descent by one revolution to make sure “that we will have Goldstone coverage.” If the launch was delayed and if Parkes was better situated to pick up the signals, the relay would travel from the lunar module to Parkes, to Sydney by microwave, across the Pacific Ocean via synchronous satellite Intelsat III, to the control center in Houston, to the television networks, and thence to television sets throughout most of the world. Goldstone would shorten that route.³⁸

Some Apollo managers were worrying about the quality of the pictures they could expect. Looking at a photograph of a simulation, Phillips observed to Low that the first step onto the lunar surface might be in the shadows. And the light might be too bright in the stowage area, as the astronauts unloaded the experiments package. Phillips asked Low to see about this, since “sharing with the world our historical first steps onto the moon warrants our efforts to maximize this return.” Low did not believe the results would be as bad as Phillips feared, but Houston set up scale models under various lighting conditions to make sure of good coverage of the crewman as he descended to the lunar surface. Before he left Houston, Paul Haney had suggested that the surface camera be set up to photograph the liftoff from the moon. The idea was exciting, but it was too late to arrange it for Apollo 11. It would have to wait for a future mission.³⁹

Color television was so effective on Apollo 10 that it was adopted for the following mission, but only in the command module. Faget was more than mildly upset when he learned that so much of the television, motion, and still photography planned for Apollo 11 would be in black and white. To him, it was “almost unbelievable” that the culmination of a $20-billion program “is to be recorded in such a stingy manner.” Low explained that some of the scientists insisted on black and white film, because it had a higher resolution than color film. Furthermore, with no atmosphere to absorb the solar energy in the ultraviolet, color film might not turn out well on the lunar surface.⁴⁰

In January 1969, NASA began work on plans to commemorate Apollo 11 symbolically. Phillips wrote Gilruth, Wernher von Braun, and Kurt Debus that ideas discussed at Headquarters included planting United Nations and United States flags, putting decal flags of U.N. member states on the lunar module descent stage, and leaving a capsule on the surface with information about the Apollo program and personnel and copies of international agreements. Gilruth asked Johnston to canvass the top Houston staff for suggestions. The consensus was that the American flag should be raised in a simple ceremony. This proposal was supported by private citizens from East Coast to West. Slayton said the pilots would probably carry personal items, as had been done in the past, but most of these would be brought back. All they intended to leave on the lunar surface, besides the descent stage, would be such things as the experiments, backpack, and lunar overshoes. Slayton added that he had no objection to anything that might be decided on as a symbol of the mission, but it must meet weight and stowage requirements and place no additional training demands on the crew.⁴¹

Paine assigned Associate Deputy Administrator Willis Shapley as chairman of a committee^cz to draft recommendations. Shapley’s group met for the first time on 1 April and considered three categories: articles to be left by the astronauts (flag or flags, commemorative plaque), articles to be attached to the descent stage (inscriptions, documents, microfilm) , and articles to be taken to the moon and brought back (photographs, flags, stamp dies, tokens). The chairman reported that Scheer and Assistant Administrator for International Affairs Arnold W. Frutkin were working out words for a plaque. Shapley also said that suggestions were being solicited from the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Archivist of the United States, the NASA Historical Advisory Committee, the Space Council, and congressional committees. The flag proposal was the most persistent. There were also discussions about carrying miniature flags of all the United Nations in a metal box shaped like a pyramid (but not the official flag of the United Nations or any other organization). The aim of the whole committee was to make it clear that, regardless of the symbol chosen, the United States had landed on the moon first.⁴²

Shapley’s committee released its decisions on 2 July. Only the flag of the United States would be unfurled and left on the moon. Miniature flags of all the United Nations, the United States, its 50 states, its territories, and the District of Columbia would be stowed in the lunar module and returned to the earth. Other items to be brought back included a stamp die, a stamped envelope (to be canceled en route by the crew), and two full-sized United States flags that had flown over the two houses of Congress (to be carried in the command module). Personal items would be carried by the pilots in their kit bags, after approval by Slayton.

Two important items besides the flag were to be left on the moon. One was a microminiaturized photoprint of letters of good will from representatives of other nations. The other was a plaque affixed to the descent stage as a permanent monument, to be unveiled by the crew. It would depict the earth’s two hemispheres, their continents and oceans, but no national boundaries. Bearing the words “Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon. We came in peace for all mankind,” it would be inscribed with the signatures of the three astronauts and the President of the United States. To forestall any charges that the United States was attempting to establish sovereignty over the moon, Robert F. Allnutt, NASA’s Assistant Administrator for Legislative Affairs, prepared a statement containing the gist of a 1967 treaty governing all space exploration. The United States, one of the 89 signatories, had no intention of claiming the moon.⁴³

Suggestions for honoring the landing, on both the moon and on the earth, came from throughout the country. One person thought the plaque should be inscribed with the names of the astronauts who had lost their lives during the program, one argued that the carrier John F. Kennedy should recover the crew after the journey, one suggested that a complete Apollo-Saturn stack be erected in the style of the Washington monument in the nation’s capital, and one recommended that the ashes of recently deceased space author Willy Ley be placed on the moon.⁴⁴

Collins mentions in his book that two of their “non-technical chores [were] thinking up names for our spacecraft and designing a mission emblem.” Scheer had cast a jaundiced eye on the call signs selected by the crews of McDivitt and Thomas Stafford. He urged Low to make sure those chosen for the lunar landing, “to be witnessed by all mankind,” were more appropriate. Low and Armstrong agreed that the names should not be frivolous. At the end of May, Slayton submitted a patch, which Headquarters turned down. It depicted an eagle (an obvious name for the lander) carrying an olive branch in its beak and descending to a lunar landscape, with “Apollo 11” at the top of the emblem. Headquarters thought the eagle’s extended talons looked menacing. Although shifting the olive branch from the beak to the claws presented a more reassuring aspect (and won Headquarters approval), Collins facetiously wrote that he hoped the eagle dropped that branch before he touched down. Collins had his own problems in choosing a name for the command module. He was still wrestling with the task in mid-June. He credits Scheer with suggesting the name “Columbia.” ⁴⁵ So the ceremonies and symbols of Apollo 11 were finally set.

Plaque on the landing gear of the Apollo 11 lunar module. The descent stage would remain on the moon, a permanent commemoration of the first visit at the landing site.

DOWN TO THE WIRE

Mission planning and crew training were only two of the many activities that had to be carried out for Apollo 11. NASA and contractor employees worked out procedures and prepared facilities for handling and studying lunar samples, drafted recovery plans for both the crew and the moon materials to calm fears of back contamination, and tested the lunar module. And review piled on review as preparations for Apollo 11 came into the home stretch.

John E. Pickering, NASA’s Director of Lunar Receiving Operations, reminded Hess in September 1968 that there were only 300 days in which to get ready for the mission—and weekends and briefings would chew up more than a third of that time. Pickering outlined a schedule of month-by-month activities that would have to be carried out if the receiving laboratory was to meet the deadline. Gilruth set up an operational readiness inspection teamda in October, headed by John Hodge, to check out the laboratory. In January 1969, Phillips added this Houston facility to the other items that would be reviewed by the certification board. He named five major aspects for study: landing and recovery procedures, laboratory operations, astronauts and samples release plans, sample processing and distributing plans, and scientific investigations. Gilruth set the review for 3 February, with an agenda that included briefings on all activities from the time the astronauts landed on the lunar surface until scientific results were reported.⁴⁶

The Lunar Receiving Laboratory covered 25 300 square meters. Public interest focused on the crew reception area, which served primarily as a quarantine facility for astronauts and spacecraft, with their attending physicians, technicians, housekeepers, and cooks. Scientists were more concerned with the sample operations section, where the lunar materials were analyzed, documented, repackaged, and stored within a biological barrier. The third, and final, area contained support and administrative personnel, laboratories, offices, and conference rooms. Employees who worked here, outside the barrier, were free to come and go—unless they accidentally came into contact with the lunar materials or the astronauts. In February these teams went through a six-week rehearsal of the events that would take place from the arrival of the moon rocks to the end of the quarantine period. It was obvious that the laboratory teams were not ready. Gilruth sent Richard Johnston to take charge and to start a crash program to get the laboratory moving. Johnston ran practice tests of all laboratory procedures, insisting on participation by principal investigators assigned to the experiments, until he was satisfied that everything was in order.⁴⁷

Gilruth had asked Johnston in January 1969 to find out what the Houston senior staff thought was needed to prevent back contamination. To help this group in making judgments, Johnston set up briefings by specialists on landing and recovery, flight crew support, laboratory preparations and operations, and agenda summaries of coming meetings of the Interagency Committee on Back Contamination. In the meantime, Paine had turned over back contamination responsibilities to Mueller, who began discussions with representatives from the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior and the U.S. Public Health Service. These scientists visited the laboratory in mid-February and asked for tighter controls on even the most minute operations. In May, Gilruth established an Apollo Back Contamination Control Panel,^db similar to the spacecraft configuration control boards, to conduct very strict reviews of any changes in either facilities or procedures.⁴⁸

A successful quarantine would depend on carefully worked out spacecraft, lunar sample, and crew recovery procedures. In November 1968, Washington asked Kraft’s recovery operations people to conduct “an end-to-end dress rehearsal simulation.” This test began in January when the Mobile Quarantine Facility, resembling a streamlined automobile house trailer without wheels and capable of supporting six persons for ten days, was passed between two ships near Norfolk, Virginia. About the time of the Apollo 9 recovery, four test subjects made a trial run in the quarantine facility from the Pacific to Houston.⁴⁹

There were a few hitches in working out the recovery plan. Any contamination that the command module might pick up from the lunar module should be neutralized by the searing heat of earth reentry before the vehicle splashed into the Pacific. The planners intended to lift the command ship aboard the prime recovery vessel and park it next to the quarantine trailer, so the crew could move quickly into isolated quarters. This idea had to be abandoned because the attachment loop on the space vehicle was not strong enough—it could have pulled loose and dumped the craft, crew and all, into the sea. Crew system specialists then came up with what they called a biological isolation garment—BIG in the technicians’ usual shorthand. The crew would climb from the spacecraft into a raft, put on the garments (which really made them look like creatures from outer space), ride a helicopter to the ship, deplane, and enter the trailer. Kerwin and Collins tested the garments in a tank and discovered that the face mask filled with water when the inhalation valve was submerged. If rough seas dumped the crew from the raft, the biological barrier would be broken when they pulled off the masks to keep from drowning. But this problem was corrected, procedures were impressed on the crew of the carrier Hornet, details were cleared with the Interagency Committee on Back Contamination, and a notice was published in the Federal Register. On 26 June, Kraft notified everyone concerned that procedures for recovery and quarantine were ready.⁵⁰

The lunar module probably had to undergo the toughest tests and the sharpest scrutiny of all the hardware, procedures, and facilities. LM-2, veteran of the Saturn launch vehicle pogo testing program, was called upon to simulate landing stresses. Robert J. Wren, from Faget’s directorate, and a team from Houston and Grumman rigged the vehicle in Houston’s vibration and acoustic testing facility. Dropping LM-2 at slightly different angles to see how it would stand the shock of landing was a simple test. But the ascent stage carried a full propellant load and the descent tanks a small quantity of fluid; when the tanks were pressurized, this could be dangerous. Maximum safety precautions were taken, however, and the tests were completed successfully.⁵¹

Although the lander passed all its trials with good marks, Low still worried about single-point failures that could wreck a mission. He sent a “walk-dawn team” to the contractors’ plants to inspect both spacecraft and told Rocco Petrone that he would like the same kind of inspection at the Cape by veterans in spacecraft flight preparations. Low even wanted someone to take a look at the landing gear to make sure the honeycomb shock absorbers had been installed.⁵²

Most of the flight readiness reviews for Apollo 11—mission content, lunar module, command and service modules, government-furnished equipment (the extravehicular pressure garments and backpack, experiments and equipment, and cameras), back contamination, and medical status—were held from middle to late June. Carroll Bolender, Houston manager of LM-5, found that the general quality had consistently improved, but the vehicle had more items for resolution on 23 June than LM-4 had at a comparable time. Martin Raines’ flight safety team attended the reviews, keeping a close watch on the hardware, and admitted that the only great risk it could see was that Apollo 11 was to make the first lunar landing—and that risk would be there no matter what vehicle made the trip. The Boeing Company also reviewed the mission and came to the same conclusion. The missions were coming so close together now that Mueller began to worry about possible fatigue overtaking the workers. When he wrote Gilruth of his concern, however, the gist of his message was “worry [along with me] but don’t allow [it] to interfere with driving your staff at full throttle until ... the Lunar Landing.” And they did drive on. On 14 July, Director Phillips confirmed that Apollo 11 was ready for flight.⁵³

Mobile Quarantine Facility off-loaded from carrier Randolph during recovery rehearsal simulation before the Apollo 11 mission.

Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston.