Waiting was something we had become used to, but this wait had a distinct edge to it. Most of the flight controllers sat quietly, eyes on the two clocks listening and probably offering a prayer. In due course, the first clock reached zero and there was no communication from the ship. The second clock continued to count, reached zero and almost at the same time, the crew reported that the spacecraft was in lunar orbit. It was lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968, and playing to an American audience, which was overdue for a reason to celebrate and it choked all of us. Misty eyes, nods all around, and touches on shoulders and backs were the shared signs of a decade of work together by the MCC team.
The crew had a good time picking out craters and landmarks and matching their visuals to their lunar maps. They were the first humans ever to look at the moon this close up, and to contrast it with their view of earth, a beautiful blue planet in the blackness of space. What a time, what a Christmas Eve. And then on the next to last orbit, the crew conducted a TV tour looking inside and outside the windows. It seemed to me to have an undercurrent of reverence for what we were seeing, and then Bill Anders started and they each contributed to the reading of the passages from Genesis. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” And the familiar voices of our friends softly recounted the biblical story of creation. And as one, all of us in MCC felt the power and awe of the moment. We could only look at each other.
In another revolution, the spacecraft was on the way home – a nominal return, and a perfect splashdown in the blue Pacific. Apollo VIII was recovered by the Navy crew of the USS Yorktown, who gave up their Christmas holiday time to retrieve the spacecraft and three American astronauts.
Many citizens today may remember mostly the lunar landing mission as the symbol of Apollo. For us, Apollo VIII was the opening of the gates to the lunar landing mission. It was the breakthrough that made our path to the landing much less uphill, maybe even downhill. We even got a telegram from a citizen, who thanked NASA for “saving 1968.”
1968 and the second half of the sixties were a traumatic time in our country. Many people, even today, are defined by what they were experiencing and even participating in during those times. Certainly, we were. But ours was a markedly different experience, very strongly felt and limited to a small fraction of the population. For us, although we were aware of all the divisions and changes tearing at our country, it was as if we lived on an offshore island. The mainland was suffering through these turmoils and upsets. We felt the pain of our countrymen but we had a mission to perform. Our life was on the island and we were completely focused on the challenge of the space race. This was our Camelot, our special place where our work was our life. We lived, and were marked by, a far different view of the sixties than the vast majority of our people who were on the mainland.
Earth Rise
Chapter Sixteen: Apollo IX and X
By virtue of the preparations for Apollo VIII, we had captured the mission mechanization in our people, the RTCC computers, our procedures, and the mission rules. The following phases were now added to our portfolio of building blocks for Apollo:
Launch windows to meet Lunar target conditions
The translunar injection (TLI) from earth orbit by the S IVB
The Coast Phase with mid-courses, passive thermal control and abort plans
Lunar orbit insertion (LOI)
Lunar orbit operations
Transearth injection for return to earth
Coast phase home with mid-courses to meet entry conditions.
Short of the actual landing and EVA, we were now planning to demonstrate the lunar landing sequence of propulsion maneuvers of both LM stages and the CSM. These would be performed first in earth orbit on Apollo IX and then in lunar orbit on Apollo X. This was a simple, logical plan to capture all of the requisite experience short of landing and EVA.
The crew of Apollo IX was Jim McDivitt, Rusty Schwiekart, and Dave Scott. Jim and Dave were Gemini veterans and this was the first flight for Rusty. Gene Kranz was the lead Flight Director for Apollo IX. The LM team, trench operators and systems flight controllers were ready while another set prepared Apollo X. Dave Reed was the experienced hand at the Lunar Module, and the leader of the Trench team at FIDO. Greene, Boone, Kennedy and Pavelka rounded out the FIDO team. Fenner, Renick, Paules, Paules and Wells were at Guidance with Jim I’Anson, prime at Retro, and Spencer, Deiterich, Elliot and Llewellyn on the other shifts. The crew and the MCC team put the vehicles through their scheduled paces and all of the new equipment worked just fine.
This was a tribute to another of the major Apollo contractors, Grumman and their sub-contractor team. The only threat to the timeline was not hardware but a human one. Rusty came down with the same kind of motion sickness which affected Frank Borman on Apollo VIII. The Apollo spacecraft was different from Mercury and Gemini because it was a bigger cabin and enabled the crew to move around, much more so than the strapped in the seat configuration of Mercury and Gemini. This resulted in a scrub of an EVA backpack test and a space walk by Rusty from the LM to the CSM. All in all, IX was a great test of the LM and the team was beginning to feel the lunar landing within reach. Next up was Apollo X on May 18, 1969.
Tom Stafford was the commander of Apollo X with a crew of Gene Cernan and John Young and a combined total of five Gemini flights in experience. Tom and Gene had flown Gemini IX together and with John Young, they were very well versed in the rendezvous sequences as was the MCC team. This Apollo X crew was the only one which carried three crewmembers, all of whom served as Commanders of Apollo flights. I was the lead Flight Director with Gerry Griffin, Pete Frank, and Milt Windler. Bill Stoval was the prime FIDO after less than two years with us, with Shaffer, Greene, Kennedy and Guthrie each on-console for some of the critical phases. Russell was the prime for a Guidance team of Paules, Renick, Bales and Teague. Tom Weichel was the prime Retro with Deiterich, I’Anson and Elliot. We had considerable depth in the Trench by this time, with a cast of solid operators at all positions.
The mission was planned to provide as much Apollo XI specific information as possible. Once in lunar orbit at sixty miles altitude, the timeline called for the descent orbit initiation maneuver that put the low point of the orbit about fifty thousand feet or eight miles above the moon surface where the powered descent to the moon would take place for the landing mission. This was the first time at this low altitude and it had to feel like the LM was clipping the mountains. Gene Cernan relayed that sentiment to the world with “We is Go – we is down amongst them.” And later, “That one looked like it was coming inside.” Tom was known for some salty language of his own. Picking out a crater, he remarked “there’s old Censorinus, bigger than shit.” Gene affectionately called Tom “mumbles” because it was hard to understand him sometimes. Tom’s annunciation always seemed to clear up just when he was compelled to observe something with a salty remark. No harm done, just men working. Gene Cernan added a “sob” later when the spacecraft control system put in a rapid attitude change when Gene was not expecting it. A big descent stage maneuver and later separation of the ascent stage with the crew cabin set up the rendezvous chase by the LM ascent stage just as it would be two months later. Rendezvous was completed, docked with the command ship and after almost sixty-two hours in Lunar orbit the crew was on its way home. One minor problem with fuel cell 1 caused it to be taken off line while in Lunar Orbit. The fuel cell was put back on line for TEI and then kept in reserve off line during the flight back home.
CSM From LM
The LM worked to perfection, the last set of questions and uncertainties, which could be answered, were, and we and the world started counting the days to Apollo XI.
Chapter Seventeen: Apollo XI
After the years of anticipation, the time for landing on the moon was at hand. Two choices remain open until fairly close to launch. The first was: which crewman would climb down the ladder first and into the history books. The second choice was when to do the moonwalk after landin
g (relatively soon or after a sleep period). The landing crew was Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while Mike Collins flew the CSM solo in lunar orbit. Each had flown one Gemini flight.
Probably of equal or greater significance to Gemini experience, Neil had strongly supported the use of the lunar landing training vehicle (LLTV) at Ellington and flew it when he could. The LLTV was an ungainly contraption that looked like a metal bed frame with a throttle-able engine to simulate the descent propulsion system and an attitude control system with small thrusters. There was an ongoing discussion between the crew office and some of the MSC management, Chris and Bob Gilruth in particular, about the wisdom of continuing to fly this machine. Neil had ejected from it once during 1968. A new version was produced to fix previous problems and the chief of the aircraft pilots, Joe Algranti, ran a test flight. He also had to eject. The crew office, especially Neil, insisted that it provided the necessary link in training for the final minute of selecting a landing spot and putting the vehicle down safely. Much discussion ensued but still Neil and Buzz separately flew this training vehicle on different days in the month immediately before their launch. I believe that Neil was one of, if not the only, pilot who could have convinced management to continue to fly it. Such was the respect earned and accorded to Neil and his piloting judgment. When the decision of which crewman would be first down the ladder, the initial deliberations revolved around the unspoken assessment of the respective qualifications of the two men. At this stage of consideration, the choice leaned heavily to Neil. Eventually, it was observed that the path of opening the LM hatch swung the edge of the door inward and from left to the right side of the cabin, making it conclusive that the crewman on the left side of the cabin, Neil, was clear to go out first. In my view, this supplied a technical rationale for what the choice would have been anyway.
Returning to the subject of whether to do the moon walk soon after landing or schedule a sleep period, we flew with the latter timeline as the baseline plan with the understanding that circumstances might well lead to the early moon walk. After the actual landing, the early EVA won out, as in, “How could anybody just go to sleep while the long sought prize was there for the taking?”
The Trench team had many tough phases to prepare and train for and more than enough talent to cover them all. Greene, Reed, Shaffer, Boone and Bostick were the FIDOs. Deiterich, I’Anson, Spencer, Elliot, Weichel and Llewellyn manned the Retro position. Guidance assignments were Presley, Paules, Bales, Russell, Renick, Fenner, Mill and Wells. Certainly, the Guidance officer was about to earn his pay.
Another late development found in the landing simulations was the appearance of computer program alarms during the powered decent to the surface. To Gene Kranz’s landing team, this was a brand new problem to be understood and defensed. It fell to the guidance team to orchestrate the solution technically with advice from the onboard software team at MIT and Houston. The program alarms were an indication that the computer was being asked to do more then it could within the computing cycle and this is what the alarm was trying to tell us. More was learned and understood about program alarms in these last few weeks than we ever knew about them in the years leading up to the flight. With that in our tool kits, the team was “GO” for the moon.
Apollo XI lifted off on July 16, 1969, to the rapt attention of the entire world and especially the hundreds of thousands who would see and feel it at the launch site. Man’s first big step in reaching for the stars was underway. The mission events occurred as nominal- a term we had learned to dearly love. We are often asked how it feels to be in MCC. Most of the time is a relaxed but guarded diligence. But, for the big mission phases, it is like an electric field is raising the hair on the body and stimulating the synapses firings inside ones brain. I love that feeling of readiness and concentration.
The MCC team – the Trench, the systems controllers for the CSM and LM, the communications controllers, the planning positions and the Flight Directors – was an average age of twenty-eight and ready for the biggest events of their young lives. And, no matter what shifts we were assigned, we were all plugged in at the consoles for landing and the expected moonwalk.
Apollo XI Liftoff
And then during descent, program alarms started. Neil reported, “program alarm 1202, 1202.” Our young guidance officer Steve Bales, with his SSR team lead by Jack Garman, responded, “We are Go on that alarm, Flight.” Three more program alarms showed up on the way down. Steve and his team assessed them all as “Go.” And then it was “sixty seconds” called from the MCC, alerting the crew they had that much more fuel before having to abort. Buzz reported “sixty feet, down two point five feet per second, two forward.” Neil was searching for a landing spot. Then “thirty seconds” called up. Buzz called “forty feet, getting some dust here, thirty feet.” Landing was close and then “contact light, engine stop.” Landed. Soon Neil came on to tell us and the world, “Houston, Tranquility base here, the eagle has landed.” Capcom Charlie Duke replied, “Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.” And it was true. The last stages of landing seemed to be the longest seconds in our flight history.
Cliff was the lead Flight Director and was on duty for the Moon Walk. From “one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind” to back inside the cabin, the grainy images captured us and the world for a short time of absolute wonder. Soon it was time for the ascent and rendezvous with Mike Collins in orbit and my black team was on duty. For most of the MCC shifts, we were always mindful of the possible mission conditions that would lead to terminating a phase and downgrading to a reduced mission. Once the phases began that were “coming home,” there was no “No-GO,” only “GO” and whatever it might take to keep it that way. LM ascent was the start of the only “GO” stage of the mission. Some events might be delayed but only temporarily. After LM liftoff, we experienced more of that wonderful “nominal” stuff-docking, LM jettison, TEI, mid-courses, entry and splashdown.
The recovery carrier carried a new trailer onboard, which looked much like one of those gulfstream travel trailers. This would be home to our astronauts for an evaluation period as a precaution against bringing back to earth some alien biological agents. They smiled through the window and through this process, perhaps knowing that these were their last few days of privacy and calm. We stood around the control center, flags in hand, cigars all lit, congratulating each other and not wanting the moment to pass. My mind turned to what it took to get to this point and the people who made it happen- the work, the good times, the tough times, the sacrifices, the fire, our leaders and this MCC team of mostly twenty-somethings all of it came flooding in.
We did something that started out as impossible. And it was accomplished in eight years and two months from President Kennedy’s speech in May 1961, less than one hundred months. Quite a job, guys.
On the Soviet side, since the first flight of Soyuz 1 in April of 1967 that ended in the death of Vladimir Komarov, their program was going through a recovery of its own. In 1968, Soyuz 3 flew with one crewman, Georgy Beregovoy. On January 14, 1969, Soyuz 4, commanded by Vladimir Shatalov, lifted off. Three cosmonauts, Krunov, Yeliseyev and Volynov followed the next day in Soyuz 5. The mission was a real rendezvous and their first manned docking. Two of the Soyuz 5 cosmonauts transferred into and returned in Shatalov’s Soyuz 4 spacecraft. And that was the last manned mission for our competition before the moon landing. Unknown to us at the time, the giant heavy lift, Russian N-1 rocket failed and blew up on the pad in July 1969. An unmanned probe, Luna 15, crashed on the moon on July 21, 1969, during the Apollo XI mission.
LM Back From The Surface
Apollo started as part of the US-Soviet Union global confrontation known as the Cold War. The Cold War began shortly after the end of WWII and was the global state of affairs until the Soviet Union formally dissolved in 1991. While it was ongoing, this confrontation was competed in many theaters and at various levels
of hostilities, some conducted by proxies. It lasted for about forty-six years. The “space race” began with Sputnik in 1957, approximately the start of the second quarter of the Cold War. By the halfway point in 1969, the “space race” had been won. Within fifteen months of Apollo XI and after Apollos XII and XIII, I would travel with a five person delegation headed by Dr. Gilruth to Moscow in October 1970 to discuss the possibility of establishing requirements for the technical systems for rendezvous and docking in order to make possible the rescue or of astronauts or cosmonauts by spaceships of the other countries. From a competitive condition to a limited but admirable cooperative effort was the next step. This eventually led to the test flight of all these equipments. It was also a test of the mutual trust and commitment of both countries to this humanitarian purpose. During this effort, I met many of the cosmonauts from the sixties flights and some of the men behind the Soviet programs. The Apollo Soyuz flight experience also was the foundation for the decision in the nineties to invite the Russians to join the existing international partnership on what is now the International Space Station – a global effort involving sixteen countries and expanding.
As Apollo recedes in time and becomes more historical then contemporary, the significance of Apollo will draw more discussion and debate. Eventually, in the long sweep of history to come, it will be seen as a starting point. We might ask ourselves what else happened in the 1400s besides Christopher Columbus in 1492.
In the immediate aftermath of Apollo XI, I remember somebody interviewing many of us in NASA and soliciting our views as to the significance of Apollo. Many answers were in the geo-political, security and technology realms. You could classify mine as more a view as to how far and fast this human race has come – the first time we humans left the planet and visited our nearest neighbor in the solar system – two hundred thousand years since homo sapiens appeared and about a million of our generations. And of all of those humans, we were the fortunate few who were given the opportunity to work the Apollo program. What a gift. I will forever be proud of this operations team – planners, MCC operators and astronauts and especially the young men of Mission Control. And to our leadership, thank you for your trust in us. It has been the greatest of pleasures to serve with all of you.
Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program Page 17