Reaching for the Moon

by Roger D. Launius

  On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 launched from the Kennedy Space Center without incident and began the three-day trip to the Moon. On July 20, the LM, dubbed Eagle and crewed by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command/service module (CSM) to begin its descent toward the lunar surface. The landing was difficult. As the LM neared the surface, Armstrong realized that the automatic landing system was poised to set them down in the middle of a boulder field, so he took manual control and searched for another landing spot. As he slowed the descent over the lunar surface, the LM used more and more of its fuel, setting off low-fuel alarms in the spacecraft. Aldrin called out the altitude and the status of fuel. With just eleven seconds of fuel left, amid rising tension among those at Mission Control, Armstrong finally set Eagle down on the lunar surface, announcing, “Contact light. Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Charlie Duke, the astronaut at Mission Control responsible for communicating with the mission crew, responded in a flustered voice, “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!”

  After the landing the crew had been scheduled to sleep for five hours, but Armstrong and Aldrin elected to skip it, reasoning that they would be too excited to sleep. After some final checks the pair suited up. Armstrong left Eagle to set foot on the Moon, telling millions on Earth that it was “one small step for man—one giant leap for mankind.” (Armstrong later added “a” when referring to “one small step for a man” to clarify the first sentence delivered from the Moon’s surface.) Aldrin soon followed, and while he was not first on the Moon, he paused for a moment to relieve himself just as he reached the surface, claiming a different type of first for himself. Thereafter, the two lumbered around the landing site in their bulky space suits in the lunar gravity, one-sixth that of Earth, planting an American flag, collecting soil and rock samples, and setting up scientific experiments. The ceremonial planting of the flag, conjuring images of Europeans doing the same in others parts of the world from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, notably did not include a claim of the Moon for the United States. Instead, the astronauts proclaimed that they “came in peace for all mankind.” That phrase was not accidental, and its meaning was not lost on the rest of the world. The next day the crew launched the LM to rendezvous with the Apollo CSM orbiting overhead before returning to Earth.

  Some were concerned that the crew might be stranded on the Moon. Shortly before the flight astronaut Bill Anders contacted the White House to warn that they should be ready in the event of an accident. Richard Nixon’s speechwriter, William Safire, prepared an eloquent speech should it be necessary. Nixon would have declared: “They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.” It concluded: “Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.” After Apollo 11, Safire filed the speech way, transferred his papers to the National Archives, and forgot about it. Researchers rediscovered it in 2009, reminding all how risky space exploration was. Fortunately, the speech proved unnecessary.

  Apollo 11 also unified for a brief moment an American nation divided by political, social, racial, and economic tensions in the summer of 1969. Virtually everyone old enough recalls where they were when Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon. One seven-year-old boy from San Juan, Puerto Rico, said of the first Moon landing: “I kept racing between the TV and the balcony and looking at the Moon to see if I could see them on the Moon.” He recalled never being more proud as an American citizen than in the summer of 1969.

  Figure 14. Aldrin at the flag is an iconic image from Apollo 11. This image also circled the globe immediately after its release in July 1969 and has been used for all manner of purposes since that time, including for the logo for MTV in its early years. The flag in this image proved a powerful trope of American exceptionalism. It also has often been used by Moon-landing deniers as evidence that the landing was filmed on Earth, because the flag appears to be waving in the breeze, and we all know there is no breeze on the Moon. When astronauts were planting the flagpole, they rotated it back and forth to better penetrate the lunar soil (a maneuver familiar to anyone who has set a blunt tent post). Of course, the flag waved—no breeze required!

  The Reverend Ralph Abernathy, successor to Martin Luther King, Jr., as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led a protest to the Apollo 11 launch to call attention to the plight of the poor of the United States. The protesters held an all-night vigil as the countdown proceeded, then marched with two mule-drawn wagons as a reminder that while the nation spent significant money on the Apollo program, poverty ravaged many Americans’ lives. As Hosea Williams said at the time, “We do not oppose the Moon shot. Our purpose is to protest America’s inability to choose human priorities.”

  This protest pointed up the confluence of high technology challenges and the more mundane but ever-present problems of American society. Abernathy asked to meet with the NASA leadership, and the space agency’s administrator, Thomas O. Paine, met with Abernathy before the launch. Paine recorded the incident:

  We were coatless, standing under a cloudy sky, with distant thunder rumbling, and a very light mist of rain occasionally falling. After a good deal of chanting, oratory and lining up, the group marched slowly toward us, singing “We Shall Overcome.” In the lead were several mules being led by the Rev. Abernathy, Hosea Williams and other leading members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The leaders came up to us and halted, facing Julian [Scheer, NASA press secretary] and myself, while the remainder of the group walked around and surrounded us. . . . One fifth of the population lacks adequate food, clothing, shelter and medical care, [Rev. Abernathy] said. The money for the space program, he stated, should be spent to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend the sick, and house the shelterless.

  Abernathy said that he had three requests for NASA: that ten families of his group be allowed to view the launch, that NASA “support the movement to combat the nation’s poverty, hunger and other social problems,” and that NASA technical people work “to tackle the problem of hunger.”

  Paine responded by inviting Abernathy and a busload of his supporters to view the Apollo 11 launch from the VIP site with other dignitaries. Paine told Abernathy that it was difficult to apply NASA’s scientific and technological knowledge to the problems of society. “I stated that if we could solve the problems of poverty in the United States by not pushing the button to launch men to the moon tomorrow,” Paine said, “then we would not push that button.” He added:

  I said that the great technological advances of NASA were child’s play compared to the tremendously difficult human problems with which he and his people were concerned. I said that he should regard the space program, however, as an encouraging demonstration of what the American people could accomplish when they had vision, leadership and adequate resources of competent people and money to overcome obstacles. I said I hoped that he would hitch his wagons to our rocket, using the space program as a spur to the nation to tackle problems boldly in other areas, and using NASA’s space successes as a yardstick by which progress in other areas should be measured. I said that although I could not promise early results, I would certainly do everything in my own personal power to help him in his fight for better conditions for all Americans, and that his request that science and engineering assist in this task was a sound one which, in the long run, would indeed help.

  Paine then asked Abernathy, who had scheduled a prayer meeting later that day with his protestors, that they “pray for the safety of our astronauts.” As Paine recalled, “He responded with emotion that they would certainly pray for the safety and success of the astronauts, and that as Americans they were as proud of our space achievements as anybody in the co
untry.”

  Paine realized that the social problems of the United States could not be solved entirely by revectoring resources from NASA to other initiatives. He also agreed that the problems of society were much more complex and defied resolution using the tools, knowledge, and resources employed to accomplish Project Apollo. While it might be tempting to generalize from the experience of NASA during the 1960s that its success might be duplicated elsewhere, such was not the case.

  Apollo 11 inspired an ecstatic reaction around the globe, as everyone shared in the success of the mission. Ticker-tape parades, speaking engagements, public relations events, and a world tour by the astronauts served to create goodwill both in the United States and abroad. It became much more than an American achievement; it was a “human” triumph. Newspapers’ front pages virtually everywhere displayed this mood. NASA estimated that because of nearly worldwide radio and television coverage, more than half of the planet’s population had followed Apollo 11.

  One of the objectives of the Apollo program had been to demonstrate American technological competence, thereby bringing allies to the Western Cold War bloc. It was successful in achieving this objective. Although the Soviet Union tried to jam Voice of America radio broadcasts, most living there and in other Eastern Bloc countries followed the adventure carefully. Police reports noted that streets in many cities were eerily quiet during the Moon walk, as residents watched television coverage in homes, bars, and other public places. U.S. ambassador to Morocco Henry Tasca recalled that Apollo 11 proved “a unifying experience,” captivating everyone from the king to “the street beggar.” There could be no doubt, he commented, “that the international position of the United States in all its aspects has been deeply, . . . irreversibly changed” with the Moon landing.

  Official congratulations poured in to the U.S. president from other heads of state, even as informal ones went to NASA and the astronauts. All nations having regular diplomatic relations with the United States sent their best wishes in recognition of the success of the mission. The People’s Republic of China, with no such official relations, made no formal statement to the United States on the Apollo 11 flight, and the mission was reported only sporadically by news media because Mao Zedong refused to publicize successes by Cold War rivals. Only in February 1972, when Nixon flew to China and met with Mao, did the United States establish formal diplomatic relations with the nation. China now seeks to go to the Moon, and fully recognizes the success of the Apollo program.

  The day after the Moon walk, the astronauts launched back to the Apollo capsule orbiting overhead and began the return trip to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific on July 24. This flight rekindled the excitement felt in the early 1960s with John Glenn and the Mercury astronauts. When meeting the crew, President Nixon told a worldwide television and radio audience that the flight of Apollo 11 represented the most significant week in the history of Earth since the creation. This was political hyperbole, but the successful Moon landing captured the world’s attention. As the legendary American journalist Walter Cronkite commented in 2003, those who witnessed the Apollo Moon landing were part of “the lucky generation.” They participated in the experiences as humanity “first broke our earthly bonds and ventured into space. From our descendants’ perches on other planets or distant space cities, they will look back at our achievement with wonder at our courage and audacity and with appreciation at our accomplishments, which assured the future in which they live.”

  Apollo 12: Precision Landing

  Apollo 12 entered the public’s perception in a way different from the first Moon landing. It represented exciting and significant advances in capability over Apollo 11, but it did not have a broadcast component, since the camera failed on the lunar surface. Still, the second lunar landing, on November 14–24, 1969, broke open the space race with the Soviet Union. Apollo 11 might have been a fluke, but this mission required a precision landing close to a robotic Surveyor 3 spacecraft that had touched down on the lunar surface in 1967. If the Americans could pull that off, Soviet space-exploration officials knew, the USSR could not compete in the Moon race. The descent was automatic, with only a few manual corrections by commander Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan L. Bean. The landing in the southeastern part of the Ocean of Storms brought the lunar module Intrepid within walking distance—600 feet—of Surveyor 3.

  Conrad’s statement when stepping onto the Moon was more spontaneous if less memorable than Neil Armstrong’s “one giant leap.” “Whoopee!” he said. “Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me.” Conrad and Bean brought pieces of the Surveyor 3 back to Earth for analysis, and took two Moon walks lasting just under four hours each.

  They collected rocks and set up experiments that measured the Moon’s seismic activity, solar wind flux, and magnetic field. Meanwhile Richard Gordon, on board the Yankee Clipper in lunar orbit, took multispectral photographs of the surface. The crew stayed an extra day in lunar orbit taking photographs. When the lunar module ascent stage was dropped onto the Moon after Conrad and Bean rejoined Gordon in orbit, the seismometers the astronauts had left on the lunar surface registered the vibrations, allowing the measurement of seismic activity on the Moon. This experiment, and others of a similar nature, allowed scientists on Earth to measure the density and materials making up the Moon, thereby helping to answer one of the central questions in lunar science: how did the Moon come to be? It took more than a decade for a consensus to emerge that the Moon came about through Earth’s collision with another planet soon after the solar system formed, but the measurement of lunar seismic activity was critical to this scientific finding.

  One of the most unusual stories of Apollo 12 involved the Surveyor 3 camera that had journeyed to the Moon on April 20, 1967, and had sat exposed on the lunar surface for thirty-one months before the Apollo 12 astronauts retrieved it in December 1969. Humans, of course, cannot survive more than a few seconds while exposed to the vacuum of space. Apparently, not so some extremophiles from this planet. After the Apollo 12 mission, while examining the Surveyor 3 camera, scientists saw evidence of micrometeoroid bombardment. But they also found terrestrial bacteria—Streptococcus mitis—that apparently had survived for more than two and a half years in the vacuum of space.

  The bacteria occupied only one of thirty-three samples from various parts of the spacecraft, and the question arose whether it predated Apollo 12’s visit or resulted from accidental contamination following return from the Moon. No one knows the answer, but there is firm evidence from other space projects to suggest that some forms of microbial life can go into hibernation while in space and revive once they reach a hospitable environment. Apollo 12’s mission offered the first inkling that this might be the case. In any case, the low-key response to the finding was amazing to nonscientist Pete Conrad, who recalled in 1991, “I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole goddamn Moon was that little bacteria who came back and lived and nobody ever said shit about it.”

  Apollo 13: A Successful Failure

  In spite of the success of the other missions to the Moon, only Apollo 13, launched on April 11, 1970, came close to matching earlier popular interest. It would have been the third landing, and astronauts James A. Lovell, Jr., Fred W. Haise, Jr., and John L. Swigert, Jr., practiced enthusiastically to achieve important scientific discoveries. Apollos 11 and 12 had been largely about reaching the surface safely and collecting lunar samples, without much emphasis on geological questions. Lovell even used the motto Ex Luna, Scientia to emphasize this objective. They would explore the Fra Mauro Highlands, a mountainous area thought to be formed by ejecta from a crater.

  Apollo 13 never reached Fra Mauro. After only fifty-six hours of flight, an oxygen tank in the Apollo service module ruptured and damaged several of the power, electrical, and life-support systems. NASA engineers quickly determined that the spacecraft was dying, turning the lunar module—a self-contained landing craft unaffected by the acc
ident—into a “lifeboat” to provide austere life support for the return trip. In the feature film Apollo 13 (1995), NASA flight director Gene Kranz announces, “Failure is not an option.” While Kranz never actually said that line, he has recalled that he wished he had thought of it at the time, since it fit so well with what NASA did during the crisis. Bringing the crew home alive was now the only objective.

  To achieve that goal, the crew and those on the ground fell back on their training, improvised where necessary, and showed their mettle in systematically tackling every problem thrown in the way of a safe return. People around the world watched and waited and hoped as NASA worked to return the crew to Earth. It was a close call, but they returned safely on April 17. More than any other incident in the history of spaceflight, recovery from this accident solidified the world’s belief in NASA’s capabilities. One might best refer to Apollo 13 as a “successful failure.”

  Because of this failure, however, such NASA leaders as Bob Gilruth pulled back from an aggressive spaceflight program to the Moon. Apollo 13 served as an object lesson of the risks involved in the lunar voyages. It was only a matter of time, Gilruth realized, before astronauts would die in this endeavor. “There were some people who wanted to keep on flying those things, you know, a lot more of them,” Gilruth said in 1987. “I said, ‘Not me, you get another boy. . . . I’m not going to stay around for it if you’re going to keep doing it.’ ” In fact, Gilruth had always been cautious in space endeavors. He recalled in 1975: “You don’t take any risks in this business that you don’t have to take.” Now that NASA had achieved Kennedy’s objectives of landing Americans on the Moon by the end of the decade and demonstrating U.S. preeminence in space, Gilruth argued for a termination of the Apollo landing program. He was not alone, and after a series of more expansive scientific missions between 1970 and 1972, the program ended.