Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure (6 page)

Next to leave his spacecraft was Gene Cernan. Secured to the outside of the rear of Cernan's capsule was a backpack equipped with small thrusters, which he was intending to fly as if he himself were a mini spacecraft. On 5 June 1966, Cernan huffed and puffed his way back towards the backpack, known as the 'astronaut manoeuvring unit'. Lacking sufficient handrails and footholds, and breathing heavily, he suffered sunburn on his lower back after tearing the outer layers of his pressure-suit while trying to drag himself along the spacecraft's hull. Once in position, he found it so difficult to complete his task that he was forced to take frequent rests. With his visor fogging and his body beginning to overheat it was clear he was in serious trouble. As his pulse soared to around 195 beats per minute, the flight surgeon in Mission Control feared Cernan would lose consciousness. The experiment was abandoned, and after Cernan returned to the hatch Tom Stafford struggled to pull him back into his seat. Once they had repressurised the capsule Stafford felt compelled to break procedure by firing a jet of water into Cernan's face to help him recover. Had Cernan not made it back aboard the capsule, rather than cut his tether and leave him in orbit it is likely that Stafford would have strapped him to the side of the spacecraft where his body would have been cremated on re-entry.

Despite Ed White's success, NASA knew 'diddly-squat' about EVA, Cernan later wrote. His experience showed that the agency had not yet developed the training, procedures or equipment required to complete a successful EVA. There was much to learn before anyone could contemplate walking on the Moon. At least on the lunar surface it would be easier to move about. But those responsible for the development of the spacesuit, including Collins, would have to come up with a more robust design incorporating an improved cooling system.

In the meantime there were just three Gemini flights left, all would involve EVAs, and next to go was Michael.

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With just three hours remaining before the launch of Apollo 11, Collins moved through the corridors of the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building, smiling at old friends and colleagues from inside his pressure helmet. By prior arrangement, one of them handed him a brown paper bag containing a gift for Guenter Wendt, the technician in charge of the launch-pad. Collins and Wendt frequently fished together, and Michael enjoyed poking fun at Guenter's claims to have caught a spectacularly large trout. In celebration of Wendt's stories, Collins decided to present him with a tiny trout that had been frozen and secured to a wooden plaque above the words 'Guenter Wendt Trophy Trout'.

Clutching his bag, Michael stepped out into the early-morning sunlight, and with the press looking on he, Neil and Buzz clambered aboard the van that would take them on the eight-mile journey to the pad. On the way, the crew crossed the Banana River where, five miles downstream, Janet Armstrong was waiting aboard a boat.
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The only one of the three wives to attend the launch (Pat Collins and Joan Aldrin had chosen to stay at home to avoid the press), along with her children Janet was accompanied by astronaut Dave Scott and
Life
magazine reporter Dora Jane Hamblin. Meanwhile, ashore, more than 5,000 people were taking their places in an enclosure three and a half miles from the launch-pad – deemed to be the closest point where spectators would probably escape serious injury from an exploding Saturn V. The clouds had cleared, and although it was still early the humidity was climbing and the temperature was already in the high eighties.

In the VIP stands, former president Lyndon Johnson was joined by senior NASA managers, led by Tom Paine. Beyond the Cape, millions of Americans were watching the live television coverage, among them President Nixon in Washington and hundreds of soldiers, sailors and airmen in Vietnam. Many astronauts had friends stationed in Asia, where already nearly 34,000 Americans had been killed, and some felt guilty that rather than serving alongside them they were being treated as celebrities. Gene Cernan, along with Tom Stafford, had made headlines just two months earlier following their part in Apollo 10. Cernan felt that Vietnam was his war, yet he was safely in America where he was regarded as a hero. The commander of US troops in Vietnam, General Westmoreland, had however managed to overcome any similar worries about where he ought to be and was also watching the launch from the stands. He was joined by cabinet ministers, foreign dignitaries, businessmen and half the members of Congress, together with a scattering of stars including aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, comedian Jack Benny, and Johnny Carson, host of NBC's
Tonight Show
.

Nearby around 3,500 reporters from 55 countries were gathered in the press enclosure, their numbers swollen by the throng that had witnessed the astronauts depart aboard the van. It was a moment some felt to be shaped by the hand of history, and venerable reporters like Eric Sevareid found themselves ascending into lofty rhetoric. 'You get a feeling,' Sevareid told the equally venerable Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman, 'that people think of these men as not just superior men but different creatures. They are like people who have gone into the other world and have returned, and you sense they bear secrets that we will never entirely know.'
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Wearing nappies and carrying a dead fish, the astronauts meanwhile were lumbering across the deserted launch-pad, still breathing through a tube. Previously they had seen it only as a hive of activity. 'Did everyone know something we didn't know?' Michael Collins later asked in jest. The only thing that exuded life was the rocket itself. Absorbing electrical power, exhaling oxygen and loaded with a million gallons of propellants, the vehicle hissed and groaned as it adjusted to its fully laden weight.

A high-speed wire lift whisked the crew up the tower to the highest swing arm, at the end of which the tiny White Room adjoined the command module. There wasn't room for all three men to board the spacecraft at once, so while Aldrin waited on the tower, Armstrong led Collins across the access arm, accompanied by Guenter Wendt. A technician with thick glasses and a caricature accent, Wendt had served as a flight engineer aboard German night fighters during the war. Nicknamed the Pad Führer by the astronauts, the term was not always used in admiration of his good-humoured though committed style of leadership. In the sterile atmosphere of the White Room, a smiling Guenter gave Neil a farewell gift in the form of a 'key to the Moon', a four-foot-long Styrofoam key wrapped in foil. In return Neil presented him with a card that had been pushed under his watchstrap by suit technician Joe Schmitt. It read: 'Space Taxi. Good Between Any Two Planets'. Clasping a rail inside the spacecraft, Neil swung his legs through the hatch and pulled himself over to the commander's couch on the left-hand side of the cabin. Behind him, Collins presented the trophy trout to Guenter
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before he too swung himself into the command module, sliding over to the couch on the right with the assistance of Fred Haise, a member of the backup crew who had spent 90 minutes preparing the cabin for launch, working his way down a 417-switch checklist.
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After Buzz had taken his position in the centre couch, Schmitt connected the astronauts to the spacecraft's oxygen supply and communications system and then climbed out of the hatch, followed by Haise, who shook each man's hand as he bid them farewell.

The suggestion that 'beneath the bravado, astronauts naturally felt fear' is something of a cliché. 'What was there to be afraid of?' Buzz later asked. 'When something goes wrong, that's when you should be afraid.' For the first time man was going to the Moon, where wonderful sights were waiting to be described, but rather than give the job to a coterie of wilting poets NASA had recruited test pilot types for a reason. Through a combination of personality and training, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, once strapped into a cockpit, were just not the kind of people predisposed to fear. 'What would be the point?' was the way it seemed to them. Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham described how he had silently besought those around him to 'please launch and get us away from all that hand-wringing'.
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Nevertheless, there was no getting away from the fact that here was a machine designed to generate an enormous prolonged explosion. But just how controlled was it exactly? When looking for a title for his 1974 autobiography, Collins was asked to sum up space-flight in a single phrase. For him it was like 'carrying fire to the Moon and back', and in wondering how this might be done his editor received the suggestion 'carefully, that's how, with lots of planning and at considerable risk ... the carrier must constantly be on his toes lest it spill'.
²²

At launch, the point when a 'spill' was most likely to occur, the whole vehicle weighed more than 3,300 tons, 90 per cent of which was fuel; the command module together with the crew took up just 0.2 per cent of the overall weight. The amount of fuel, the size of the engines and the extensive safety precautions left no-one in any doubt that the crew would have to tread a fine line in terms of retaining control of the whole assembly. The prospect of watching the rocket ascending upon a stream of fire while three men sat at the mercy of its explosive force sparked a shared sense of awe among the thousands of spectators. The Saturn V was the only manned machine ever built that was powerful enough to leave not just the ground but the Earth's entire sphere of influence, the edge of which lay 186,437 miles away. As the minutes ticked by, the test of the crew's ability to control such power drew closer.

At 7.52am, technician John Grissinger closed and locked the hatch, then he, Wendt, Haise and the rest of the small 'close-out' team descended the tower, leaving the astronauts alone in the cabin.

Chapter 3
MOVING TARGETS

With three of the command module's five windows covered by a protective shroud, the cabin was illuminated by a scattering of small lights that cast reflections in the men's transparent helmets. Lying on their backs and surrounded by dull grey hardware, Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin were busy making their final checks. An hour and 20 minutes before lift-off, still scheduled for 9.32am, Neil was monitoring the guidance system, his right elbow brushing against Buzz. Above, beneath and around them lay stowage lockers, harness supports, manuals and checklists, batteries, two computer displays, fire protection panels, 12 reaction control engines, pyrotechnic devices, helium tanks, drinking water facilities and 57 instrument panels supporting more than 800 switches and gauges. Tucked away were tapes containing music selected by the crew, and an opal chosen by Guenter Wendt which was to be presented to Mrs Wendt after it had travelled to the Moon and back. As well as items necessary for Holy Communion, among them a small quantity of wine, the men were also taking with them 2.4 ounces of plutonium 238, intended to heat one of the lunar experiments; snacks such as bacon squares, and meals including spaghetti and meat sauce; fragments of
Flyer
, the Wright Brothers' aircraft that was the first to achieve powered flight; two full-size American flags at the request of Congress; and TV broadcasting equipment for the benefit of the rest of the world.

If successful in reaching its destination, Apollo 11 promised to take mankind somewhere new – and it seemed to the crew that virtually all of mankind had given them a trinket to take along for the ride. For Michael there was a sense of tension that came 'mostly from an appreciation of the enormity of our undertaking rather than from the unfamiliarity of the situation. I am far from certain that we will be able to fly the mission as planned. I think we will escape with our skins, or at least I will escape with mine, but I wouldn't give better than even odds on a successful landing and return. There are just too many things that can go wrong'.
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Squashed in beside Buzz, Michael had minor tasks to complete, 'nickel and dime stuff' as he called it. 'In between switch throws I have plenty of time to think, if not daydream. Here I am, a white male, age thirty-eight, height 5 feet 11 inches, weight 165 pounds, salary $17,000 per annum, resident of a Texas suburb, with black spot on my roses, state of mind unsettled, about to be shot off to the Moon. Yes, to the Moon.'
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Beyond the rocket and its pad, 463 people directed the final preparations from consoles in Firing Room 1 of the Launch Control Center. At one point Jim Lovell, Neil's backup, came over the air, asking again whether Armstrong felt OK to fly. 'You missed your chance,' Neil replied.
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At the 56-minute mark, public affairs officer Jack King announced that parts of the countdown checklist were 15 minutes ahead of schedule. 'That's fine,' Armstrong had said, 'so long as we don't launch 15 minutes early.' With less than 40 minutes to go, launch controllers tested the Saturn's destruct system. Should the rocket tumble out of control near a populated area, the destruct system could be remotely activated. After passing the 15-minute mark, the booster no longer drew on an external electrical supply but began to rely on its own resources. At five minutes and 30 seconds from lift-off, the destruct system was armed,
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and at three minutes and seven seconds the launch sequence came under the control of a master computer in the firing room. At 17 seconds, the Saturn's highly advanced instrument unit, built by IBM, began independently to monitor the rocket's stability.