Foreword

20 July 1969—The Eagle had landed, and Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin were now preparing for man’s first walk on the moon. In contrast to the intense drama that played out earlier in the day, activities in mission control had settled down, and my fellow mission controllers were starting to relax, at least a little.

What a day!

What a day indeed!

Around 9 p.m., I realized I was drained. The day’s excitement and cliff-hanging moments had taken their toll on me. My relief, Charlie Dumis, had arrived earlier to take over the console duties, so I decided to unplug from my console and take a break before Neil and Buzz were scheduled to make their way out of the lander for the historic moonwalk. There was no way I was going to go home. Not yet. Not today.

I headed for the exit of the Mission Control Center building not realizing what I was about to experience. As I stepped out of the front door of the building, there it was, maybe thirty or forty degrees above the western horizon. A beautiful crescent moon appeared through the haze of that July Houston evening. That was the moment it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Neil and Buzz are on the moon. They are really there.

I was completely awestruck by the view. As a boy growing up in rural Texas and Oklahoma, I spent many evenings outdoors and had watched and wondered about our moon countless times over, but suddenly things changed. The impact was immediate, and in a way that I have never looked at the moon the same way since.

I reported for work that morning feeling a bit anxious about the day’s challenge, even though I felt prepared for the task at hand. During previous Gemini and Apollo missions and for countless numbers of mission simulations, my days had been spent preparing, monitoring, and managing spacecraft systems using my console’s racks of status lights, data displays, and voice communications circuits.

1. Although John Aaron very nearly left the agency early in his career, he went on to become one of the most capable flight controllers ever to sit a MOCR console. Courtesy NASA.

However, today was to be no simulation. This was the real deal. Two months earlier, Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan performed a powered descent to within nine miles of the lunar surface. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were going to try to go the rest of the way and settle the Eagle spacecraft down on the dusty plains of the Sea of Tranquility. And sure enough, following a nail-biting, drama-saturated, should-we-keep-going powered descent to the surface, it actually happened at just past 3:17 p.m. Houston time.

As EECOM, my attention was focused on the Command and Service Module (CSM) Columbia. I closely monitored the CSM to ensure all systems were ready for supporting the undocking and solo flight phase of the Eagle. After undocking, and with Command Module pilot Michael Collins still on board and orbiting sixty miles above the surface, the mother ship was performing well and all systems were in good shape. The focus in the room was now on the Eagle’s powered descent and attempt at a landing. In addition to keeping an eye on Columbia, I could now sit back and take in the bigger picture of everything that was taking place.

I had the best seat in the house. Just across the aisle to my left was capcom Charlie Duke, relaying messages back and forth to the crew, and Gene Kranz was right behind me at the flight director’s console, polling for go/no go calls each step of the way. Guidance officer Steve Bales was down in the front row to my right, sweating out multiple unexpected computer overload alarms. Steve was assisted by Staff Support Room controller Jack Garman, while Lunar Module control officer Bob Carlton sat three consoles down from me on the second row, keeping a careful eye on Eagle’s descent braking engine’s fuel supply that was depleting quickly. As the LM began approaching near the lunar surface, I listened in as Neil took over the controls, skirting Eagle across the surface, looking for a safe place to set down. I was watching and listening to an incredibly proficient and well-honed team. I sat quietly holding my breath, wondering whether Neil could set Eagle down before the depletion of fuel resulted in a descent abort and powered climb back to orbit. Then, suddenly it happened. Neil announced, “Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.”

Although I was temporarily stunned, somehow the moment had the same look and feel it had during all those many, many training sessions and prior spaceflights. In a very real sense, I had gotten used to such drama.

So, how could this happen? How was it that in such a short period of time, a fresh team of a mostly young, talented, yet inexperienced collection of individuals could be assembled and trained to pull off such a feat?

Like most of my team members, I arrived at NASA straight out of college with no experience in spaceflight. I found that although our team’s objective had been clearly defined, the necessary techniques were very much in their infancy. In addition to developing the necessary mission control techniques, we quickly became aware that being a flight controller required that we prepare ourselves to handle the unexpected, no matter how unlikely the event. Preparing for those kinds of situations demanded that we know everything there was to know. That knowledge was tested through endless hours of very realistic full-scale mission simulations, sessions in which unimaginable and unexpected failures were thrown at us time and time again. On days between simulations, it was back to the drawing board to fill the gaps in our knowledge and refine our techniques. Training under such pressures made us keenly aware of where knowledge was lacking. Just as important, we became comfortable in taking action when needed. Not everyone was cut out for this kind of work and some soon moved on. But for me and most other team members, such preparation and effort was not work—it was our passion. Such teamwork successfully paid off many times during missions leading up to and including Apollo 11.

I joined NASA in 1964. Just five short years later, I was standing outside the Mission Control Center looking at the moon with the knowledge that my coworkers and I had played a key and decisive role in successfully landing two men on the moon, fulfilling a dream of the human race that so long was assumed to be impossible. The mission control team’s major challenges and heroics did not end here; much to the contrary, later missions continued to further challenge the team’s preparation and capability, including recovering several from the brink of failure.

In Go, Flight!, coauthors Rick Houston and Milt Heflin have gone to great lengths to track down and speak with as many of the people who worked in mission control as possible. What you will find in these pages is something far more than a mere recitation of facts, figures, dates, and accomplishments.

Not only is Go, Flight! the story of what happened in that room, it is also about the people who worked there. Regardless of your familiarity with the technical details, readers will find it a great read, and when finished, you will very much feel like you were there with us. History will always remember the names of the astronauts, but back on the ground in mission control, we like to think we were the story behind the story.

John Aaron