Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure

by Dan Parry

  In April 1962, NASA asked for applications for a new class of astronauts. Applicants had to be test pilots who were currently flying high-performance aircraft and who had a college degree in engineering or one of the sciences. They could be no taller than six feet and no older than 35. Although it wasn't explicitly mentioned, it was clear that one way or another they would be involved in the preparations for a lunar landing. As well as new personnel, such ambitious plans would require spacecraft and rockets bigger and stronger than anything that was currently available. Two months earlier, Project Mercury had successfully achieved its goal of putting a man in orbit. John Glenn, a former marine, circled the Earth three times, but his hardware fell far short of the capability needed to get to the Moon. The rockets propelling the first two Mercury flights were not much more powerful than the XLR-99 engine installed in the X-15.

  In May, NASA's plans for the future were set out at a conference in Seattle, and among those speaking was Armstrong, who delivered a presentation on hypersonic research flights. The conference was held alongside the Seattle World's Fair, whose guests included John Glenn. By proving that NASA was capable of orbital flight, Glenn had demonstrated that proposals for more adventurous missions deserved to be taken seriously. It was clear that the design and engineering challenges posed by flights into space promised to go beyond anything on offer elsewhere. For a pilot captivated by powered flight since childhood the new opportunities were too exciting to resist. Still, never one to rush things, Armstrong waited until he got back from Seattle before submitting his application. It arrived at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston in early June, missing the final deadline by a week.26

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  At Cape Kennedy on 15 July 1969, after leaving the simulator Armstrong returned to the crew quarters, from where he called his parents in Wapakoneta. Sounding cheerful, he told them that he and the rest of the crew were ready for the launch, scheduled for 9.32am local time the following morning.

  'Will you call us again before you leave?' his father asked.

  'No, I'm afraid I won't be able to call again,' Neil softly replied.

  'We asked God to watch over him, and then we had to say goodbye,' his mother later said.27

  After lunch (why was it always steak, he had once asked Janet) there was little to do except try to relax and maybe steal a breath of fresh air. The crew were given access to a cottage on the coast where they passed the time swimming and relaxing on the beach. That evening they called their wives and ate an early dinner. Jim Lovell, the commander of the backup crew, told Armstrong, 'This is your last chance to tell me if you feel good. Because if you do I'm going to have myself a party.'

  While the astronauts themselves maintained an air of business as usual, around them their support team felt a rising sense of tension. 'We were the ones who were a little uptight,' Dee O'Hara, the crew's nurse, later said. After driving to the space centre from her hotel, Dee told Neil, 'You wouldn't believe the number of people who have come to watch the launch.' Neil gave her a brief smile and said it was inevitable people were going to make 'a big deal out of it'. Dee was surprised by Armstrong's cool assessment of what to the rest of America promised to be the biggest scientific accomplishment in the country's history.28

  Tight security operated throughout the 88,000 acres of the Kennedy Space Center as a million sightseers from all corners of the country descended on eastern Florida. From Titusville to Melbourne, thousands of cars converged on a huge region stretching as far west as Orlando. With the freeways blocked by the worst jams in Florida's history, some drivers used the wrong side of the road since no-one was heading in the opposite direction. Only the wealthy, or well-connected, managed to avoid the crowds by arriving in private aircraft and then boarding one of the hundreds of boats choking the Banana River. Meanwhile thousands of people, who were already settled among barbecues, beer coolers and bottles of pop, were either lounging around or else trying out their cameras, telescopes and binoculars. Somewhere out there was a rocket and a bunch of guys who were going to fly on it and there were persistent debates about which direction to look in. Hotel rooms had long since sold out but late-comers were allowed to set up camp-beds in lounges and lobbies. By the waterfront, caravans, tents and awnings lay scattered among camper vans and station wagons as revellers prepared for the countdown beach parties that would run through the night. A 'lift-off martini' would set you back $1.25, while for those who really wanted to live it up there was the 'moonlander', consisting of crème de menthe, crème de cacao, vodka, soda and a squeeze of lime, topped with an American flag. Food and drink were still available but local stores had sold out of alarm clocks by lunchtime.

  While for some Apollo 11 represented exploration, prestige and glamour, all wrapped up in a neat metal tube, beyond the fanfare on the beaches others believed that America was falling apart at the seams. Many felt the whole event was a costly mistake that ignored the social problems battering the nation. As the parties were getting under way, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, successor to Martin Luther King as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led more than a hundred campaigners to the gates of the space centre in protest at 'this foolish waste of money that could be used to feed the poor'. As far as Abernathy and his supporters were concerned, relieving poverty was surely a priority over the search for moon rocks that was costing the nation $24 billion. Abernathy wanted to know whether the largest commitment of resources ever made in peacetime was really worth it. He was met by NASA Administrator Thomas Paine who addressed the protesters' concerns before inviting a delegation to watch the launch from the VIP area.

  For the vast majority of America, however, the moral arguments were a distraction from a feat of engineering that represented all that was great about the country. American expertise had built this rocket, heroes would sit in the top of it and there were only a few hours left before everyone could see it for themselves. 'Apollo 11 gave a lot of nice people a chance to get acquainted,' said Texas car dealer Jay Marks. He and a friend had loaded up their sons and driven east to Cocoa Beach, a Florida playground that had been frequented by off-duty astronauts since the days of Mercury, and which was now overflowing with people from out of town. Throughout the day the southern sunshine had given way to heavy clouds, but undaunted by the weather, everywhere everyone shared the feeling that history was about to be made.

  Ten miles beyond the most congested areas stood the object at the centre of all the excitement, the anguish and the hope. On launch-pad 39A, the towering Saturn V rocket waited in the one place on the coast that was relatively peaceful. With no-one aboard, and not yet carrying any fuel, the vehicle could be largely left alone until the pre-launch activity began. Yet this rocket, the most powerful machine ever built, was impossible to ignore. As dusk descended, the second tallest structure in Florida (the tallest was the building in which the Saturn V had been assembled) was brilliantly lit up by floodlights, its white panels glowing softly against the forbidding clouds behind. This was the vehicle that was going to achieve something men had dreamt of for millennia. That was the plan at least.

  Like all astronauts' wives before a launch, Janet Armstrong had been trying to prepare herself for any eventuality. Having been driven to a spot three miles from the launch-pad, Janet and her children gazed at the monumental sight before them. With clouds obscuring the Moon, she stood lost in her thoughts until forced to retreat to the car when a gentle rain began to fall.29

  Chapter 2

  CARRYING THE FIRE

  Standing 363 feet tall, from a distance the Saturn V looked more like a peaceful monument than anything capable of reaching orbit. But as lightning lit up the night sky, technicians began to busily prepare the slumbering rocket for its improbable flight to the Moon. At 11pm the launch-pad team began cooling the booster's empty fuel tanks before filling them with six million pounds of propellants. The RP-1 kerosene was allowed to remain at room temperature but the pale blue liquid oxygen had to be kept extremely cold to prevent
it returning to gas. It boiled at a temperature of minus 182.96°C; positively balmy compared to the liquid hydrogen that was held at minus 252.87°C. The propellants were pumped into insulated tanks resembling giant thermos flasks. As the tanks slowly began to fill, glistening chunks of ice formed on the outside of the rocket. Some of the liquid oxygen was allowed to boil off, and as the tank was replenished excess gas was released into the atmosphere to prevent a dangerous build-up of pressure. Streams of vapour rolled down towards the ground, and the rocket looked as if it were exhaling on a cold winter's morning.

  The sections of the vehicle that would fly all the way to the Moon weighed more than 103,000lb (51 tons). To get them there meant first raising them off the ground, then pushing them up through the atmosphere so quickly that they reached orbit before they could fall back again. Orbit was just 100 miles from the ground; the Moon, however, was the best part of 239,000 miles away. To complete the journey the rocket would have to break free of Earth's gravity, which meant burning fuel for another five minutes and 53 seconds. All in all, to put the spacecraft on course for the Moon required such a heavy load of fuel that its weight compressed the relatively thin external skin of the booster. When fully laden, the rocket shrank by eight inches.

  Once depleted, the Saturn's heavy fuel tanks had to be dropped over the Atlantic to reduce the burden on the engines. This required the rocket to be made of three separate sections. The first stage – fuel tanks, engines and all – would fall away at a height of 36 miles, at which point the second stage would take over, pushing the rocket up to an altitude of 101 miles before it too was dropped. To assist each separation process, small thrusters were placed at strategic points along the Saturn's length so that the entire vehicle carried a total of 41 rocket engines. Between them, the first two stages of the Saturn V produced enough energy to supply the city of New York for an hour and a quarter.1 After the second stage was jettisoned, the third-stage engine would then ignite, sending the spacecraft into orbit. Built by different contractors in separate locations, the three stages (together referred to as the 'launch vehicle') had been transported to Cape Kennedy and bolted together in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), an enormous hangar with a floor plan covering an area of eight acres.

  On top of the third stage sat an instrument unit carrying the rocket's guidance system, and above this came the three modules that would continue all the way to the Moon (together referred to as the 'spacecraft'). The lunar module was sealed inside a conical 'adapter' that rested on the instrument unit, and on this sat the cylindrical service module which carried oxygen, electrical power and other critical supplies for the command module that was attached above it. The conical command module, the principal section that would be occupied by the crew, was just 11 feet five inches high. At the very top of the stack (or 'space vehicle') was an abort rocket which was capable of pulling the command module clear of danger during the launch. The stack, consisting of nearly six million parts – a labyrinth of fuel lines, tanks, pumps, gauges, sensors, circuits and switches – was put together by more than 5,000 technicians using computer-assisted cranes and an assembly tower, which at 398 feet was taller than the Saturn itself. The entire vehicle was completed on 14 April.2

  Connected by horizontal access arms, and together weighing 12 million pounds (6,000 tons), the vehicle and the tower rested on an enormous steel platform inside the VAB. The tricky thing about the VAB was that it was three and a half miles from the launch-pad. Fortunately the platform was mobile and could be collected by a vehicle and driven to where it was needed. The vehicle capable of collecting a Saturn V rocket and its accompanying tower and driving both to the launch-pad boasted a set of statistics that rivalled the booster itself. The six-million-pound 'crawler transporter' trundled along at 1mph on giant caterpillar tracks; each of its 'shoes' alone weighed a ton. More than 500 gallons of fuel were consumed during its six-hour journey along a road the width of an eight-lane motorway.3 Once the rocket was in position at Launch Complex 39A, the transporter retreated.

  Specifically designed and built to accommodate the Saturn V, the pad was equipped with fuel lines encased in a protective vacuum (small leaks were stopped using tampons soaked in water that quickly froze in place). It also offered a concrete blast-room, designed to protect the crew from an exploding rocket. Built directly under the pad and capable of holding 20 people for up to three days, in an emergency the bunker could be entered via a 40-foot slide that ended in the 'rubber room'. The pad was managed by a team of technicians who reported to the Launch Control Center, an enormous blockhouse built beside the VAB, from where the overnight preparations were directed.4

  At 4.15am, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin were woken by the Director of Flight Crew Operations, Deke Slayton. Deke had originally been selected as one of the Mercury Seven, but after being unceremoniously grounded by a heart condition he had been moved to a management position and had never flown in space. He joined the crew for breakfast (steak), accompanied by Bill Anders from the backup crew and the artist Paul Calle, who sat sketching in a corner. Half an hour later, the astronauts began the arduous process of putting on their pressure-suits. All being well, the bulky suits could be removed a few hours into the mission, but an emergency during the early stages of the flight might mean they would have to be worn for days. The procedure began with each man rubbing a special salve on his buttocks before strapping on a condom-style device to collect urine, followed by a nappy for anything else. After attaching sensors to their chests, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins put on 'constant wear' long-johns before being assisted into their airtight suits.

  On Earth, when drawing in breath your lungs rely on the fact that their sucking action is readily met by a quantity of air heaped into the body by the weight of the atmosphere pressing down from above. Without external pressure, the lungs would struggle to function. Worse still, the natural forces within your body would no longer be held in check; blood, and other fluids, might try to burst free. Keen to avoid this, the astronauts would artificially maintain pressure within the command module, allowing them to remove their suits. These were only worn to protect the men in the event of a sudden loss of pressure during vulnerable moments, such as the initial journey into space. Each suit consisted of an inflatable bladder that allowed an artificial degree of pressure to be imposed on the body. To stop the bladder ballooning once inflated, its human shape was maintained by a web of stiff fabric, bellows, inflexible tubes and sliding cables, all of which were woven together to produce the familiar spacesuit. Two types were available: Armstrong and Aldrin wore a heavier 55lb variety capable of protecting them on the surface of the Moon, while Collins wore a lighter 35lb suit.

  Once they had donned their 'Snoopy hats' (soft caps fitted with earphones and microphones), the astronauts completed the suiting-up process with the addition of a pressure helmet, a clear polycarbonate bubble. The suits were then filled with pure oxygen, which in space would allow them to replicate only a fraction of the pressure of Earth's atmosphere (3.7 psi as opposed to 15 psi). However, pressure as low as this allowed nitrogen within the body to break free of solution and collect in painful bubbles - a condition known to divers as 'the bends'. In its mildest form this effect is familiar to all of us: it's thought that 'cracking knuckles' can be attributed to bursting bubbles of nitrogen. In space, nitrogen collects in joints, particularly elbows and knees, and to prevent this the astronauts purged their body of the gas by breathing pure oxygen for more than three hours before launch. Dependent on portable supplies of pure oxygen, connected to the suit via a tube, the three men were sealed off from any physical contact with friends and colleagues waiting to bid them farewell. 'You peer at the world, but are not part of it,' wrote Michael Collins. He secretly found pressure-suits to be unsettling and even claustrophobic, so much so that he had once considered confessing all and leaving the programme.5

  In the weeks before the flight, Collins had attracted almost as much press attention as Armstrong, for t
he fact that he would not be walking on the Moon. As the only member of the crew who would remain aboard the command module throughout the mission, he had been repeatedly asked about his fears of isolation. Despite the growing press attention he maintained a sang-froid that later earned him a reputation as Apollo 11's philosopher. Unencumbered by Neil's focus or Buzz's ambition, Michael occasionally managed to indulge a sense of detachment from his role as the command module pilot, not to mention the mission overall, and even NASA itself.

  This relaxed attitude to life developed during childhood when he learned to adapt to the succession of new homes and schools that were part and parcel of life in a military family. His distinguished father, Major General James Collins, had served in the Philippines in 1911, where he had flown aboard the wing of a Wright Brothers aircraft. During an appointment to Italy as a military attaché, Michael, his fourth child, was born, in Rome on 31 October 1930. After returning to the States, the family moved to Governor's Island in New York Bay, then to Baltimore, Ohio, and Texas before being sent to Puerto Rico where they lived in a 400-year-old house. To ten-year-old Michael it seemed that no other home could offer such an immense ballroom, gardens teeming with tropical animals, and a brothel at the end of the road. Later he remembered that the girls would 'toss me money if I would talk to them but I never would'. Through his father's connections and varied postings, Michael came to acquire a broader understanding of the world than some of his NASA contemporaries.6

  At school he was capable and athletic, and while he developed a love of books he also became known as a prankster. 'I was just a normal, active, troublesome kid. I liked airplanes and kites, and climbing trees and falling out of them. I didn't like school much.' He also shared Armstrong's interest in model aircraft, but for Michael it was an occasional hobby that was never as important as football and girls.