(from Buzz Aldrin and Malcolm McConnell,
Men from Earth)
THE FIRST MAN IN orbital flight around the earth was a Russian, Yuri Gagarin, in April 1961. President John F. Kennedy responded within weeks to this Russian challenge, promising that the USA would place a man on the moon and return him safely “within this decade.” Kennedy’s proposal was highly ambitious by any account, but on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, with his now famous words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
We may simply think of astronauts as well-trained airplane pilots, but in fact, only the “best of the best” are selected. In the race to the moon each Apollo astronaut was a combination of test pilot, engineer, computer guru, celestial navigator, emergency M.D., and wise improviser. Each had natural leadership, a sense of humor, profound knowledge, and the ability to think swiftly. In sum, the astronauts were personable, cool, courageous, and calculating risk-takers.
All astronauts know they may die, either in training or in space. In fact, three died from lack of oxygen in a fire during a routine ground test as they lay in the command module attached to the gantry. Four pilots died in NASA aircraft accidents. Apollo 13 almost ran out of electricity and oxygen in 1970 as it approached the moon. Even Neil Armstrong had a close call while flying a simulator lunar landing training vehicle (LLTV). As he started to land, a sudden gust of wind spun the LLTV out of control. Armstrong ejected to parachute to earth, and his LLTV crashed and burned. Every mission had its brushes with death.
For all astronauts, knowledge and training insured their survival and success. The pilots and copilots had the responsibilities of millions of integrated systems; an incalculable number of variables fell on their shoulders to understand, operate, and at times remedy. These men and women not only knew the risks, they understood the complexity of those risks and embraced them to conquer them. It was not a matter of daring without knowledge as in the days of Christopher Columbus. It was a matter of accepted responsibility for the people, systems, and goals of manned space flight.
From Men from Earth, published on the twentieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, we turn now to Buzz Aldrin’s firsthand account as copilot of the first landing on the moon—where temperatures range from-250 degrees to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, where there is no air to breathe, where gravity is one sixth that of Earth, and where space radiation and hazardous micrometeorites shower down.
NEIL AND I had moved into the LM [Lunar Module] in preparation for undocking from Columbia. Mike told us to be patient while he worked through his preseparation checklist. Mike had to replace the drogue and probe carefully before sealing off the command module and separating from the LM. We were all conscious of the fragile docking mechanism. In 24 hours, we would be needing that tunnel again. When Mike finally finished we were on the far side of the moon again, in the middle of our thirteenth orbit.
Back on the moon’s near side, we contacted Houston, so that Mission Control could monitor the stream of data from the LM and CSM [Command Service Module]. The hatches were sealed; now the LM was truly the Eagle and the command module was Columbia. “How’s the czar over there?” Mike asked Neil.
Neil watched the numbers blinking on our DSKY [Display and Keyboard], counting down for the separation maneuver. “Just hanging on and punching buttons,” Neil answered. We exchanged long blocks of data with Mike and with Houston. The numbers seemed endless.
Houston rewarded us with a terse, “You are go for separation, Columbia.”
Mike backed the command module away with a snapping thump. Then the moonscape seemed to rotate slowly past my window as the LM turned, until it hung above my head. “The Eagle has wings,” Neil called.
Neil and I stood almost shoulder to shoulder in our full pressure suits and bubble helmets, tethered to the deck of the LM by elastic cords. Now we were the ones who were engrossed with long checklists. But I felt a sharp urgency as I flipped each switch and tapped the data updates into the DSKY. When Mike thrust away from us in Columbia, he simply said, “Okay, Eagle, you guys take care.”
“See you later,” was all Neil replied. It sounded as if they were heading home after an easy afternoon in the simulator room.
Just before Neil and I looped around the back of the moon for the second time in the LM, Charlie Duke, who was now capcom, told us, “Eagle, Houston. You are go for DOI [Descent Orbit Insertion].”
“Descent orbit insertion” was a 29.8-second burn of our descent engine that would drop the perilune, the lowest point in our orbit, to eight miles above the surface. If everything still looked good at that point, Houston would approve Powered Descent Initiation (PDI). Twelve minutes later, Neil and I would either be on the moon or would have aborted the landing attempt.
The LM flew backward, with our two cabin windows parallel to the gray surface of the moon. The DOI burn was so smooth that I didn’t even feel a vibration through my boots, only a slow sagging in my knees as the deceleration mounted when we throttled up from 10 percent to 100 percent thrust. Before the throttle-up was finished, I could tell from the landing radar data that our orbit was already bending. Neil turned a page in the flight plan and grinned at me through his helmet.
The moon rolled by silently outside my window. The craters were slowly becoming more distinct as we descended. There wasn’t much to do except monitor the instruments and wait for AOS (acquisition of signal). As we got closer, the moon’s color changed from beige to bleached gray. The hissing crackle of Houston’s signal returned to our earphones. “Eagle, Houston,” Charlie Duke called through the static. “If you read, you’re go for powered descent. Over.”
Neil nodded, his tired eyes warm with anticipation. I was grinning like a kid. We were going to land on the moon….
LUNAR MODULE EAGLE, JULY 20, 1969
We were just 700 feet above the surface when Charlie gave us the final “go,” just as another 12 02 alarm flashed. Neil and I confirmed with each other that the landing radar was giving us good data, and he punched PROCEED into the keyboard. All these alarms had kept us from studying our landing zone. If this had been a simulation back at the Cape, we probably would have aborted. Neil finally looked away from the DSKY screen and out his triangular window. He was definitely not satisfied with the ground beneath us. We were too low to identify the landmark craters we’d studied from the Apollo 10 photographs. We just had to find a smooth place to land. The computer, however, was taking us to a boulder field surrounding a 40-foot-wide crater.
Neil rocked his hand controller in his fist, changing over to manual command. He slowed our descent from 20 feet per second to only nine. Then, at 300 feet, we were descending at only three and a half feet per second. As Eagle slowly dropped, we continued skimming forward.
Neil still wasn’t satisfied with the terrain. All I could do was give him the altimeter callouts and our horizontal speed. He stroked the hand controller and descent-rate switch like a motorist fine-tuning his cruise control. We scooted across the boulders. At two hundred feet our hover slid toward a faster descent rate.
“Eleven forward, coming down nicely,” I called, my eyes scanning the instruments. “Two hundred feet, four and a half down. Five and a half down. One sixty….” The low-fuel light blinked on the caution-and-warning panel, “…quantity light.”
At 200 feet, Neil slowed the descent again. The horizon of the moon was at eye level. We were almost out of fuel.
“Sixty seconds,” Charlie warned.
The ascent engine fuel tanks were full, but completely separate from the descent engine. We had 60 seconds of fuel remaining in the descent stage before we had to land or abort. Neil searched the ground below.
“Down two and a half,” I called. The LM moved forward like a helicopter flaring out for landing. We were in the so-called dead man’s zone, and we couldn’t remain there long. If we ran out of fuel at this altitude, we would crash into the surface before the ascent engine could lift us back toward orbit. “Forward. Forward. Good. Forty feet. Down two and a half. Picking up some dust. Thirty feet….”
Thirty feet below the LM’s gangly legs, dust that had lain undisturbed for a billion years blasted sideways in the plume of our engine.
“Thirty seconds,” Charlie announced solemnly, but still Neil slowed our rate.
The descent engine roared silently, sucking up the last of its fuel supply. I turned my eye to the ABORT STAGE button. “Drifting right,” I called, watching the shadow of a footpad probe lightly touching the surface. “Contact light.” The horizon seemed to rock gently and then steadied. Our altimeter stopped blinking. We were on the moon. We had about 20 seconds of fuel remaining in the descent stage. Immediately I prepared for a sudden abort, in case the landing had damaged the Eagle or the surface was not strong enough to support our weight.
“Okay, engine stop,” I told Neil, reciting from the checklist. “ACA out of detent.”
“Got it,” Neil answered, disengaging the hand control system. Both of us were still tingling with the excitement of the final moments before touchdown.
“Mode controls, both auto,” I continued, aware that I was chanting the readouts. “Descent engine command override, off. Engine arm off….”
“We copy you down, Eagle,” Charlie Duke interrupted from Houston.
I stared out at the rocks and shadows of the moon. It was as stark as I’d ever imagined it. A mile away, the horizon curved into blackness.
“Houston,” Neil called, “Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
It was strange to be suddenly stationary. Spaceflight had always meant movement to me, but here we were rock-solid still, as if the LM had been standing here since the beginning of time. We’d been told to expect the remaining fuel in the descent stage to slosh back and forth after we touched down, but there simply wasn’t enough reserve fuel remaining to do this. Neil had flown the landing to the very edge.
“Roger. Tranquillity,” Charlie said, “we copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
I reached across and shook Neil’s hand, hard. We had pulled it off. Five months and 10 days before the end of the decade, two Americans had landed on the moon.