by Von Hardesty
On May 22, after boarding the lunar lander and detaching it from Charlie Brown, Stafford and Cernan fired the LM’s descent rocket at an altitude of 69 miles above the moon. Their descent orbit carried them down to around the prescribed 50,000 feet. At that altitude they saw huge boulders scattered across the landscape below, with some appearing to be the size of five-story buildings. Stafford later learned they were 10 times larger. “Houston, this is Snoopy! We is Go, and we is down among, ’em, Charlie,” an excited Cernan radioed Mission Control as he and Stafford watched their first earthrise.77 Flying through blackness nine miles over the surface, the LM crew also surveyed the Sea of Tranquility, planned as the first lunar landing site. They reported that while some safe areas existed, much of the site was covered with boulders and craters.
The Snoopy crew had a brief but terrifying scare on their way back to link up with the command module. The LM’s automatic guidance system caused the maneuvering thrusters to fire wildly. The LM began tumbling out of control, causing Cernan to yell, “Son of a bitch…. What the hell happened?” The crew regained manual control of the spacecraft after eight long seconds; the problem turned out to be easily correctable.78
The remainder of the voyage went as planned. America now had sent six astronauts to the moon and safely returned them. Nothing stood in the way of a lunar landing. Yet, there was the lingering fear that the Russians might upstage the United States at this critical juncture. While their intentions were shrouded in mystery, the launch of Zond 5, an unmanned photographic mission from lunar orbit, prompted anxiety in the American space program. Sending a highly automated probe into lunar orbit and returning it successfully, in the view of Michael Collins, “represented a hell of a capability and made a lot of NASA people edgy.”79 The eleventh-hour launch of another unmanned Soviet mission, Luna 15, at the time of the actual lunar landing in 1969 would prompt similar forebodings.
A LANDING ON THE SEA OF TRANQUILITY
The Apollo 11 launch took place on July 16, 1969. The moment possessed a cosmic aura of its own. NASA simply stated in a press release on the eve of launch date that the Apollo mission would “perform a manned lunar landing and return.” In a narrow sense, the extraordinary space venture would achieve the “national goal” of a successful manned lunar landing by the end of the decade. Yet it would accomplish a much greater dream, one NASA expressed in an understated and cautious manner: “If the mission—called Apollo 11—is successful, man will accomplish his long-term dream of walking on another celestial body.”80
The audacious undertaking called for a three-man crew to make the long journey to the moon, and two astronauts to land and explore the moon’s surface. They would collect lunar samples, deploy scientific experiments to transmit back to Earth important data, and photograph the landing site and the surrounding environs. To mark the historic occasion, the Apollo 11 explorers would leave a plaque bearing a map of Earth with the following inscription:
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969 A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND.
The crew selected for the Apollo 11 mission brought considerable experience and technical expertise to their assignment. The commander of Apollo 11, Neil A. Armstrong, a veteran test pilot, received the coveted nod to take the first steps on the moon’s surface. He would be joined by lunar module pilot Edwin “Buzz” E. Aldrin, Jr., for the high-risk lunar landing. Michael Collins would serve as command module pilot. All three astronauts were in their late thirties at the time. A former Navy pilot with combat experience in the Korean War, Armstrong had come to NASA as a civilian; his crewmates were both experienced Air Force officers. Collins, an articulate veteran of the Gemini program, has left insightful descriptions of his two fellow Apollo crewmen. Armstrong, as described in Collins’s own memoir, was cool under pressure, hardworking, and seemingly nonchalant—“very much on top of a complex and rapidly changing situation.” In Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, Collins saw another purposeful colleague, who was “all business” during the training for their historic mission. However, Collins remembered that Aldrin—“if generally quiet and incapable of small talk”—would expound endlessly on his “pet projects.” Both men, in Collins’ view, were talented and creative engineers.81 Aldrin held a Ph.D. in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The launch of Apollo 11 was for NASA a tense event that passed without any technical glitch—again demonstrating the impressive power and reliability of the giant Saturn V rocket. The Apollo 11 crew had named their command module Columbia and their lunar landing vehicle, the Eagle. Once in orbit, the crew of Apollo 11 received the welcome order for the translunar injection, and the third stage of the Saturn V engine reignited to boost the spacecraft outward on a trajectory to the moon. During its three-day journey Apollo 11, as with other lunar journeys, repeated the thermal-control maneuver of past lunar missions. In it the spacecraft was positioned broadside to the sun and then rotated slowly, in the words of one astronaut “like a chicken on a motorized barbecue pit.”82 The passage to the moon followed the script of two earlier missions, Apollo 8 and Apollo 10. Upon reaching the moon, the Apollo 11 spacecraft slowed in a two-burn firing to allow its capture by the moon’s gravitational field. Once in its new orbit, Apollo 11 followed a nearly circular path around the moon, an orbit averaging 60 miles above the lunar surface. The transposition and docking of the LM followed, repeating the well-rehearsed maneuver of extracting it from the Saturn’s third stage for docking with the command module. On the fourth day, all was ready for a descent to the moon’s surface.83
The encounter with the moon prompted a sense of awe in the Apollo 11 crew. “To begin with,” Michael Collins reported in his memoir, “it is huge, completely filling our window. Second, it is three-dimensional: The belly of it bulges out toward us in such a pronounced fashion that I almost feel I can reach out and touch it…. It is between us and the sun, creating the most splendid lighting conditions imaginable.” Once observed up close, the ever-shifting perspective of sunlight gave the moon a special character: “The sun casts a halo around it,” Collins reported, “shining on its rear surface, and the sunlight which comes cascading around its rim serves mainly to make the moon itself seem mysterious and subtle by comparison, emphasizing the size and texture of its dimly lit and pockmarked surface…. This cool, magnificent sphere hangs there ominously, a formidable presence without sound or motion, issuing us no invitation to invade its domain.”84
On Sunday, July 20, the Apollo 11 crew prepared for a descent to this forbidding domain. The procedure began with the release of the LM, quickly followed by a two-burn sequence to power Armstrong and Aldrin downward toward the lunar surface. Though practiced repeatedly in Earthbound simulators, the actual moon-landing maneuvers entailed many risks for the crew. The Eagle had to land in a precise spot, selected in advance, to assure safety. Initially, Armstrong and Aldrin assumed the odd position of heads up and feet forward; this awkward stance was maintained during the powered descent to the lunar surface. At this juncture they peered out their windows into a black void. Then, on signal, the LM rolled over and Armstrong began a tension-filled quest for the proper landing site. The two astronauts encountered what appeared to be a “program alarm,” but Mission Control responded with instructions to ignore the warning.
The LM now began its final descent to the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong peered out the window of the LM to oversee the climactic computer-run descent program. Nearby in the close quarters of the fragile LM, Aldrin monitored their progress by yelling out periodic readings on altitude and velocity. Soon the targeted landing zone came into view—clearly visible to Armstrong at approximately 1,000 feet altitude. For Armstrong, the planned landing area now looked problematic. Suddenly, he spotted a large crater, surrounded by boulders and rocks, some quite large and imposing. He then pitched the LM forward until it was nearly level, gliding over this field of boulders
at 350 feet. Armstrong had acted swiftly, even as Aldrin continued his audible readings: “Six hundred feet, down nineteen [feet per second]…. Four hundred feet, down at nine…. Two hundred feet, 4 ½ down…. One hundred feet, 3 ½ down, nine forward. Five percent [fuel remaining]…. Forty feet, down 2 ½, kicking up some dust….” Houston chimed in: “Thirty seconds. That’s how much fuel they have left. Better get it on the ground, Neil.” Within an instant that seemed like an eternity, Armstrong deftly steered the Eagle to a soft landing—although the braking thrust of the LM generated a huge cloud of dust. “Contact light,” Aldrin reported exuberantly, signaling confirmation of a safe touchdown. At Mission Control the tension had reached a fever pitch. “We copy you down, Eagle,” Houston announced to the Apollo 11 crew—a message, in Collins’ words, that was “half question and half answer.” Finally, Armstrong confirmed the space triumph—“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”85
Later that night Neil Armstrong descended from the hatch, moving deliberately down a small ladder, and stepped off onto the lunar surface. The moment was electric and unforgettable—the first excursion by a human being on the moon. The event was televised to a vast global audience on Earth. Armstrong’s brief words captured the epic nature of the moment, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Aldrin joined Armstrong on the lunar surface. Above them was the canopy of a pitch-black sky, broken only by the intense light of the sun. Around them was, as Buzz Aldrin aptly described it, the “magnificent desolation” of the lunar surface—jagged, chalky gray, and forbidding. Lightly tethered by the moon’s one-sixth gravity, the two astronauts planted an American flag, set up seismic sensors and other scientific packages, and gathered rock samples. Armstrong even indulged his curiosity about an 80-foot crater he and Aldrin had passed over just before landing. He ran over to inspect it for a brief moment and to shoot some spectacular photographs, with the lunar module visible in the background.
The astronauts’ nearly two-and-a-half-hour EVA proved to be as exhausting as it was exhilarating. There were still many preparations, and scheduled rest, before their assent. Their stay on the moon’s surface proved to be short—22.5 hours in all—but it constituted an extraordinary and unprecedented episode in the saga of human exploration.
Once reunited in the cocoon of the Apollo 11 command module, the three astronauts shifted their attention to the task of navigating home. In the distance—across an enormous void—was a beckoning blue planet, alone and unique. Now began their triumphal voyage home.
Astronaut Stafford and cosmonaut Leonov meet after link-up of Soviet and American spacecraft, July 1975.
EPILOGUE
Old Visions, New Realities
The Apollo 11 mission stands out as a defining moment in the history of the 20th century—if not of the millennium that soon closed. Earthlings boldly stepping onto the surface of the moon represented an extraordinary moment in the human experience. Televised coverage of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin exploring the distant lunar surface evoked a sense of awe, even magic. Most earthbound observers felt that the Apollo 11 mission represented more than a raw display of America’s formidable technological and engineering prowess. Some sought to cast the entire saga of space travel in universal terms as a triumph for civilization—a welcome counterpoint to a century filled with wars, revolutions, and vast human suffering. Still others chose to interpret it more narrowly as a welcome victory for the United States in the Cold War. In the summer of 1969, Americans found themselves bedeviled by terrestrial concerns: a divisive war in Vietnam, racial conflict, and growing social discord. The 1960s had signaled a time of profound cultural change in American life. For many, this immediate context of change and uncertainty dampened any urge to celebrate.
Ironically, the Apollo 11 mission—and the five successful Apollo lunar treks that followed it—did not herald a new age of manned space exploration for the United States. The fabled mission to the moon had ended an era, not opened one. As public interest in space waned and other competing national priorities arose, budget allocations for NASA were sharply reduced. Facing this wave of fiscal austerity, the American space program took on a variety of new incarnations, with manned missions restricted to near-Earth orbits. Some of the new orientation reflected genuine, if neglected, NASA programs. Robotic missions to explore the solar system soon received renewed emphasis. For ardent space visionaries, the ancient dream of a human visitation to Mars would persist, but the grand enterprise had been deferred indefinitely.
The Soviet Union faced its own limitations. Still a superpower, the communist state nonetheless had to contend with powerful internal stresses and contradictions. This hidden dynamic would bring about the demise of the Soviet regime within a generation, even though such a fateful turn of events seemed implausible in 1969. The Soviet Union had keynoted the space age with the launch of Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin’s fabled orbital flight, and a sequence of other dramatic “firsts” in space exploration. The highly secretive spaceport at Baikonur had served as a platform to fire an array of advanced rockets and pioneering robotic space probes. Yet these formative space spectaculars had not assured any permanent lead for the Soviets in the space race. In the quest to launch a manned mission to the moon, the Soviet Union proved itself to be lacking in the organizational and technological means to compete. In retrospect, the Soviet Union’s debut as a space-faring nation has to be regarded as impressive in its own right. Not only that, the Russians established a presence in space that would endure beyond the life span of the Soviet regime.
Moscow’s propaganda organs had greeted the space age with a flurry of hyperbole, proclaiming that the Soviet Union’s early triumphs reflected the powerful and relentless dynamic unique to communism. In reality, both the Soviet Union and the United States had embraced technology as an effective tool to sustain a competitive edge in the Cold War. The Soviet regime benefited from its talented group of designers, engineers, and scientists who established an early momentum. This edge, however, did not long endure once the American space program acquired a clear mandate, proper footing, and lavish funding. By contrast, the weaknesses of the Soviet space program became evident, a lack of forward progress made more severe by a cumbersome bureaucracy belabored by internal strife, waste, and inefficiency. By the late 1960s, the Soviets had become essentially spectators in the high-profile lunar quest. The failure to keep pace with Americans, however, did not spell the end to Russia as a space-faring nation: In the post-Apollo era Russian rocketry and orbiting space stations would sustain—even define—the new space age.
Looking back, this new epoch of exploration had been characterized by fast-paced technological breakthroughs. The Cold War with its military missile programs had been a catalyst that fueled this extraordinary innovation on many fronts. When the Soviets placed the first artificial satellite into orbit in 1957, they ignited a phenomenal sequence of technological advances on both sides. Rocketry and spacecraft design advanced quickly, allowing for manned orbital flights beginning with Yuri Gagarin in 1961. For the Apollo missions in the late 1960s, the United States routinely launched its huge and reliable Saturn V rocket—truly one of the technological wonders of the space age. The era became a showcase of innovative spacecraft designed for long-duration flights, space rendezvous and docking, and landing on the moon’s surface. The quickening pace of space exploration was also measured in the early robotic space probes, beginning with Luna 1, launched in 1959 by the Soviet Union. It became the first man-made object to leave the gravitational field of Earth, fly past the moon, and enter an orbit around the sun. Subsequent deep-space probes by both nations revealed remarkable data on the atmosphere of Venus and the surface of Mars. The era required visionaries and talented engineers on both sides. The organizational demands were daunting and calendar-driven—and here NASA prevailed by demonstrating a prodigious capacity to meet the stated national goal of a manned lunar mission before the close of the 1960s.
I
n the immediate aftermath of Apollo 11, the United States launched six Apollo lunar missions. Apollo 12 followed in November 1969 with Alan Bean and Pete Conrad making an impressive lunar landing in the Ocean of Storms—a mere 600 feet from the Surveyor 3 unmanned probe that had landed on the moon two years before. A near tragedy with Apollo 13 followed in April 1970: The explosion of an oxygen tank compelled astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and John Swigert to circle the moon without a landing, using their lunar module as an improvised life-support system to reach home. Nearly a year followed before Apollo 14 took Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell to the Fra Mauro lunar highlands. In the Apollo 15 mission, July 26–August 7, 1971, David Scott and Jim Irwin explored the lunar surface for three days, making use of a lunar rover to range out from the landing site. One dramatic measure of success was the total of 18 hours of EVA that these two Apollo 15 astronauts accumulated on the moon. In April 1972, Charlie Duke and John Young on Apollo 16 reached the central highlands, exploring for three days. The final manned lunar mission, Apollo 17, came in December 1972 with Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt making use of a lunar rover to complete a long-duration exploration of the lunar surface.
NASA had originally planned 20 missions for the Apollo program, even a projected landing on the far side of the moon. In August 1969, just two weeks after the Apollo 11 landing, Wernher von Braun laid out an ambitious program for future space exploration to the Space Task Group, arguing for orbiting space stations, a permanent base on the moon, and ultimately a manned mission to Mars. However, the prospects dimmed for any bold program of manned flights in the near term. With the completion of the Apollo 17 mission the curtain descended, the consequence of the Nixon administration’s decision to both reduce NASA’s budget and to increase funding for the proposed Space Transportation System (STS), or space shuttle. These changes mirrored the shift in public support for NASA in the 1970s. Von Braun would leave NASA in 1972, and he died of cancer five years later.