Flying to the Moon

by Michael Collins

  Three things had to be done. First, the electrical systems of all future spacecraft had to be carefully checked for possible short circuits. Second, all highly flammable material inside the spacecraft had to be replaced. Third, 100 percent oxygen would not be used on the launch pad, at full atmospheric pressure, but would be used only in orbit, at onethird atmospheric pressure. These changes took a long time, and it was nearly two years after the deaths of Grissom, White, and Chaffee before the first manned Apollo finally flew. It was especially difficult to find non-burnable materials to substitute for what we already had. The pressure suits, for example, had been covered with nylon, and that was replaced with something called Beta cloth, which did not burn as easily. Beta cloth was woven from glass fibers. The only trouble with this change was that Beta cloth is also very fragile, and if your knees or elbows got even a little bit worn, the glass fibers would come loose. In the weightlessness of space, they would float around freely, and it was quite possible that an astronaut might inhale them. Once in his lungs, there was no way to get them out again, and they might cause permanent damage. A coating had to be developed, therefore, which in itself was fireproof, to put over the Beta cloth to prevent it from flaking off. Finally, Teflon was selected. Thus one problem created a second, which created a third. A string of complications like this seemed common in the space program, at least it did in 1967 and 1968.

  Finally, Wally Schirra and Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham got the first manned Apollo into the air. Called Apollo 7 (because there had been six unmanned tests before it), they stayed in earth orbit for ten days. It was an amazingly successful flight, and cheered us all up, even though I suppose we all still thought a lot about the dreadful fire. Before we could land on the moon, however, we still had a lot of work to do. Wally Schirra and his crew did not have a lunar module, because it was not yet ready to fly. Also, they were launched by the Saturn IB booster, which was the baby brother of the huge Saturn V required to reach the moon. We astronauts worried about the development of the lunar module and the Saturn V. However, I think the one thing that concerned us most in planning future flights was bringing the command module and the lunar module together in orbit around the moon.

  If the lunar module took off from the surface of the moon at exactly the right time and in exactly the right direction, it was fairly simple to catch the command module as it whizzed by overhead. But if the lunar module had to take off early or late, or got into a lopsided or crooked orbit, then all kinds of trouble could easily develop, and the rendezvous process could become very complicated, indeed. If the lunar module had to take off late, it was further behind the command module than usual, and had to fly faster to catch up with it before its limited oxygen supply was all used up. In orbit, to fly faster you have to fly lower, so the further behind the lunar module was, the lower the orbit it would aim for. That idea was fine right up to the point where the lunar module was just skimming the mountain tops (there being no atmosphere on the moon, you can orbit right down to the surface; in earth orbit, you have to stay up above the atmosphere, or approximately a hundred miles up). If the lunar module was so far behind the command module that even mountain skimming wasn’t going to allow it to catch up fast enough, the command module could help a bit by going higher, and therefore slower. But if this was not of sufficient help, then a whole new game plan went into effect, and the command module and the lunar module switched roles. The lunar module, instead of trying to go low and fast and catch the command module, went as high and slow as possible, while the command module dove down and made a fast extra turn around the moon and caught the lunar module from the rear. In other words, the command-module pilot could normally expect to be the target, the hunted one, but under some circumstances his role might swiftly be reversed, and he would become the hunter! The problem with all this was that his work inside the command module changed completely, depending on whether he was hunter or hunted, whether he had to go high or low. And I have only described one situation, that of the lunar module taking off late. There were many other emergencies in which the lunar module might find itself, and the command-module pilot’s job as rescuer was a very complex one. In some cases, he simply would not have enough fuel to change his orbit enough to catch the lunar module. If that happened, he was expected to leave his two buddies in lunar orbit, and come back to earth by himself. I didn’t like that idea one bit, but it made more sense than having the command-module pilot die unnecessarily.

  My life was not all work and worry, however. I remember one time in 1967 when my wife and I got to go to Paris for a couple of days to see an air show and to meet two Russian cosmonauts. I always like air shows. It is exciting to watch the airplanes looping and rolling over the runway at low altitude. It’s the next best thing to flying yourself. And, of course, we had never met any cosmonauts, and we wondered what they would be like. I liked them, especially the one named Colonel Pavel Belyaev. It was difficult to talk to him, as our interpreter did not know much about spaceflight and its special language, but Pavel seemed friendly, and his life as a cosmonaut seemed similar to mine as an astronaut. We shared some of the same ideas and likes and dislikes. For example, neither one of us cared much for the space doctors and the complicated medical equipment they made us carry on board our spacecraft. I remember thinking that I would have enjoyed flying in space with Colonel Belyaev, despite the fact that our two countries were not friendly in 1967. It was not until much later, in the summer of 1975, that two Russian cosmonauts and three American astronauts finally did make a joint spaceflight, with an Apollo command module visiting a Russian Soyuz in earth orbit. I think such flights are a good idea. It takes a lot of trust to put your life in someone else’s hands, and that is what you do when you enter a strange spacecraft. If that sort of trust between two countries can exist for a spaceflight, why cannot it develop into friendship in other areas as well?

  After our trip to Paris, I plunged into preparations for my own Apollo flight. One of the things I had to learn was the guidance and navigation system. We called it G&N for short, but there was really nothing short about it. It was the most complicated part of the spacecraft, and took the longest time to learn. It began with the stars. There are five or six thousand stars that can be seen with the naked eye. Thirty-seven of these had been picked, because of their brightness and location, for us to use in navigating. We had to learn all their names, and memorize where they were in the sky, so that no matter which way we were pointed, we could always find a couple of them. Once we found them, we focused an instrument called a sextant on them, and measured their direction precisely. Then we told the computer which star we had picked. Combining this information with what the computer already knew about our speed and so forth, we could fly to the moon and back without help from the ground.

  I enjoyed studying the stars. Mostly we used a planetarium rather than the real sky, because that way we didn’t have clouds blocking our view, and also we could see all the stars (those in the Southern as well as the Northern Hemisphere) without traveling to different parts of the earth. The Arabs were among the first seafarers, and they navigated using the stars. Consequently, many of the stars today have Arabic names, which I think are mysterious and beautiful. Altair, Deneb, Vega. Enif, Fomalhaut, Nunki. Adhara, Mirzam, Menkar. Aldebaran, Mirfak, Thuban. I love those names, and I didn’t mind memorizing where each one was in the sky. They are always there; they never change position; and they are very far distant. The star closest to us is called Alpha Centauri, and it is over four light-years away. In other words, if we could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), it would take us over four years to reach the nearest star. According to Albert Einstein, the speed of light is the fastest it is possible to go, so if he is correct, we will never be able to visit any star (except our sun, which is a star) unless we are willing to spend many years traveling. It gives me a strange feeling to think about how big our universe is. For example, let’s say you go out into your back yard on a clear night
and find the star Betelgeuse (I pronounce it Beetle Juice). It is in the constellation Orion, which is easy to locate. Now point your lighted flashlight at it. That light will eventually reach the star, but by the time it does, you will have been dead a long, long time. Perhaps your great-great-great-great-great-grandchild may be alive when your flashlight beam reaches Betelgeuse, and remember that there are stars much, much further away than old Beetle Juice!

  While I was struggling to learn Apollo, it seemed to me the most important thing in the whole world, but suddenly I discovered that it really wasn’t. Something was wrong with me, and I realized my health was a whole lot more important to me than any spacecraft. I first noticed my problem when I was playing handball. My legs didn’t seem to be working right, and I would stumble frequently. Also my left leg felt funny, with a tingling sensation, and there were parts of it that were numb. After checking with four doctors, I discovered that the trouble was up in my neck, where a bony growth on my spine was pushing against my spinal cord. Pressure against this important bundle of nerves can cause all kinds of trouble lower down in the body. The answer was an operation, which would remove the growth. It might also weaken my spine or do other permanent damage, so that I might never fly in space again. When I thought about the past two years since Gemini 10, I realized that my life as a “real” astronaut hadn’t worked out the way I had hoped. It had been more hard work than glamour. Three of my friends had burned to death in a spacecraft, and now I was headed for major surgery. I checked into the hospital with a feeling of dread, but with a desire to see the pages of the calendar fly by, so that I could see what was going to happen to me.

  10

  When I woke up after surgery, there was a plastic ring around my neck, my right hip hurt, and I had trouble swallowing. The ring was to hold my neck in one position, and I was to wear it twenty-four hours a day for three months. The hip pain was caused by the removal of a circular piece of bone from my hip, which had then been inserted into a hole in my spine, where it would cause new bone to grow and strengthen my spine. My throat hurt because the doctor had to move it out of the way so he could reach my backbone. Within a week my pains had gone away, and I was released from the hospital. Now I had only to wait three months to see if my spine was growing back together properly.

  In the meantime, my old crewmates Borman and Anders had been joined by Jim Lovell, who had taken my place. Their flight, instead of going out 4,000 miles, was now scheduled to fly all the way to the moon. I was really sad that I would not be going with them, but I was even more concerned about my back. When the three months were up, an X-ray showed that my spine was healing beautifully, and was regaining full strength. It was a real relief to throw the plastic ring away. I was allowed to fly airplanes again, and I hoped to be assigned to a flight crew, but my first job was to help with the flight of Borman—Lovell—Anders to the moon.

  The only previous Apollo flight had been an earth orbital test of the command module, and it had worked fine, but the idea of taking a command module all the way to the moon was a bit scary. No one had ever left the gravitational pull of the earth before, not in all history. Apollo 8, as Borman’s flight was called, had to aim at a place in the sky where the moon would be three days later. If done properly, it would barely miss the moon as it passed a mere eighty miles in front of it, at a distance of 230,000 miles from earth. Then it would fire its engine and slow down enough to be captured by the moon’s gravity. It would be trapped in lunar orbit unless its engine worked properly to start it on the trip back to earth. Since none of this had been done before, people were naturally worried. My job was to work in Mission Control and to talk on the radio with the crew, relaying necessary information to them.

  When launch day arrived, I was quite nervous. This was the first crew to ride the gigantic Saturn V rocket, and I wasn’t sure how safe a ride it would be. I remembered watching the first flight of the unmanned Saturn V. The safety people wouldn’t let spectators get within three miles of it, but even at that distance the monster made the sand shake under my feet, and the crackling roar of its five huge engines made me wince. Now three men would be, not three miles away, but perched on the nose of the monster! As they left the launch pad, their actual path in the sky was calculated and compared with the ideal path, which was shown as a line on the wall in Mission Control Center. Their spacecraft appeared as a dot, which was supposed to climb up the center of the line. If the Saturn V veered off in the wrong direction, I could tell it by watching the dot separate from the line. Then I would notify Borman and he could separate his command module from the Saturn V and return to earth. Fortunately, I didn’t need to do this, as the Saturn V put the spacecraft in the proper orbit. After checking all their equipment, they were ready to leave earth orbit for the first time in history, and again the Saturn V put them on a perfect path for the moon.

  Now they were on their way, and I breathed a sigh of relief. When they got to the moon three days later, they chattered like excited tourists. They thought the moon looked like dirty beach sand. It was Christmas Eve, and they celebrated by reading parts of the Bible, from the Book of Genesis. It is the very first part of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” On their way back from the moon, Jim Lovell said he thought the earth looked like a “grand oasis in the great vastness of space.” I got the feeling from listening to them talk on the radio for a week that they would always appreciate the earth more because of their flight so far away from it. When the flight ended, and the spacecraft plopped into the Pacific Ocean, I felt both great happiness and sadness. I was happy that everything had gone so well, and sad that I had not been able to go with Borman and Anders instead of Lovell. In place of a trip to the moon, I had only a scar on my throat and a great desire to make up for lost time.

  The news was not long in coming, and it was all good. I was assigned to the Apollo 11 crew, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin! We were to be the first crew to attempt a lunar landing, provided everything went well. By that I mean that Apollos 9 and 10 must make near-perfect flights before us. Apollo 9 was the first test flight of the lunar module, in earth orbit, and Apollo 10 was to be a dress rehearsal in lunar orbit, involving a rendezvous but not a landing. I figured the chances were about fifty-fifty for Apollo 11 to be the first flight to try a landing. I would know in six months’ time, but meanwhile it was back into the simulator for me, because that is where I would get the knowledge I needed to fly safely and well.

  The simulator, inside, looked exactly like a real command module. Outside, it looked completely different. There were huge boxes attached to the windows, which contained make-believe stars and spacecraft, so that when we looked out the windows we would see what we would see in flight. Then there was a huge computer, which figured out things like how far away from the earth or the lunar module we might be at any time in our imaginary flight. The whole thing looked like a huge pile of jumbled boxes. John Young called it the “great train wreck.” Sometimes I got inside it with Neil and Buzz and we practiced things like launches and reentries, where all three of us would be together. At other times, Neil and Buzz got into the lunar-module simulators and I stayed by myself in the command-module simulator. We each had our own computer, and we would hook these up to Mission Control’s computer, and then we would pretend to chase each other around the moon, while the computers measured how long it took and how much fuel we used. As the months went by, we got better and better at flying the simulator, and finally I was ready to stop pretending and really fly.

  Of course, being the first lunar-landing flight made Apollo 11 different in a number of ways. One was germs. No one had ever worried about germs in empty space, but now we were going to touch the moon. Suppose there were germs on the moon, and suppose when we brought them back on our clothes and bodies,
we discovered that they killed earth plants or animals or people? Very few scientists thought this could happen, but no one wanted to take a chance on infecting planet earth with moon germs. Therefore, the three of us would be separated from the rest of the world until we had been certified “germ-free,” or at least “moon-germ-free” (there is no way of getting rid of the normal germs in your body). The way it would work was this: when we landed in the Pacific, we would open our side hatch, and the Navy frogmen would throw in three rubber suits to us. We would put these on before leaving the spacecraft. Since they covered head and body entirely, our germs would stay inside them. Then we would be delivered by helicopter to the aircraft carrier, where we would be locked up inside an aluminum box that looked like a house trailer. When the aircraft carrier reached Hawaii, the box (with us still inside it) would be flown to Houston and put inside a special sealed building. Then we could get out of the box, and scientists and doctors could check us for a couple of weeks. If we didn’t show signs of sickness, and no strange germs could be found, then we would be released from the building.