Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure (7 page)

'T minus 15 seconds,' announced King, 'guidance is internal ... 12, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence starts.'

In 1961, Alan Shepard's Redstone rocket had produced 80,000lb of thrust. Less than nine seconds before the launch of Apollo 11, fuel cascaded into the Saturn's five F-1 engines, the most powerful of their type ever built. After reaching maximum output, together they generated a ground-shaking 7.5 million pounds of thrust.

'6, 5, 4 ...'

Strapped down tightly inside the dull cabin of the command module, the men could see little through the hatch window. The first indication that they were on their way would come when the mission timer on the main instrument panel began to register the seconds, minutes and hours that had elapsed since ignition.

'3, 2, 1, zero. All engines running, lift-off! We have a lift-off, 32 minutes past the hour. Lift-off on Apollo 11.'

The engine-bells ignited in a blinding flash of light, each soon producing more thrust than the three main engines of the space shuttle combined. Now they were lit, they could not be shut down. Come what may, the crew knew they were at least going somewhere. All being well they would be in space in less than 12 minutes.

Boiling plumes of fire plummeted down through the launch platform, then were briefly sucked back towards the engines before rolling down to ground level. As 25,000 gallons of water washed across the face of the platform, huge clouds of flame, reaching temperatures of 1,900°F, were channelled away from the pad via long trenches filled with water. With the engines now burning 15 tons of fuel a second, more than 40 tons of propellant were consumed before the rocket even left the ground. Fountains of flame instantly vaporised the water in the trenches, producing clouds of steam that could be seen for dozens of miles around. Behind a protective sand bunker nearly 3,000 feet away 14 people in flame protection gear were waiting on armoured personnel carriers, ready to help the astronauts in an emergency. Further afield, teams of doctors, safety officials, ordnance experts and recovery specialists were stationed beside roadblocks surrounding the space centre. The five swing arms that were still connecting the vehicle to the tower were rapidly pulled aside, and as the engines' exhaust fumes thrust downward in a relentless force of energy they generated enough pressure to push the 36-storey rocket slowly off the ground. More than 17,000 gallons of water a minute were sprayed over the swing arms to preserve them as flames gushed from the 14-foot-wide engine-bells at a rate four times faster than the speed of sound.

The spectators saw the steam but at first heard nothing. Fifteen seconds later a noise could be sensed rushing at them. When it arrived it overwhelmed them, a resounding deep bass crackling that shook the ground. Australian journalist Derryn Hinch, packed in among the press corps, later found bruises on the tops of his thighs, caused by his shuddering desktop. (In tests carried out during poor weather conditions in Alabama, the sonic energy of five F-1s had reverberated so strongly off the cloud ceiling that minor earthquakes were felt 40 miles away.) Nurse Dee O'Hara cried as she saw the rocket rise into the clear blue sky. Photographers forgot their cameras and just stood and watched along with everyone else. In the VIP stands, the protester Reverend Ralph Abernathy considered himself to be 'one of the proudest Americans as I stood on this soil'. Aboard her boat on the Banana River, Jan Armstrong exclaimed, 'There it is! There it is!'
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Inside the command module, the astronauts were shaken so much they found it difficult to see the altimeters to check they were actually moving. The sound of the launch rumbled through the cabin like a distant express train. Buzz felt 'there was a slight increase in the amount of background noise, not at all unlike the sort one notices taking off in a commercial airliner'.
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Four of the engines could be gimballed, and as the rocket lifted off the ground it threw itself this way and that, struggling to keep away from the tower. To Michael, the first ten seconds felt 'very busy', and he believed the three of them were maintaining only the thinnest veneer of control. He compared the rocket's jittery action to a 'nervous lady driving a wide car down a narrow alley. She can't decide whether she's too far to the left or too far to the right, but she knows she's one or the other. And she keeps jerking the wheel back and forth.'
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In an emergency, Armstrong was responsible for swiftly selecting one of a number of abort procedures, as determined by the rocket's velocity and altitude. The booster was the first of its type equipped with a manual override system that allowed the commander to fly it himself should it deviate from its course.
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If the crew were to lose control altogether, Neil would turn the abort handle beside his left knee, which would instantly ignite the rocket mounted above the command module. This would quickly carry the cabin clear of trouble. Emergencies aside, the Saturn remained free to guide itself, and as its speed rapidly increased, the fast-changing situation required intense concentration. 'You have to do things right away and do them properly,' Neil later said, adding that he 'listened to indications over the radio as to which [abort] phase you were in or about to enter'
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while simultaneously monitoring the instruments.

After clearing the tower, the rocket maintained course by rolling over to 18 degrees from vertical, while control on the ground transferred from the Cape to Houston. In the Mission Control Center, flight controllers and backroom staff assessed more than 1,300 telemetry measurements that were automatically sent from the rocket. The launch team then gave updates to astronaut Bruce McCandless as he helped Armstrong through the abort options.

McCandless: 'Apollo 11, Houston. You're good at 1 minute.'

Armstrong: 'Roger.'

McCandless: 'Stand by for mode 1 Charlie.'

McCandless: 'Mark.'

McCandless: 'Mode 1 Charlie.'

Armstrong: 'One Charlie.'

Approaching four miles in altitude and climbing at nearly twice the speed of sound, the rocket's rough ride was beginning to quieten down. Thousands of awestruck spectators along the eastern coast of Florida were left stunned by the sight of the tiny white needle balanced on top of a towering column of smoke. Above the exhaust fumes, a plume of fire hundreds of feet long was driving the astronauts forward at 6,000mph, so fast that as they sank back into their couches they felt as if they weighed more than four times as much as normal.

McCandless: 'Apollo 11, this is Houston. You are go for staging.'

After the giant F-1 engines had burned for just two minutes and 42 seconds, the 138-foot first stage fell away from the rest of the vehicle .While soaring up to an altitude of 36 miles, the lowest reaches of space, the rocket had travelled at such a speed that it had been compressed lengthwise. When the first stage was dropped, the rest of the booster snapped back to its true proportions, throwing the astronauts forward against their harnesses.
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The five J-2 engines of the second stage then ignited, pushing the spacecraft up past the 60-mile mark. At this point the abort tower was jettisoned, carrying with it the command module's protective shroud and thereby allowing sunlight to stream in through the windows. At this height the Saturn was scything through the thinnest regions of the atmosphere.

More than six minutes after ignition, the second stage was depleted and it too was jettisoned, eventually plunging into the Atlantic 2,300 miles from the coast. Apollo 11 was now powered by the single J-2 engine of the third stage (known in NASA's jargon as the S-IVB). Pitching over towards a flatter trajectory, the crew were presented with a spectacular view of the curvature of the Earth as the ocean stretched away before them. Finally, at a point 1,461 miles downrange, the instrument unit stopped the engine. The astronauts were now coasting at more than 17,400mph, on an orbital path 103 miles above the world. Just 11 minutes and 49 seconds after launch – before the spectators had had time to return to their cars – Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins had arrived in space.

Buzz felt that 'The Earth ... has an almost benign quality. Intellectually one could realize there were wars under way, but emotionally it was impossible to understand such things. The thought reoccurred that wars are generally fought for territory or are disputes over borders; from space the arbitrary borders established on Earth cannot be seen.'
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On the ground, the cabin had been filled with a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. During the ascent, the cabin pressure had been allowed to drop from nearly 15 to 5psi, and at the same time the crew's life-support system purged any remaining nitrogen to leave an atmosphere consisting of 100 per cent oxygen. Protected from the threat of nitrogen, the crew were able to remove their helmets. These had to be carefully stowed to stop them floating about the cabin in the liberating conditions of weightlessness. Releasing the straps on his couch, Collins moved forward towards the middle of the display panel. By slipping underneath it, he could pull himself into the lower equipment bay, on the far side of the command module. This was the only place in the spacecraft where an astronaut could stand up, his head rising towards the apex of the cabin. At the top lay a hatch, through which the crew would later be able to enter the lunar module once they had retrieved it from its protective position inside the adapter.

Moving about in the equipment bay, Michael removed a Hasselblad stills camera from a locker, then called over to Buzz: 'How would you like the camera ... I'll just let go of it, Buzz; it will be hanging over here in the air. Coming up – it's occupying my couch.'

The crew had spent a lifetime living with gravity, and now that it was no longer present, their hearts were working overtime. The men experienced a pounding in their ears and throats until their bodies were able to adjust. The first pictures Buzz took show that their faces were puffed up with blood, and though the redness receded the crew continued to look fuller than when on the ground.
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With gravity no longer pulling down on the fatty tissue beneath their eyes, Michael believed that Neil and Buzz looked 'squinty and decidedly Oriental'.
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An hour and 20 minutes into the flight, as the spacecraft passed from the dark side of the Earth into sunrise, an arc of rich crimson light rolled back the blackness of space with a majesty that took Michael's breath away.

'Jesus Christ, look at that horizon!'

Armstrong: 'Isn't that something?'

Collins: 'God damn, that's pretty; it's unreal.'

Armstrong: 'Get a picture of that.'

Collins: 'Oh, sure, I will. I've lost a Hasselblad ... has anybody seen a Hasselblad floating by? It couldn't have gone very far – big son of a gun like that.'

After a couple of minutes searching, the camera still hadn't appeared.

Aldrin: 'But you want to get it before TLI.'

Collins: 'I know it. That's what I'm worried about.' After eventually recovering the camera, Collins looked out of the window.

Collins: 'Trees and a forest down there; it looks like trees and a forest or something. Looks like snow and trees. Fantastic. I have no conception of where we're pointed or which way we're going or a crapping thing, but it's a beautiful low pressure cell out here.'

Having entered a 'parking orbit', the spacecraft travelled around the world one and a half times in less than three hours, giving the crew and the ground a chance to make sure everything was working. Once it was established that all was OK, at two hours and 43 minutes into the mission the crew received permission to re-ignite the third-stage engine. By burning the engine a second time, in a manoeuvre known as trans-lunar injection (or TLI), they would escape from orbit and begin their journey towards the Moon.

Mission Control: 'Apollo 11, this is Houston. Slightly less than 1 minute to ignition, and everything is go.'

Collins: 'Roger.'

Collins: 'Ignition.'

Mission Control: 'We confirm ignition, and the thrust is go.'

Mission Control: 'Apollo 11, this is Houston at 1 minute. Trajectory and guidance look good, and the stage is good. Over.'

Armstrong: 'Apollo 11. Roger.'

Mission Control: 'We show cut-off.'

Mission Control: 'Apollo 11, this is Houston. Do you read? Over.'

Aldrin: 'Roger, Houston. Apollo 11. We're reading a VI of 35,579 ... over.'

Armstrong: 'Hey, Houston, Apollo 11. That Saturn gave us a magnificent ride.'

Mission Control: 'Roger, 11. We'll pass that on. And, it certainly looks like you are well on your way now.'

Armstrong: 'We have no complaints with any of the three stages on that ride. It was beautiful.'

In a mission to the Moon, an obvious thing to do would be to point your rocket towards it and fly in that direction. But in attempting to do this, you'd be likely to miss. The Moon is a moving target, travelling at 2,286mph as it orbits the Earth over a 27-day period. When flying towards it, the trick is to aim at a point where you think it will be once you've completed the three- day journey out to its orbital track. It was a while before NASA could demonstrate an ability to do this accurately and reliably. Ranger 3, a probe launched in 1962, was designed to examine the lunar surface but due to an incorrect course change it missed the Moon by 22,000 miles. It remains trapped in lunar orbit to this day. Ranger 5 also failed to reach its target, problems with its power supply causing it to miss by 450 miles. Later, more advanced probes demonstrated that such difficulties had been overcome – so although the TLI burn put them on a course towards an empty point in space, the crew of Apollo 11 confidently expected the Moon would eventually meet them. Indeed Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins intended to arrive with such accuracy they knew that if they never fired their engine again they could expect to be carried round the Moon by lunar gravity and automatically sent back to Earth. Known as a free return trajectory, this technique was adopted as a safety measure since it gave the crew a chance to come home even if they ran into trouble after TLI.