Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight

by Jay Barbree

  But ignoring it did not answer the question. Where in the hell was he?

  Neil slowly opened his eyes and could gradually see his surroundings. He focused on the sounds of the bubbling brook—glowing circles, numbers, letters, buttons—and he saw Buzz standing at his window looking out at … at what?

  The moon, Armstrong scolded himself. You’re on the moon. You were walking on it just hours ago and …

  “How was it sleeping on the moon, Neil?” Mission Control interrupted his waking thoughts.

  “Cold.” He spoke quietly, nodding for Buzz to answer for them.

  “Cold,” Buzz told CapCom.

  They had not anticipated when they put the window shades in place and turned many of Eagle’s systems off to sleep that they were turning off their source of heat. But despite the shivering, Neil had managed a couple of hours. Buzz told Mission Control, “Neil rigged himself a really good hammock with a waste tether and made him a bed on the ascent engine cover. He’s just waking up.”

  “Great,” Mission Control responded. “Tell ’im to grab a little breakfast, he has some flying to do,” quickly adding, “We’re pleased he got some sleep.”

  “Roger that,” Neil heard Buzz answer as he stood up and stretched lightly in the low gravity.

  The farm boy smiled—time to milk the cows, he told himself, coming fully awake. Until now they had been focused on reaching the moon, landing, taking a walk on its surface, setting up experiments, exploring, and gathering evidence. Now that they had done that and their “lunar booty” was on board, job one was to fly back to Earth and land near the aircraft carrier Hornet in the Pacific. Then, they’d meet the president.

  But first they had to launch from this dead world and rejoin Columbia in lunar orbit. Mission Control had it all running smoothly with one exception. When climbing back into Eagle one of their backpacks brushed against the LM’s ascent stage’s arming switch and broke it. Buzz told Mission Control and the ground came up with a solution.

  Neil and Buzz had dispensed with practically all tools in the interest of less weight, ensuring they’d have enough boost to reach Columbia. But they still had their space pens. They were told to retract the point of one of them and use the hollow end to flick the switch. It worked, and preparations were back under way.

  * * *

  In the command ship Mike had sweated every detail, every procedure in Eagle’s prelaunch countdown. He recognized he was by being in lunar orbit in a safer place; not perched on another world depending on a single rocket to start him homeward. But the truth was he would have traded places with Neil or Buzz any time.

  Columbia waits for Eagle to launch from the moon and join it again in lunar orbit. (NASA)

  Now Eagle’s ascent engine had to work. It had to burn long enough to reach some lunar orbit of meaningful height. If his crewmates could make it up to say 50,000 feet he could drop Columbia down and get them, but not much lower. There were mountains on the moon rising to 30,000 feet, and he didn’t want to think about that knowing he would, if he had too, split a mountain to pick up his crewmates.

  Mike did not know the thought of them being stranded on the moon forever had really never been considered by Neil. He knew if there was a problem they had been trained and retrained in several redundant ways to fire their ascent engine, and Neil believed the likelihood of that was zilch. Everything had been put in place to ensure their survival, but Neil’s biggest concern was still the unexpected—had they failed to anticipate a showstopper?

  * * *

  One by one they moved through the countdown and when they had only ten minutes to go, Neil and Buzz stood side by side before Eagle’s controls. They were set for the first launch from another place in the solar system.

  Mike called from Columbia, “Neil, I’m reading you on VHF. You sound good.”

  “Yes, sir,” Neil answered. “Couldn’t be better, we’re just purring along,” and Buzz told him, “We’re standing by at two minutes.”

  “Eagle, Houston,” Mission Control joined the conversation with assurances. “You’re looking good to us.”

  “Roger,” Neil said, turning to Buzz. “At five seconds I’m going to hit Abort Stage and Engine Arm, and you are going to hit Proceed.”

  “Right,” Buzz acknowledged.

  Everyone knew if everything worked as planned, the astronauts were just along for the ride. At 5 days, 4 hours, 4 minutes, and 51 seconds elapsed time in their historic mission CapCom Ron Evans cleared Neil and Buzz for launch from the moon’s Sea of Tranquility.

  “Roger, understand,” Buzz acknowledged. “We’re number one on the runway.

  “Nine, eight, seven, six, five,” and Neil hit Abort Stage, Engine Arm, Ascent, and Buzz pushed the Proceed button. They waited—waited only for a moment. There was the muffled bang of pyrotechnic bolts firing and the ignition of their ascent rocket’s hypergolic fuels, and they felt themselves lifting—a steady lift like a high-speed elevator, 21 hours after landing on the lunar landscape.

  Eagle had blasted free of its bottom-half launch platform. Neil watched as flames from their ascent rocket ripped into the moon. Gold foil tore away from the landing stage, showering bits and pieces outward in all directions, and he saw the American flag they’d labored to raise whipped back and forth by their ascent engine’s flames until it toppled to rest in the lunar soil.

  Eagle’s ascent rocket burned perfectly and Neil reported, “Climbing 26, 36 feet per second up,” adding, “Be advised the pitch over is very smooth.”

  “Eagle, Houston. One minute and you’re looking good.”

  Apollo 11’s liftoff from the moon was like this picture of Apollo 17. (NASA)

  “Roger.”

  Beneath his feet Neil could see their landing site rapidly shrinking. If they’d had their television camera working by remote as Apollo 17 later did, their viewers could have been watching their launch and climb. They could have seen Eagle race away on its ascent rocket’s flames to become a pinpoint of light above the moon’s cratered surface. But Neil knew their viewers could only hear him report, “A very quiet ride, just a little bit of slow wallowing back and forth—not very much thruster activity.”

  “Roger. Mighty fine,” acknowledged CapCom Ron Evans.

  Eagle was flying over the same Apollo 10 landmarks Neil had been looking for during his landing approach to Tranquility. He told Mission Control, “We’re going right down U.S. 1.”

  “Roger, Eagle. Four minutes. Everything’s great.”

  Their ascent stage needed to burn seven minutes plus and Neil and Buzz stood with braced boots looking out their windows. The moon’s landscape was growing smaller, but they had no trouble locating known craters along their track. “There’s Ritter out there,” Buzz said. “There it is, right there, there’s Schmidt, man, and that’s impressive looking, isn’t it?” Neil nodded agreement watching one landmark after the other whiz by. He told CapCom, “Looking good here. It’s a pretty spectacular ride.”

  Neil and Buzz could see the lunar landscape rapidly shrinking during their climb to rejoin Mike Collins in lunar orbit. (NASA)

  “Eagle, Houston. You’re still looking mighty fine.”

  Eagle’s ascent rocket continued to burn, and then at the precise moment it completed its job with Buzz announcing, “Shutdown,” before pausing and reporting the lunar orbit numbers: 54.3 miles by 10.9 miles. Mission Control cheered.

  “Houston, the Eagle is back in orbit, having left Tranquility Base and leaving behind a … a replica from our Apollo 11 patch and the olive branch,” Neil said with a touch of relief.

  “Eagle, we copy. The whole world is proud of you.”

  “We had a lot of help down there,” Neil said with sincerity as he and Buzz settled in for the three-and-a-half hours they needed to reach their command ship and Mike Collins. The hard stuff was now behind them and they should easily reach Columbia, their ride home. All they had to do was fly the route pioneered by Snoopy with Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan two months ear
lier.

  * * *

  For nearly two trips around the moon Eagle chased Columbia. By flying a lower orbit taking less time to circle the lunar surface, the LM caught the command ship as planned. Eagle was about 40 miles behind and 15 miles below Columbia. Eagle could now be seen in the eyepiece of Mike Collins’s sextant—a small dot moving up from the craters that made up two-thirds of the population of the moon. It was climbing steadily toward the other third and Mike would later say “It was the happiest sight of the whole mission.”

  At that very moment 27 degrees above the horizon, Neil made his move. He fired Eagle’s thrusters to complete the rendezvous, and told Collins, “We’re burning.”

  Mike Collins happily watched Eagle close the distance. (NASA)

  Mike Collins watches as the Earth rises over the horizon behind Eagle. (NASA)

  “That-a-boy,” Mike answered as he floated back to the command pilot’s seat to watch the lunar module slowly close the distance, its thruster rockets spitting flame to cancel forward movement and complete its rendezvous.

  “I see you don’t have any landing gear,” Mike told them.

  They were returning with only half of Eagle, and with his movie camera rolling and his Hasselblad camera clicking, Mike captured the rendezvous on film.

  Moments later, both ships moved back into radio contact with Mission Control and CapCom called immediately. “Eagle and Columbia, Houston is standing by.”

  Eagle coming home, with Earth watching. (NASA)

  “Roger,” Neil answered. “We’re station-keeping.”

  “I’ve got the Earth coming up behind you,” Mike shouted. “It’s fantastic!”

  They moved in for the docking and Mike watched Eagle drive steady as a rock down the centerline of final approach for the linkup. Minutes later the two ships were firmly docked—they were one once again.

  * * *

  Neil and Buzz floated back into the command module as all three astronauts celebrated their success and good luck knowing their flight had forever changed humankind’s view of its place in this corner of the universe.

  They were all full of laughter and happiness, and Neil and Buzz transferred their lunar samples into the command ship before discarding their faithful Eagle. They left it to orbit the moon until gravity tugged it down to its final resting place among lunar craters and plains that had been there for the eons.

  When it came time to fire Apollo 11’s big service propulsion system to come home, what Mission Control called TEI (Trans Earth Insertion), CapCom Charlie Duke was back with them. Charlie didn’t know he would go on to be the tenth astronaut to walk on the moon. He did know the firing was the next to last big concern for their flight. Apollo 11’s astronauts set up their main rocket engine to increase their speed to 6,188 miles per hour—far less than the speed they needed to break Earth’s gravity. Then again when they fired it they would be on the lunar far side out of radio contact with Mission Control. As they disappeared behind the lunar limb, Charlie Duke in South Carolina vernacular told them, “Go sic ’em.”

  For twenty minutes Duke sweated the outcome. Then when Apollo 11 reappeared Charlie asked, “Apollo 11. How did it go?”

  “Time to open up the LRL (Lunar Receiving Laboratory) doors, Charlie,” Mike Collins told him.

  “Roger. We got you coming home,” Duke assured them. “The LRL is well stocked.”

  Neil read all the burn times and numbers, and Charlie Duke said, “Copy, Neil. Sounds good to us and all your systems look real good. We’ll keep you posted.”

  “Hey, Charlie boy, looking good here, too,” said an elated Neil Armstrong loosening his demeanor a bit. “That was a beautiful burn. They don’t come any finer.”

  Charlie just had to say it! “Only in Carolina,” he laughed, and Neil and crew could not feel better. They were coming home. They had fulfilled President John Kennedy’s call to land on the moon within a decade. Even more important, they had not become a permanent moon satellite. They were now down to only one real concern—penetrating Earth’s atmosphere at the correct attitude to keep from becoming toast or skipping off the atmosphere to never return. They would need about two-and-a-half days to make the return trip, and the good news was the Apollo 11 astronauts knew the way.

  Apollos 8 and 10 had locked the flight path in 11’s computers.

  * * *

  That first night going home proved to be the best night of sleep Neil, Mike, and Buzz had had during their mission. With a loud, fire station–style clangor to wake them if needed, the flight director permitted the whole crew to sleep for eight-and-a-half hours—until noon on Tuesday, Mission Control time. When the astronauts awoke they found their ship back in the grip of Earth’s gravity, a point 44,620 miles from the moon and 200,100 miles from Earth.

  Apollo 11 being welcomed by a half Earth and being bid farewell by a full moon. (Composite photograph, NASA)

  The larger body was now pulling them back to family and friends, back to the life they loved. They took turns with the cameras at the windows.

  CapCom told them, “The weather forecast for the landing area at the moment is 2,000 scattered, high scattered, 10 miles, wind from zero-eight-zero at 18 knots. You’ll have about three-to-six-foot waves, and it looks like you’ll be landing about 10 minutes before sunrise, over.”

  “Sounds good,” Neil acknowledged, recalling another night landing on the Pacific; his and Dave Scott’s hair-raising night return aboard Gemini 8.

  And it was not only a night landing he wasn’t crazy about. There was quarantine ahead—three weeks of it.

  There simply was no evidence or scientific justification to quarantine the crew but Neil, Chris Kraft, Deke Slayton, and others who made Apollo go forced themselves to go along with the scientific community’s fuss.

  These hysterical handwringers were the same who had warned that a spacecraft landing on the moon would be gobbled up by hundreds of feet of dust and if NASA was to successfully place a human on the lunar surface, it would take the agency several attempts before astronauts could overcome the hazards.

  These same doomsayers’ forefathers had warned Columbus he would sail off the edge of the Earth, and now their descendants were warning that the Apollo 11 astronauts would bring back alien organisms that would contaminate Earth. Their worries were so farfetched only Hollywood was capable of believing such nonsense, but that didn’t stop some not-too-bright people in the media and on Capitol Hill from listening.

  Following splashdown, Apollo 11’s crew was to be handed biological isolation garments, BIGs for short, that were rubberized, zippered, hooded, and visored with side-filtered face masks. After they struggled to put them on, they would then be flown to the carrier where they would enter a sterile trailer. Upon reaching Hawaii, the quarantine trailer would be off-loaded for flight by a C-141 transport to the Manned Spacecraft Center. There they would be confined for three weeks, until doctors completed their examinations of crew, lunar rocks, and other samples, and until solid science confirmed for certain the astronauts would not unleash a plague on the world. Only then would Apollo 11’s astronauts be set free to tour the world. Everyone wanted to wish them well and shake their hands.

  A smiling Apollo 11 crew watched its home planet getting closer and closer. (NASA)

  Neil thought quarantine was at best stupid, but politically mandatory. Having no choice, he and Mike and Buzz went along with a smile and they were pleasantly surprised when Apollo 11’s backup commander, Jim Lovell, called: “Just wanted to remind you that the most difficult part of your mission is going to be after recovery,” Jim laughed.

  “We’re looking forward to all parts of it,” Mike Collins answered with a straight face.

  “Please don’t sneeze.”

  “Keep the mice healthy,” he agreed, quickly adding an up-to-date observation. “The Earth is really getting bigger up here and, of course, we see a crescent.”

  * * *

  Early Thursday, July 24, the prime recovery ship the USS Hornet w
as ordered to move northwesterly a distance of some 200 miles.

  It was said the Hornet’s new location would be in calmer seas and Mission Control told Apollo 11, “The Hornet will be on station just far enough off the target point to keep from getting hit. Recovery 1, or the chopper, is there; they’re on station. And Hawaii Rescue 1 and 2, the C-130s, are within 40 minutes off your target point.”

  What CapCom failed to mention was the Hornet was moving well clear of any possibility of getting hit by a plummeting Apollo 11 because President Nixon was on board. What CapCom also failed to mention was that President Nixon did not request the move, and he simply didn’t know about it. High-ranking Navy officers who didn’t wish to be responsible for the president getting injured or killed on their watch had given the order.

  Then, once the crew was settled for reentry, Jim Lovell was back. He told them, “This is your friendly backup commander. Have a good trip, and please remember to come in BEF.”

  BEF meant blunt-end-forward. That would be with the heat shield leading, absorbing the heat, and Neil told Jim, “You better believe. Thank you kindly,” and then turning he quickly added, “We can see the moon passing by the window, Jim, and it looks like what I consider to be the correct size.”

  “You’re almost home, son,” Lovell told him, adding, “You’re going over the hill there shortly. You’re looking mighty fine to us.”

  Neil simply said, “See you later,” and with Mike Collins driving, and with Apollo 11’s command module moving about 25,000 miles per hour, they kissed the fringes of the atmosphere some 400,000 feet northeast of Australia. It was the beginning of their six-and-a-half-degree entry into Earth’s protective cover. An entry too shallow would have them bounce off like a stone skipping across a pond never to return; too steep and their spacecraft couldn’t stand the heat; but by entering just right Apollo 11 was slowing and slowing, appearing to be a comet within a sheath of flaming colors.