Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight

by Jay Barbree

  The astronauts and their command module began a brief life as a man-made meteor. Temperatures on its heat shield soared to what could be found on the surface of the sun as they plunged downward with their backs to their line of flight. Only ships on the surface of the western Pacific were able to see their command module hurtling through atmosphere, a flaming streak of intense and blinding fire with an outer red sheath followed by a streamer of flames 125 miles long. Inside the crew was cool and comfortable.

  The USS Hornet standing by to recover Apollo 11. (U.S. Navy and NASA)

  Apollo 11 was trading off tremendous speed for heat, and the more their heat shield burned, the slower the astronauts flew until they were out of the inferno of reentry and radio blackout. They heard, “Apollo 11, Apollo 11 this is Hornet, Hornet, over.”

  “Hello, Hornet,” Neil answered. “This is Apollo 11 read you loud and clear.” They had left the blackness of the Pacific night and flown into the rising sun where their three large parachutes streamed away from the command module, opening partially for deceleration, then blossoming wide and full.

  “What’s your error of splashdown and condition of crew?”

  Apollo 11 rode to Earth on three parachutes, like Apollo 17 seen here. (U.S. Navy and NASA)

  Neil, Mike, and Buzz dressed in their Biological Isolation Garments (BIGs) wait in the life raft attached to Apollo 11 for helicopter pickup to the Hornet. (U.S. Navy and NASA)

  “The condition of crew is good,” Neil reported. “We’re on main chutes and passing through 4,000 to 3,500 feet, on the way down.”

  A little more than a mile away the helicopter with rescue swimmers began its run toward Apollo 11’s splashdown point, telling the Hornet, “This is Swim One. We have a visual dead ahead about a mile.”

  “Hornet, Roger.”

  “This is Swim One, Apollo 11.”

  Neil answered, “300 feet.”

  The recovery helicopter replied, “Roger, you’re looking real good,” and the swimmers watched Apollo 11 drop comfortably onto Pacific waves, and then reported, “Splashdown.”

  The first Earthlings to visit another place were home.

  TWENTY-TWO

  BACK HOME

  Swim One’s helicopter brought the Apollo 11’s astronauts to the aircraft carrier Hornet’s flight deck. A brass band was playing. Sailors and visitors, including President Richard Nixon were cheering. The crew, dressed in their greyish-green biological isolation garments (BIGs), was rushed through the back way into its sterile quarantine trailer.

  The Apollo 11 astronauts leave the Hornet’s helicopter in their BIGs. (U.S. Navy and NASA)

  The three grateful-to-be-back astronauts immediately removed their BIGs and donned their NASA jumpsuits, then moved to the trailer’s rear window. There stood Mr. Nixon on the other side.

  Inside their sterile quarantine trailer, the astronauts donned their NASA jumpsuits for their meeting with the president. (NASA)

  The president was grinning widely and through the glass his amplified words told them, “Neil, Buzz, and Mike, I want you to know that I think I’m the luckiest man in the world. I say this not only because I have the honor of being the president of the United States, but particularly because I have the privilege of speaking for so many in welcoming you back to Earth.… I could tell you about all the messages we have received in Washington,” he said, and he did! He told them about the more than one hundred from foreign governments and their leaders who wanted them to come and visit. He told them about the millions of well-wishers. He continued saying just how proud everyone in America was of them, and then President Nixon smiled even wider.

  I called, in my view, three of the greatest ladies and most courageous ladies in the world today, your wives. And from Jan and Joan and Pat, I bring their love and their congratulations.… I made a date with them. I invited them to dinner on the thirteenth of August, right after you come out of quarantine. It will be a state dinner held in Los Angeles. The governors of all the fifty states will be there, the ambassadors, others from around the world and in America. And they told me that you would come, too. And all I want to know—will you come? We want to honor you then.

  “We’ll do anything you say,” Neil told the president, following with a little banter. Then Mr. Nixon’s expression turned somber. “The eight days of Apollo 11,” he said with deep sincerity, “was the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.”

  * * *

  Moments later in the front yard of Neil and Janet’s home she thanked hundreds of friends, proud neighbors, and the media who had been there for most of Neil’s historic flight.

  In Wapakoneta reporters wanted a statement from his parents. His mother Viola would only say, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

  The president left the Hornet and the celebration subsided with the carrier getting under way for Honolulu. Apollo 11’s crew finally relaxed. The doctors drew blood and bodily fluids, and probed and kneaded muscles and flesh and bone, examining the moon visitors for any problems. When the medics were through Neil, Mike, and Buzz enjoyed some libations and great navy chow before collapsing into soft beds and real pillows. They slept solidly for nine hours.

  * * *

  Two days later they entered Pearl Harbor where thousands more cheered, more bands played, and more flags waved along with a broomstick on the Hornet’s mast signifying a clean sweep.

  The worst part of Neil, Mike, and Buzz’s brief Hawaiian stopover was going through customs. The best part was seeing their wives, even if it was only through the glass of their quarantine trailer.

  The wives do Hawaii while the husbands wait. (NASA)

  They were only in Pearl long enough for their quarantine trailer to be placed on a flatbed truck and driven slowly to nearby Hickam Field where their sterile unit was loaded into the cargo bay of a C-141 Starlifter transport for the long flight to Houston. Even though they were still confined to a small space, the crew was grateful for the additional room where they had a shower and hot food—even a cocktail hour with time to write down their thoughts and memories from their visit to the Sea of Tranquility.

  They didn’t reach Houston until after midnight but the crowds were still there. Thousands refused to go home. They cheered and screamed and waved at the trailer as it was placed on a flatbed truck again. And again there were more speeches and welcomes with the crew happiest to see their families.

  Janet, Rick, and Mark spoke to Neil through the glass on a special phone hookup with his sons telling him how proud they were of their father, how glad they were to have him back. Mark proudly showed him his “all new” healed finger while Rick got in a little baseball talk. Their mother reminded the boys she had first dibs on their father—something about a “Honey Do List.”

  Sometime after 1:30 A.M., the astronauts’ flatbed began to roll, but driving the truck with their sterile trailer wasn’t all that easy. Even two hours after midnight along the way to the Manned Spacecraft Center people were still crowding the roadways. They were hollering and waving and trying to touch the astronauts’ trailer. But the driver pushed on, made his way to the lunar receiving laboratory (LRL) where Apollo 11’s astronauts would spend 21 days in quarantine. That was the bad part. The good part was that inside they had a lab equipped with special air-conditioning, and a wide screen to view the latest Hollywood movies.

  Mike, Buzz, and Neil found their quarantine trailer nice, especially the comfort and libations. (NASA)

  The lunar receiving laboratory was safe, secure, and its quiet was most appreciated by Neil. It had a population of three astronauts, two cooks, a NASA spokesperson, a doctor who was a lab specialist, and most important, a janitor.

  The LRL was big enough for all. Neil kept in touch by phone, especially with Janet and the boys. Then there was his first call to his mother.

  “Hello, Mom, this is Neil,” he said with a feel-good voice.

  “Oh, honey, how are you?” she cried with happiness.

  �
�Oh, I’m just fine. All three of us are great—none of us got sick, Mom.”

  “Thank the Lord,” she first said before asking her son about the moon. “You said it was pretty up there, honey, was it?”

  “Yes, it was fantastically beautiful, Mom, but I got covered with dust. I can’t get it off. I got it all over my nice white spacesuit. I can’t brush it off—nothing will clean it, Mom.”

  “That’s okay, honey, you bring it home,” she told him. “Mom’ll clean it for you.”

  Neil laughed softly. He loved putting his mom on. He couldn’t tell her the Smithsonian already had what he wore for his walk on the lunar surface.

  “I’m sorry Daddy isn’t here, honey,” she continued. “He just left for the farm. He’ll be so sorry he missed your call.”

  “Tell him we’re okay, Mom. Tell him I’ll be seeing all of you pretty soon. And Mom,” he spoke with tenderness, “take care of yourself and be careful. You’re still my favorite girl. I love you.”

  Neil hung up happy and satisfied. He loved his family, the ones who nurtured him to full growth. Nothing relaxed him more than talking with his mom. Going to the moon was great, but it was also great to be back.

  * * *

  About the only time there was tension among the crew during quarantine was during a debriefing about seeing distant flashing lights in space. All three had seen the lights when they were outbound and their comments had crazed UFO buffs.

  Apollo 11’s crew in one of its many debriefings. (NASA)

  Now here in quarantine the conversation reached a fever pitch. You would have thought some were suggesting a UFO was following Apollo 11 to the moon. Neil became annoyed.

  “From the beginning I felt there was an explanation,” he told me. “We were looking back at lights that steadily flashed—natural lights or human made it seemed to me, and we just didn’t have the facts. I thought we had an obligation not to start some Hollywood frenzy about us being watched and followed by aliens.”

  Neil’s analyses of the incident proved to be correct.

  I had earlier learned a top-secret and sensitive American photographic reconnaissance satellite had failed and was tumbling out of control. With each tumble it sent out a reflection from sunrays giving the appearance of flashing lights. My source was solid and he only told me with the promise I would not report it. At the time it could have damaged the country’s reconnaissance efforts severely.

  The only UFO Apollo 11’s astronauts were seeing as Neil had suspected had been built here on Earth—one they could not identify, and when I told him, he laughed and said, “Well, what the hell, isn’t that what a UFO is—an unidentified flying object?”

  As always Neil was right on target.

  * * *

  If anyone was concerned about what happened to the lunar rocks and soil the Apollo 11 crew brought back they needed only to be in the lunar receiving laboratory watching those standing outside a vacuum chamber dressed in hospital whites. They were geologists and one shoved his hands into a special, leak-proof set of arms attached on the other side of the wall in the vacuum chamber. He then placed his gloved hands on a silver box and opened the container. Inside were some of the moon rocks harvested by Neil and Buzz. They were still preserved in a 4.6-billion-year-old lunar vacuum and once removed amazed and startled geologists marveled at the charcoal-colored lumps and dust that one called, “burnt potatoes!” Now they were looking at a mystery.

  It would be another three decades before computer models would tell them an infant Earth and moon were products of a solar system smashup. An incoming planetoid had gouged a great wound into our planet leaving it aflame in the hottest of fires and wracked with quakes.

  A wounded Earth’s gravity grabbed the planetoid and dragged the nearly destroyed space traveler into an orbit around its surface where it recollected and repaired its wounds to become the moon we see today.

  Most of the heaviest elements from the planetoid, especially its iron, remained deep inside the now-molten Earth, beginning a long settling motion to the core of our infant world. The impact sped up Earth to a full rotation once every 24 hours.

  The geologists in the lunar receiving laboratory had no idea that they were looking at scorched soil from the twins that created our Earth-Moon system.

  What they would soon learn from the materials brought back by Apollo 11 and the landings that followed was that Earth and the moon are much alike, and lunar-orbiting spacecraft mapping the moon would cast aside their long belief that our lunar neighbor was without water.

  Near the moon’s south pole is Aitken basin, one of the largest known impact craters. About 1,600 miles across—the equivalent of more than half the distance across the United States—the crater has some of the highest mountains in the solar system. Water has been detected there, but scientists believe water cannot persist on the moon’s surface. Sunlight quickly vaporizes it so it can only be found in cold, permanently shadowed craters like those located in Aitken.

  If this were correct, then obviously Aitken’s shadowed lands with livable temperatures would be the perfect place for humans to establish a lunar colony with meteorite repelling domes. Their biggest problem would be keeping them filled with an Earth-like atmosphere.

  * * *

  The geologists studying Apollo 11’s moon rocks soon learned they had underestimated Neil Armstrong. He had honed his basic knowledge of science learned in classrooms and he was interested. He had studied their questions and had collected superb samples. In debriefings with the geologists he was full of detailed comments on what he had seen, and he made it clear a scientific observer should be part of future Apollo flights.

  The one thing that would later disturb Neil about the lunar materials he and Buzz had so meticulously collected was that some moon rocks had been given to many heads of state for diplomatic reasons. In some cases leaders leaving office kept them or sold them to the highest bidder.

  In this was a lesson. Neil needed a shield against the money grubbers who would be coming after him, enticing him to trade his celebrity for enrichment. That was not for Neil.

  Even though he never had a fat bank account Neil never felt his family was deprived. He never felt they were poor. He was simply a person of science, a gatherer of knowledge. He left the glad-handing, the rubbing elbows, and the get-rich schemes to others.

  His time in quarantine not only gave the doctors full access to Apollo 11’s astronauts, it gave Neil time to write letters, make notes, and think about his future.

  He quickly realized he could only go to the moon once. There could never be another project or adventure that could top that achievement. The downside was it had come when his life was only half completed. What was he to do for the next forty years? Family and learning would play the biggest part. Teaching would play another. He had much to think about.

  Neil’s thoughts were interrupted by Deke coming in and sitting before the glass. The boss turned on their two-way communications and asked a question lingering in the Apollo 11 astronauts’ minds. Would you like to fly again?

  Neil smiled. He was aware of the John Glenn thing.

  After John became the first American to orbit Earth, President Kennedy told NASA a hero of Glenn’s stature should not fly again. His life should not be put at risk. Neil, not one to put on airs, was pretty certain NASA would treat the first human to step onto the moon the same.

  He saw clearly his value to the agency was to star in its dog and pony shows. He would preach the sermon—a sermon in which he believed while realizing he didn’t care a whit about the adulation. He was equally certain he would be more comfortable on the moon than before an adoring crowd.

  * * *

  Quarantine ended August 10, and three days later Neil said, “This is the last thing we’re prepared for,” as he, Mike, Buzz, and families visited three cities in one day—New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

  The three-cities-in-a-day victory lap was the beginning of a monthlong worldwide tour. President Nixon got t
hem started by having Air Force 2 fly them and their families to New York City.

  By all accounts not even Lindbergh’s record-setting 1927 parade approached the size of the crowd to cheer the Apollo 11 astronauts through a blizzard of ticker tape down New York’s Canyon of Heroes between the skyscrapers. When the final count had been taken four million had celebrated Apollo 11’s achievement, including this writer.

  Neil had only one complaint: “Those who tossed whole stacks of computer punch cards out of windows weren’t aware some of the stacks didn’t come apart and they hit like a brick. There were dents in our cars and bumps on our heads.”

  No New York City ticker-tape parade was greater than Apollo 11’s. (NASA)

  As wild as the celebration had been in New York, the crowds were even wilder in Chicago. By the time they arrived in Los Angeles for the presidential state dinner in Beverly Hills, the astronauts were deaf from shouting, their smiles were frozen, and their fingers were crushed. None was looking forward to shaking another hand.

  Even their formal wear was more comfortable than the noise of the crowds.

  As promised, President Nixon and his wife Pat along with their grown daughters Julie and Tricia hosted the astronauts and their wives in their presidential suite. Joining them were former first lady Mamie Eisenhower, Esther Goddard, widow of America’s father of rocketry Robert Goddard, and many government notables including governors from 44 states.

  Governor Ronald Reagan of California was very interested in their flight, and they were most pleased with all the movers and shakers, the famous and the celebrities, who were there. They had never been invited let alone honored at a presidential state dinner.

  Neil was especially happy to see Jimmy Doolittle who led the first bombing raid on Tokyo—B-25s taking off from aircraft carriers for just 30 seconds over the untouchable city only weeks after Pearl Harbor. Doolittle was also the man who headed NACA when Neil had been hired by the flight science agency in 1955.