The Eagle Has Landed: The Story of Apollo 11 (15 page)

“There are lots of smiling faces in this room, and all over the world,” Cap Com announced.

“There are two of them up here,” Armstrong replied.

“And, don’t forget the one in the command module,” Michael Collins chimed in, orbiting high above the lunar surface.

“Whew, boy! Man on the Moon!” Walter Cronkite announced to
CBS
television viewers.

Far away from
Tranquility Base,
at Arlington National Cemetery, an anonymous visitor placed a small bouquet on the grave of John F. Kennedy, whose ambitious proposal, eight years earlier, heralded the
Apollo
program. A simple message was penned on the card attached to flowers: “Mr. President, the
Eagle has
landed.”

.

CHAPTER 12

One small step

D
uring space exploration, danger was a constant companion. Immediately after the
Eagle
landed on the Moon, Mission Control observed that the temperature in the descent engine fuel line had climbed to a dangerous level. NASA and
Grumman
engineers concluded that a “solid slug” of frozen fuel had trapped a small amount of overheated liquid in the line. If the temperature continued to rise, a catastrophic explosion was quite possible.

Two options were considered—aborting the mission, whereby the astronauts would immediately take off and leave the descent engine behind, or “burping” the engine, by quickly opening and closing the fuel line valve to relieve the mounting pressure. Neither choice was particularly appealing. Aborting the mission before the scheduled lunar excursion would be a major setback for the
Apollo
program. However, if the
Eagle
was not firmly planted on the lunar surface, the “burping” process could generate enough force to topple it over, stranding the astronauts on the Moon.

NASA officials faced a difficult choice, balancing mission goals with the safety of the flight crew. Suddenly, the pressure inside the fuel line began to drop, when the frozen fuel slug began melting. Fate had once again smiled on
Apollo 11.

Soon after landing on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin conducted a preplanned ritual of thanksgiving. A Communion kit had been prepared by Dean Woodruff, Pastor of Aldrin’s Webster Presbyterian Church in Texas, allowing the astronaut to celebrate his blessings with bread and wine: “This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”

Aldrin’s actions were not without controversy. Certain non-believers had vehemently protested the recitation of verses from the book of
Genesis
by the
Apollo 8
crew the previous Christmas Eve. Renowned atheist, Madalyn Murray, subsequently filed suit against NASA. The clergy and members of Webster Presbyterian Church, however, were honored—the church has since used Aldrin’s chalice to celebrate an annual
Lunar Communion,
on the Sunday closest to July 20
^th
.

Neil Armstrong, whose religious beliefs were a private matter, remained detached from his crewmate’s ceremony: “He told me he planned a little celebratory Communion, and he asked if I had any problems with that, and I said, ‘No, go right ahead.’ I had plenty of things to keep busy with. I just let him do his own thing.”

The
Apollo 11
astronauts were originally scheduled for a four-hour rest period prior to walking on the Moon. Far too excited to sleep, Armstrong and Aldrin received permission from Mission Control to move forward with the lunar excursion.

“Telling us to try to sleep before the
EVA (extra vehicular activity)
was like telling kids on Christmas morning they had to stay in bed until noon,” Aldrin explained.

It took over four hours for the astronauts to complete their pre-EVA checklists. Conditions inside the lunar module were cramped, as Aldrin later recalled: “We felt like two fullbacks trying to change positions inside a Cub Scout pup tent.”

Armstrong and Aldrin were already dressed in spandex and nylon
lunar underwear
equipped with 300 feet of plastic tubing to circulate water and maintain proper body temperature control. Their external spacesuits, also known as extravehicular mobility units (EMU), constructed by
ILC Dover,
were designed to withstand the extreme lunar temperature fluctuations (+ 260 degrees to – 273 degrees Fahrenheit) and to protect against the impact of rock specks called
micrometeoroids.
At the same time, the spacesuit was designed to afford the astronauts with mobility while walking on the lunar surface. The seamstresses at
ILC Dover
had stitched, glued, and cemented together 22 layers of
Nomex, Neoprene-coated
nylon,
Beta
cloth (a fiberglass type material, coated with
Teflon),
and
Mylar
to create durable and functional spacesuits, costing $100,000.00 each.

After donning their bulky spacesuits, Armstrong and Aldrin disconnected themselves from
Eagle’s
life support systems, becoming totally dependent on their portable life support system (PLSS) backpacks. The bulky units, developed by
Hamilton Standard Company,
provided the astronauts with a temperate atmosphere during their lunar excursion. The PLSS supplied oxygen, maintained appropriate body pressure, supplied water to keep the astronauts’ bodies climate controlled, and housed communication equipment. A separate, smaller pack, worn on their chests, contained a pump for the water-cooling system, a fan for oxygen circulation, a communications switch, and in Armstrong’s case, a camera mount.

The astronauts’ helmets were equipped with tinted visors to ward off the Sun’s ultraviolet rays; a necessity, since the Moon has no protective atmospheric layer of its own. Armstrong and Aldrin wore special boots to promote traction on the yet unknown texture of the lunar surface. The combined weight of the spacesuit and PLSS was 180 pounds, but with lunar gravitational forces less than 1/6
^th
of the Earth’s, the extra load was equivalent to only 30 pounds.

Before stepping foot on the lunar surface, the astronauts vented oxygen from the LM’s cabin. Once the cabin was depressurized and the hatch opened, seven hours after landing, Commander Neil Armstrong was ready to make history.

Aldrin helped his crewmate, who was encumbered by his bulky space suit and PLSS, negotiate passage through the narrow hatch. On his hands and knees, Armstrong backed his way out the hatch onto the
porch,
a small platform at the top of the descent ladder.

As he began to step backwards down the ladder, Armstrong pulled a lanyard, releasing the modularized equipment stowage assembly (MESA)—a workbench and storage area at the base of the lunar module. The MESA housed a black and white television camera aimed at the foot of the ladder, which was programed to record Armstrong’s historic first steps. At the bottom of the ladder, Armstrong jumped three feet down to the footpad, located just inches above the lunar surface.

“I’m at the foot of the ladder. The LM footpads are depressed in the surface about one or two inches,” Armstrong reported, “The surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It’s almost like powder.”

As 500,000,000 people, 1/15
^th
of the world’s population, watched on television, Armstrong was poised to make history: “I’m going to step off the LM now…”

At 9:56:20 p.m., Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the Moon, announcing to the world: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Armstrong, who had not shared his planned statement in advance, later recalled the sentence did not come out exactly as he had hoped. In the excitement of the moment, he had left out one word
,
having planned to say: “That’s one small step for
a
man, one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong, alone, was aware of the omission, and his prosaic description of the historic moment seemed most fitting.

“Armstrong is on the Moon. Neil Armstrong, 38-year-old American, standing on the surface of the Moon!” Walter Cronkite exclaimed to
CBS
viewers, as the camera mounted on the MESA delivered a clear image of the monumental first steps.

“Isn’t this something? 240,000 miles out there, and we’re seeing this!” Cronkite excitedly reported.

Armstrong’s boots lightly penetrated the lunar soil: “The surface is fine and powdery…I can see the footprints of my boots.”

Armstrong immediately inspected the area at the base of lunar module: “The descent engine did not leave a crater of any size. It has about one-foot clearance on the ground. We’re essentially on a very level place, here,” he reported.

Before exploring his new environment, Armstrong used his contingency sampler to scoop up a small amount of lunar soil, which he placed in a Teflon bag and then stored in the pocket on one leg of his space suit. The hastily gathered contingency sample would be available if the
Apollo 11
mission was suddenly aborted, before the crew could gather more soil and rocks.

Armstrong began to walk away from the lunar module, adjusting his gait to match the reduced gravity and accommodate the bulkiness of his spacesuit. With its diameter smaller than Earth’s, the Moon’s planetoid curve was more visible, and Armstrong had to watch where he was walking, keeping his eyes several steps ahead, to keep from falling. After establishing his “lunar legs,” the mission commander ventured as far as 60 yards away from the lunar module, while examining the neighboring
East Crater.

Armstrong described the lunar topography: “It has a stark beauty of its own. It’s much like the high desert of the United States.”

Buzz Aldrin waited patiently inside the lunar module, biding his time and taking repeated photographs of the lunar surface. Nineteen minutes after Armstrong’s descent, it was Aldrin’s turn.

“Okay. Are you ready for me to come out?” Aldrin radioed his crewmate.

“All set. Okay. You saw what difficulties I was having (clearing the hatch). I’ll try to watch your PLSS from underneath here,” Armstrong replied.

Standing near the base of the lunar module, Armstrong carefully photographed his crewmate’s painstaking descent. Once he was on the porch, Aldrin paused: “Okay. Now, I want to go back up and partially close the hatch, making sure not to lock it on my way out.”

“A pretty good thought,” Armstrong chuckled.

“That’s our home for the next couple of hours, and we want to take care of it,” Aldrin emphasized; an important point, as outside of the hatch did not have a handle, and if the door had sealed shut, the astronauts would have been stranded on the lunar surface.

Armstrong watched Aldrin gradually back down the ladder: “You’ve got three more steps and then a long one.”

After Buzz Aldrin’s feet touched the lunar surface, he shared his observations with the world: “Beautiful view.”

“Isn’t that something? Magnificent sight out here,” Armstrong replied.

“Magnificent desolation,” Aldrin spontaneously exclaimed.

Armstrong placed his gloved hand on Aldrin’s shoulder: “Isn’t it fun?”

Aldrin carefully surveyed the barren terrain: “I felt buoyant and full of goose pimples when I stepped down on the surface. I immediately looked down at my feet, and became intrigued with the peculiar properties of lunar dust. If one kicks sand on a beach, it scatters in numerous directions, with some grains traveling farther than others. On the Moon, dust travels exactly and precisely as it goes in various directions, and every grain of it lands nearly the same distance away.”

The astronauts spied Earth in the distant sky. With a reflective power four times greater than the Moon, and a reflective surface area 13 times as large, the home planet was a majestic sight.

Aldrin later recalled the scenic vista: “The shadows and sky were as black as the blackest velvet I had ever seen.” He also practiced his lunar gait: “One of my tests was to jog away from the LM to see how maneuverable an astronaut was on the surface. I remembered what Isaac Newton had taught us two centuries before—mass and weight are not the same. I weighed only 60 pounds, but my mass was the same as it was on Earth. Inertia was a problem. I had to plan ahead several steps to bring myself to a stop or turn, without falling.”

Possessing little time for reflection, Armstrong and Aldrin quickly set to work completing their numerous assigned tasks, retrieving the necessary equipment from the storage bins in the MESA. As Aldrin fed cable to him from the base of the lunar module, Armstrong set up a color television camera 50 feet away.

Most of the astronauts’ activity occurred within 100 feet of the LM. By the end of the lunar excursion, the pair had collected 48 pounds of rock and soil. Hammering their lunar rocks core sampler tube eight to nine inches into the Moon’s surface, Armstrong and Aldrin were able to retrieve subterranean samples to go along with their growing above ground rock and soil collection. The astronauts also deployed the passive seismic experiment package (PSEP), designed to monitor the intensity of
Moonquakes
and measure the seismographic impact of meteor strikes on the lunar surface. A laser-ranging retro reflector (LRRR) was also erected; the two by two feet mirror reflected laser beams from Earth, allowing scientists to calculate the exact distance from Earth to the Moon. The pair also conducted a solar wind composition (SWC) experiment, whereby a thin layer of aluminum foil was used to entrap the noble gases, like helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon, all of which were active components of the solar wind. The foil sheet was ultimately transported back to Earth for detailed study.

At 10:47 p.m., Armstrong and Aldrin interrupted their work to receive a special call, patched through by Mission Control: “Neil and Buzz, the President of the United States is in his office now, and would like say a few words to you. Over.”

“That would be an honor,” Armstrong replied.

“Go ahead, Mr. President. This is Houston. Out,” Cap Com announced.

“Neil and Buzz, I am talking by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made from the White House. I just can’t tell you how proud we all are of what you have done for every American. This has to be the proudest day of our lives. And, for people all over the world, I am sure they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become part of man’s world. And, as you talk to us from the
Sea of Tranquility,
it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all people on this Earth are truly one—one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.”