Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure (40 page)

Aldrin: 'Houston, Tranquility. Do you have a way of showing the configuration of the engine arm circuit breaker? Over. The reason I'm asking is because the end of it appears to be broken off. I think we can push it back in again. I'm not sure we could pull it out if we pushed it in, though. Over.'

While wearing his PLSS, at some point Buzz had knocked off the switch that would send electrical power to the ascent engine - on which they were depending to get home. 'The little plastic pin simply wasn't there,' Buzz wrote.
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Nearly a minute after Aldrin reported the problem, Houston responded.

Mission Control: 'Tranquility Base, this is Houston. Our telemetry shows the engine arm circuit breaker in the open position at the present time. We want you to leave it open until it is nominally scheduled to be pushed in, which is later on. Over.'

The crew's next task was to depressurise the cabin in order to open the hatch and eject the backpacks and the bag of rubbish. Before they began, for the first time in the mission Deke Slayton came directly on the radio.

Slayton: 'Tranquility Base, Houston.'

Armstrong: 'Go ahead. Tranquility Base here.'

Slayton: 'Roger. Just want to let you guys know that, since you're an hour and a half over your timeline and we're all taking a day off tomorrow, we're going to leave you. See you later.'

Armstrong: 'I don't blame you a bit.'

Slayton: 'That's a real great day, guys. I really enjoyed it.'

Armstrong: 'Thank you. You couldn't have enjoyed it as much as we did.'

Slayton: 'Roger.'

Aldrin: 'It was great.'

Slayton: 'Sure wish you'd hurry up and get that trash out of there, though.'

Armstrong: 'Yes. We're just about to do it.'

Slayton: 'OK.'

In depressurising the cabin, this time they used a second valve to speed up the process, and with their suits connected to the LM's life-support system they opened the hatch. Neil threw the two backpacks down the ladder, along with their over-boots and the bag containing food trays and other litter.

Mission Control: 'Tranquility. We observed your equipment jettison on the TV, and the passive seismic experiment recorded shocks when each PLSS hit the surface. Over.'

Armstrong: 'You can't get away with anything any more, can you?'

Armstrong and Aldrin had now been awake for more than 21 hours, and with their last task of the day completed, at 3.23am Houston bid them goodnight. Although filthy with dust, the cockpit was tidier and there was now room to sleep. Settling down for the seven-hour rest period, Buzz lay on the floor while Neil sat on the ascent engine cover, his feet suspended by a cable lashed above the instruments. They kept their helmets and gloves on, hoping that this would shut out some of the whirring noise from the life-support system.
⁴¹
But as the temperature dropped, both men found it hard to doze.

On Earth, Pat Collins was also finding it hard to sleep, and in the small hours of the morning she strolled outside to gaze up at the Moon.
⁴²
In a Vietnamese prison camp, air force pilot Sam Johnson – an old friend of Aldrin's – approached one of the guards and, pointing to the Moon, said, 'That's ours now.'
⁴³

Chapter 15
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Tired and still wearing their bulky pressure-suits, Armstrong and Aldrin shivered in the cold cabin of the LM. Warning lights and electroluminescent instrument panels could not be switched off and the surface reflected sunshine so brightly, light penetrated the thin window shades. Even the Earth kept Neil awake, since it lay directly in his line of sight through
Eagle
's alignment telescope. 'It was just like a lightbulb,' he later recalled.
¹
The cabin was shielded from the Sun by the bulk of the spacecraft, so without a heater it became uncomfortably chilly. Raising the temperature of their cooling systems had little effect and neither Neil nor Buzz could properly sleep.

Stretched out in the comparative luxury of the command module, Michael was woken by Mission Control at 9.31am on Monday, 21 July.
²
He was immediately given instructions on navigation tasks before vanishing behind the Moon at the start of his twenty-fourth orbit. Houston then called Tranquility Base, and after a breakfast of cold snacks Neil and Buzz powered up the computers and the rendezvous radar. Houston still hadn't established their position, and to provide further details Buzz was asked to track the command module using the rendezvous radar. Once he'd done this, Mission Control changed the checklist procedures and asked Buzz to switch off the radar until they reached orbit, to avoid overloading
Eagle
's computer. During the descent the computer had been so busy it had triggered a series of alarms. During the ascent it would be busier still. 'We were concerned,' admitted Charlie Duke, 'very concerned.'
³

In preparing the spacecraft for launch, Buzz had to find an alternative way to close the engine arm circuit breaker, which had been damaged the previous day by his PLSS. Looking for a suitable object that could be inserted into the hole, he found that a felt-tipped pen fitted perfectly, and he successfully pushed the circuit breaker into the correct position. Electrical power could now reach the engine when a switch was pushed by Neil. If they hadn't been able to close the circuit, they would have had to resort to more complicated ways to get round the problem. After preparing the 16mm camera in Buzz's window, they put their gloves and pressure helmets back on and waited for the countdown to end. Once again, timing was essential. They had to launch at precisely the right moment if they were to catch up with Collins before running out of electrical power.

When Michael approached the Sea of Tranquility on his twenty-fifth orbit, Houston asked him to look for
Eagle
one final time. The LM had been on the surface for a little over 21 hours, but Collins had not been able to spot it once. Mission Control had refined the search, and with less than 30 minutes to go before lift-off Collins was given a new location that later proved to be only 220 metres away from
Eagle
. By that point, feeling 'like a nervous bride',
⁴
Michael wanted to focus only on the launch. 'My secret terror for the last six months,' he wrote, 'has been leaving them on the Moon and returning to Earth alone.'
⁵
In Houston, Janet Armstrong believed that as long as
Eagle
lifted off from the surface, 'Mike will come and get them, wherever they are'.
⁶
Collins, however, knew that if Neil and Buzz failed to reach 50,000 feet, the lowest height he could descend to, there was little he could do to help them. 'One little hiccup and they are dead men,' he wrote.
⁷

Mission Control: 'Tranquility Base, Houston.'

Aldrin: 'Roger. Go ahead.'

Mission Control: 'Roger. Our guidance recommendation is PGNS, and you're cleared for take-off.'

Aldrin: 'Roger. Understand. We're number one on the runway.'

While pressurising the two fuel tanks Buzz discovered that one failed to respond, which for him was 'the worst thing we could have seen'.
⁸
The problem began to resolve itself, however, and the flight controllers were not especially worried – but they were slow to reassure the crew.

At 12.54pm – 21 hours and 37 minutes after landing – the launch countdown reached zero. Neil pushed switches that ignited four explosive nuts and bolts and severed the electrical cable connecting the two stages of the spacecraft. After Armstrong pushed the engine arm switch, Aldrin then punched the computer's 'proceed' button, allowing the software to ignite the engine. A second went by and nothing happened. Then, in a sudden jerk of movement, the engine fired, and as the ascent stage smoothly rose vertically from the surface its exhaust plume knocked over the flag and shredded the foil on the descent stage. A swarm of sparkling ribbons of Kapton scattered sunlight in its wake.
⁹

As they accelerated towards orbit, Neil and Buzz noticed that in the time they had been on the ground the terminator had crept back, revealing features they had not previously seen. Gravity gradually fell away as they raced towards the escape velocity of 3,400mph, and some of the lunar dust in the cabin began to float about. Although the ascent engine was relatively small, the ascent stage was by far the lightest spacecraft in the Apollo system, and compared to the pick-up truck characteristics of
Columbia
it handled like a sports car. 'It's a very light, dancing vehicle,' Armstrong later said.
¹⁰
Aldrin felt that 'each time you hit the thrust controller, the vehicle behaved as if somebody hit it with a sledge hammer, and you just moved'.
¹¹

After seven minutes the engine shut down, and at an altitude of ten miles above the Moon they entered orbit. Coasting at nearly 3,800mph towards their highest orbital point, 47 miles above the surface, the men removed their gloves and helmets as the spacecraft raced through shadow. Once they switched on the rendezvous radar, Armstrong and Aldrin began to play catch-up with the command module.
Eagle
would perform the rendezvous procedures while
Columbia
, coasting at an altitude of 60 miles, remained the passive partner. Mission Control took a back seat as Neil and Buzz pursued the command module around the Moon, progressively raising their orbital altitude over three hours, as perfected during the Gemini missions.
¹²

With
Eagle
chasing him from below, Collins worked flat out to make sure he was holding a stable position. Operating on his own, during the course of the day he would have more than 850 key strokes to make on the computer. As the LM drew closer, Michael kept his eye glued to the sextant and was taken aback when he spotted
Eagle
coming up towards him. 'For the first time, I had the feeling that that son of a gun was really going to get there in one piece,' he wrote.
¹³
Relief was starting to replace his long-harboured anxiety. Having slowed to match
Columbia
's speed,
Eagle
took up a position less than 100 feet from the command module. The two spacecraft were behind the Moon, and for the moment the crew were unable to tell Houston that everything was going to plan. As soon as they came back into radio contact Mission Control was anxious to know how things were developing.

Mission Control: '
Eagle
and
Columbia
, Houston. Standing by.'

Armstrong: 'Roger. We're station-keeping.'

It was the news the controllers had been waiting for, and relieved applause filled the Mission Operations Control Room.
¹⁴

With the two spacecraft flying in formation, the three astronauts were ready to begin their docking manoeuvres. Neil was preparing to adjust
Eagle
's position when he realised he was about to look directly into the Sun. In swiftly taking alternative action, he inadvertently jammed the LM's guidance system, triggering warning lights and freezing the autopilot. Just a few feet short of the command module, Armstrong and Aldrin were forced to switch to the backup computer. But they managed to hold their course, and at 4.35pm the combined command and service modules successfully docked with the lightweight ascent stage. Working on the probe and drogue assembly inside the tunnel, once again Michael smelt the odour of burnt material that he had noticed on the first day of the flight.
¹⁵

As they prepared to enter the clean cabin of the command module, Neil and Buzz knew they risked carrying with them a quantity of lunar dust. To keep this to a minimum, they unstowed the LM's small vacuum cleaner and tried to collect as much dirt as possible. It wasn't only cleanliness they were concerned about. Before the mission, fears of so-called 'moon-bugs' had prompted NASA to adopt an extensive set of precautions. Virtually none of the 127 teams of scientists awaiting samples of moon rocks believed there was any point in testing the material for forms of life. Nevertheless, Congress was persuaded to hurriedly authorise the construction of a special quarantine facility in Houston, as part of the elaborate plan to isolate potential bugs. The plan also included protective rubber suits, the vacuum cleaner for
Eagle
and a period of quarantine for the crew – beginning the moment Neil and Buzz left the surface.
¹⁶

Aboard
Columbia
, Michael raised the level of the cabin's oxygen supply. Once the hatches were open the increased pressure would flow into the LM, rather than the other way round.
¹⁷
As Armstrong and Aldrin returned through the tunnel he was ready to kiss his crew-mates, but settled for firm handshakes instead. Smiling and giggling like schoolboys, Neil, Buzz and Michael warmly congratulated each other and joked about the difficulties that had caused so much anxiety and which had now been successfully completed.
¹⁸
Later, Buzz returned to
Eagle
, and telling Mike to 'get ready for those million-dollar boxes' he passed the two sample containers through the tunnel. These were then zipped up in white cloth bags before being stored in the lower equipment bay. Since they had been sealed in the vacuum of space Michael was unable to open them, but Neil showed him the contingency sample so that he could see the dark powder for himself. 'Sort of like wet sand,' was his first impression.
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