Polskie Forum Astronautyczne
Artykuły o tematyce astronautycznej => Artykuły astronautyczne => Wątek zaczęty przez: Orionid w Kwietnia 20, 2019, 23:34
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50 years later, Apollo 11's Michael Collins is still 'Carrying the Fire'
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April 18, 2019 — Four years after he orbited the moon alone during humanity's first lunar landing mission, Michael Collins brought everyone back on Earth along for the ride.
In his 1973 book, "Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys," Collins set out to share what it was like "up there." And by all accounts, he succeeded. "Carrying the Fire" is wildly considered one of, if not the best of the astronaut-authored memoirs.
In his original preface, Collins observed that the few years that had passed since the Apollo 11 mission had given him some perspective about how flying in space had changed his life. Now, five decades after his journey (http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-041319a-destination-moon-seattle-apollo.html) with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, Collins has revisited "Carrying the Fire," penning a new foreword for a 50th anniversary edition of the book (https://www.amazon.com/Carrying-Fire-Astronauts-Journeys-Anniversary-dp-0374537763/dp/0374537763/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1555614761&linkCode=sl1&tag=collectspace&linkId=841397c633497f94a526ad7aad9c97f6&language=en_US).
When he chose the title for the book, "Carrying the Fire" was a reference to the care taken when carrying out a successful space mission. ("How would you carry fire? Carefully.") Fifty years later, the phrase has taken on a second meaning, provided what he wrote continues to resonate with new and old readers alike.
Collins has traded his role of carrying the technical fire of spaceflight to carrying the emotions and inspiration that it evokes.
collectSPACE recently caught up with Collins to talk about "carrying the fire" 50 years later.
collectSPACE (cS): In your 1973 preface you wrote about how the years that had passed since Apollo 11 allowed you to gain some perspective on how flying in space changed your life. You also wrote that the time allowed you to gain some insight into what non-astronauts find interesting. So with the benefit of now 50 years, were you to sit down to write "Carrying the Fire" today, how would what you wrote then have changed now?
Michael Collins: You know, I haven't read "Carrying the Fire" in a long, long time, so I have a suspicion that if I went back through it, I would find things that either were wrong or I'd no longer quite agree with. But I think by and large, it's endured fairly well from what I have gathered and what other people have said.
I'm proud of "Carrying the Fire" in that at the time that I wrote it and for a long time after, it was the only astronaut's book that had not been ghostwritten. And I like that. That is an enduring quality that it has, for better or for worse. But I like the fact that, for a while at least, it was unique in that everybody else was turning to some professional writer, which ends up with a better product in a way, but not quite as personal a product in some other ways. So I'm fundamentally okay with "Carrying the Fire" as it was written.
cS: This is not the first anniversary edition of "Carrying the Fire." In 2009, a 40th anniversary edition was also released, with a new foreword by you. Your new introduction for the 50th anniversary edition is noticeably longer than the one you wrote 10 years ago...
Collins: That's the verbosity of old age! (laughs)
cS: ...but beyond that characteristic, what has transpired over the past decade that inspired you to expand on some of the same topics, for instance about Mars being a destination for human exploration?
Collins: I always used to joke that they sent me to the wrong place. The moon is far less interesting than Mars, NASA should've been renamed the National Aeronautics and Mars Administration and, and so on. And you know, as time goes by, I think I helped — I'm not sure whether Flash Gordon ever went to Mars, I think he prowled around in the caverns of Mongo, and I was with him then.
In the back of my mind, I've always thought we should do something about this impetus human beings have to look up into the night sky with wonder and then to wonder if they couldn't maybe set foot up there somewhere. And of course the moon is just right there. You have to look at it whether you want to pay attention to it or not. But Mars, to me, has always been more fascinating.
As we get closer to having a capability (http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-032619a-pence-astronauts-moon-2024.html) to reach Mars, then it sort of takes over. When I think of space, the two words that come to mind are outward bound. I think humanity has this innate curiosity. It wants to go outward bound. Mars is there, Mars is getting closer, Mars is becoming a more practical destination, so Mars has taken over my thinking and my writing.
cS: On that subject of going to Mars, one subject that you touch on in both your new and original prefaces is the idea of luck, and how luck landed you in the right place and right time to be on that first moon landing mission. If you could control that luck and some of that timing, would you trade being on the first moon landing crew for being on the first Mars crew?
Collins: If I could rewrite history, I'd much prefer to be on the first Mars crew. I definitely would hope that the first Mars crew would be on a round trip and not a one-way deal. (laughs)
If it were a one-way deal, ooh, I may change my mind on that, but if I could be on the first crew to go to Mars and then return safely to Earth, yeah sure, I'd swap anything for that.
cS: Are you surprised that "Carrying the Fire" has had the lasting effect it has had, in terms of crossing over generations and remaining what many consider the best written astronaut book (http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-040919a-james-donovan-shoot-moon-apollo11.html) out there?
Collins: I think books, in general, are little gems. They hide away on the shelves in libraries for a decade but then some young kid will pluck one out by mistake perhaps and dig into it and find something in there that he or she didn't know. So I'm a big fan of books.
So if "Carrying the Fire" has a worthy place in that sort of thinking, I'm very happy that it has endured. Not because "Carrying the Fire" is so great, but because it is a book and books are great.
cS: The audience that will read the 50th anniversary edition — other than those who have already picked up previous editions and are picking up this latest version to celebrate the anniversary — is going to be, statistically, people who were not alive for Apollo 11. How do you think your story will resonate differently from the original audience you wrote it for, who were people who had lived through both your Gemini 10 and Apollo 11 missions and watched them unfold from the Earth? Now it will be read by an audience that only knows your missions and that era of spaceflight from history.
Collins: I don't know. I have a friend and he didn't know anything about the first moon landing until long after it'd happened. And he's a smart man. The reason he didn't know anything about it in 1969 was he was in Vietnam, out in the middle of a rice paddy without access to that kind of information.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though people were alive and reading the newspaper and watching TV in 1969, I was writing to them with what fundamentally was a strange, alien, kind of thing — a voyage away from everything that they knew about. I was a stranger writing about strange stuff. So even though they might have read about it in the newspaper, they didn't have a feeling for it.
And that strangeness has permeated and intensified today with a generation who has every right not to know anything about it because they weren't born yet. But it's just a gradual change and not a dramatic shift in the audience. The people who I was writing for back in 1973 are pretty much like the same people today. Some are interested in space, some are not, and some know a bit about it, but most don't.
The 50th anniversary edition of Michael Collins' "Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys (https://www.amazon.com/Carrying-Fire-Astronauts-Journeys-Anniversary-dp-0374537763/dp/0374537763/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1555614761&linkCode=sl1&tag=collectspace&linkId=841397c633497f94a526ad7aad9c97f6&language=en_US)" was released on April 16, 2019 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Source: http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-041819a-collins-carrying-fire-apollo-50th.html
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First on the Moon: Looking Back on the Apollo 11 Decision, 50 Years On
By Ben Evans, on April 21st, 2019 [AS]
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Fifty years ago, this month, after detailed simulations and planning, NASA made a decision that Neil Armstrong (left) would become the first human to set foot on the Moon. His Apollo 11 crewmate Buzz Aldrin (right) would follow shortly afterwards. Photo Credit: NASA
Five decades ago, in the first half of 1969, the United States space program was consumed by a single, over-arching goal: to plant American boots on the Moon, by year’s end. It was to be the culmination of a national directive from the late President John F. Kennedy (https://www.americaspace.com/2016/05/28/not-because-they-are-easy-55-years-since-the-speech-which-committed-america-to-the-moon-part-1/), made in May 1961 in response to the Soviet Union’s successful launch of the first man into space (https://www.americaspace.com/2014/04/12/poyekhali-remembering-our-first-space-voyager-part-1/). In Kennedy’s words, the United States was to achieve a manned landing on the lunar surface, “before this decade is out”, and in spite of a multitude of technical troubles and human tragedies—most notably the loss of the three Apollo 1 astronauts during a “plugs-out” launch pad test (https://www.americaspace.com/2019/01/27/isnt-that-enough-remembering-grissom-white-and-chaffee-fallen-crew-of-apollo-1/)—significant strides had occurred to bring the goal closer. In December 1968 (https://www.americaspace.com/2018/12/16/why-complicate-it-remembering-apollo-8-50-years-on-part-1/), Americans had flown around the Moon for the first time and only weeks later the complete Apollo spacecraft had been trialed in Earth orbit (https://www.americaspace.com/2019/02/24/not-supposed-to-happen-remembering-apollo-9-50-years-on-part-1/).
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In this training image of Neil Armstrong aboard the Lunar Module (LM) simulator, the smallness of the cabin for two fully-suited astronauts is amply illustrated. Photo Credit: NASA
In January 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin were assigned to Apollo 11, which was looking to be a likely contender to execute humanity’s first manned landing on the Moon in July. Of those three men, Armstrong and Aldrin would pilot the spider-like Lunar Module (LM) down to the surface and perform a single session of Extravehicular Activity (EVA). But the question on everyone’s lips in early 1969 was who would take the first steps on alien soil. Although the “decision” itself is difficult to date precisely, it is generally believed that by April—50 years ago, this month—Armstrong, as Apollo 11 commander, had been earmarked to perform those historic steps and, in doing so, become one of the most famous people the world has ever known.
For his part, Mike Collins labeled the crew as “amiable strangers”, arriving for training separately, going to lunch separately, talking only of mission-related matters and acting in some ways like passing acquaintances. Armstrong’s reserved nature juxtaposed sharply against Aldrin’s upfront confidence and Collins’ gregariousness, but during their six months of training for Apollo 11 a number of issues did arise, including the question of who—Armstrong or Aldrin—would be first onto the lunar surface. When queried by a member of the press in January 1969, Armstrong diplomatically handed the question over to his boss, Deke Slayton, who responded that the decision had not yet been made.
One of the key factors in Slayton’s mind was that further simulations in the cabin of the LM simulator were necessary to better inform the decision. Armstrong added that the choice depended on how best to execute the timeline on the surface, rather than an individual desire to be first, but he did reveal in those early remarks the whoever did emerge onto the surface first would be walking on the Moon for about 45 minutes before the second man came out. All told, it was expected that humanity’s first walk on the Moon would last about 2.5 hours.
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In this view captured by Neil Armstrong from the lunar surface, the smallness of the square hatch posed an added obstacle for the fully-suited astronauts. Photo Credit: NASA
In his biography of Armstrong, First Man, James Hansen noted there was “no doubt” in Aldrin’s mind, at least early in 1969, that he would be first. Aldrin’s rationale stemmed from a precedent established during the Gemini program, in which the command pilot remained inside the spacecraft and the pilot went EVA. Some journalists shared this view, and even NASA associate administrator George Mueller was quoted as declaring that Aldrin, as Lunar Module Pilot (LMP), would go outside first. This situation changed shortly after Apollo 9 returned to Earth in March 1969 and rumor began to spread that Armstrong would be first. Reasons for the choice, which appears to have been set in stone from April onwards, are numerous and complex and have aroused great debate over the years.
One of the earliest and, for Aldrin, perhaps most denigrating to his parent service, the U.S. Air Force, was that Armstrong was a civilian and received the coveted spot as first on the Moon because NASA—a civilian government entity—did not want the military to “blight” humanity’s first footsteps. At the time, America was embroiled in the maelstrom of Vietnam, although Aldrin had not served in any formal military capacity since joining the astronaut corps in October 1963 and even Armstrong had flown combat missions as a naval aviator in Korea. In his memoir Men from Earth, Aldrin noted that he brought the matter up with Armstrong and witnessed “a coolness I’d never seen in him before”, whereupon his commander accepted the historical significance of the first Moonwalk, but refused to rule himself out of consideration for making the first steps.
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Armstrong’s first step on the Moon in July 1969 made him one of the most famous humans who ever lived. Photo Credit: NASA
Aldrin’s reasoning for being first was valid and technical, based upon procedures and checklist demands. It was part of his job to plan the lunar surface activity and he reckoned that with Armstrong would have his hands full with the landing. Why, pondered Aldrin, should he also be saddled with the demands of suiting up first and plunging into the physiological intensity of the Moonwalk? Aldrin, of course, already had EVA experience—from his Gemini XII mission in November 1966 (https://www.americaspace.com/2016/11/06/chimpanzee-work-50-years-since-nasa-closed-out-project-gemini-part-2/)—and he was acutely aware of its difficulties and the idiosyncrasies of the space suit. Armstrong was also no fitness fanatic; during his Gemini VIII training (https://www.americaspace.com/2014/03/16/tumbling-end-over-end-the-trauma-of-gemini-viii-part-2/), as his crewmate Dave Scott pumped iron in the gym, Armstrong put the exercise bike on its lowest possible setting and pedaled slowly, observing that a man had only a finite number of heartbeats and it was best not to waste them.
In his landmark book A Man on the Moon, historian Andrew Chaikin wrote that other Apollo commanders rolled their eyes and gritted their teeth in the face of Aldrin’s lobbying. Many of them were naval officers and turned to their seafaring traditions for a solution. “The Gemini precedent” of the pilot doing the EVA, wrote Chaikin, “didn’t apply, because a lunar module sitting on the Moon wouldn’t be in flight: it would be in port. And as any naval officer knows, the protocol on such matters is clear. When a ship comes to port, the skipper is always first down the gangplank.” For his part, Deke Slayton made a similar point, stressing that Armstrong was the senior astronaut and should go first.
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One of only a handful of images of Neil Armstrong at work on the lunar surface. Photo Credit: NASA
Over the years, Aldrin argued that his motives were misinterpreted and the actual outcome bothered him less than the need to reach a decision, one way or the other. In Hansen’s biography of Armstrong, Aldrin is quoted as admitting that it would have been “inappropriate” for him, the junior member of the Apollo 11 crew, to hae gone outside first, uttered the famous first words and gathered the priceless first lunar specimens, observed mutely from inside the LM by his commander.
Still, it is not difficult to speculate that the input of Aldrin’s father may have also been a contributory factor. When he first described the process of “egress” to his father, the older Aldrin reacted with surprising anger, threatened to “do something about it” and indeed tried to pull strings among his high-level friends at NASA and the Pentagon to get the plan reversed. Aldrin Senior, wrote Deke Slayton in his memoir Deke, co-authored with spaceflight historian Michael Cassutt, “just couldn’t seem to leave well enough alone”.
At length, the decision came down to pure practicality. The interior of the LM was only about the size of a broom closet and its square hatch opened inwards, hinged on its right-side edge. This required the astronaut on the right-hand side of the cabin—Aldrin—to pull it open and stand back in his corner, whilst the commander got down on hands and knees and reversed himself through the hatch, onto the tiny porch to prepare to descend the nine-rung ladder to the surface. For Aldrin to go first would require the two men to swap places in the cabin; a difficult act, given that both would be wearing space suits and backpacks. When faced with the risk of accidentally hitting a switch or circuit breaker, it was safer to go with the design and let Armstrong go first.
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Labeled “amiable strangers” by Mike Collins (center), the Apollo 11 crew was diverse in its personalities, with Collins’ gregariousness juxtaposed against the upfront confidence of Buzz Aldrin (right) and the calm unflappable Neil Armstrong (left). Photo Credit: NASA
Finally, on 14 April 1969, a press conference at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, Texas, presided over by George Low, head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, revealed that Armstrong would be first to step onto the Moon. Next day, an editorial cartoon showed the two men opening the hatch immediately after landing as confused Alphonse and Gaston characters: both politely offering the other the chance to go first, whilst at the same time discreetly muscling their way ahead of each other.
Humor aside, stories abounded (including one by a disgruntled public affairs officer) which claimed that Armstrong had “pulled rank” and demanded that he be first on the Moon. This was a point endorsed by Mike Collins in his autobiography, Carrying the Fire: “Neil ignored [original plans] and exercised his commander’s prerogative to crawl out first.” Such stories garnered sufficient public interest for George Low himself to admit that preliminary studies several years earlier, had called for the LMP to go first, but that simulations and planning eventually fell in favor of the commander. Buzz Aldrin has argued that he was fine with the decision, although other astronauts, engineers and managers have said otherwise. Mike Collins, for one, recounted a distinct element of melancholy and coolness in the air immediately after the announcement. And this, it would seem, was a final nail in the coffin for Aldrin being first on the Moon.
Years later, Chris Kraft, who was in 1969 head of flight operations at the MSC, spoke candidly about the fact that Armstrong was the best choice to take the historic first step, simply because he had no ego. The first man on the Moon would be remembered forever as the Charles Lindbergh of his generation, “a hero…beyond any soldier or politician or inventor”, and it was Armstrong’s very lack of ego, his calmness under duress, his quietness, his understated confidence and his desire not to put himself in the spotlight of fame and attention made him the perfect choice and the best ambassador for humanity.
Source: https://www.americaspace.com/2019/04/21/first-on-the-moon-looking-back-on-the-apollo-11-decision-50-years-on/
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Jednej rzeczy nie rozumiem, czemu wyszedl pierwszy Amstrong? Mamy w obcym terenie statek
z jednym pilotem i ryzykujemy wlasnie nim? Dziwne. Ryzyko powinien poniesc Buzz,
gdyby cos sie stalo Amstrong spokojnie moglby odleciec. Nie bylaby to kompletna
kleska. Nawet gdyby Buzzowi tylko cos sie stalo, to zawsze jest jeszcze opcja, ze pilot
moze go uratowac i odleciec. Z powazaniem
Adam Przybyla
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A reluctant No. 2: Buzz Aldrin among first to walk on the moon
Alex Stuckey April 25, 2019 Updated: April 25, 2019 11:26 a.m. [houstonchronicle.com]
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Astronaut Edwin Buzz Aldrin, shown here prior to the launch of Apollo 11 from Kennedy Space Center on July 20, 1969, was featured in the film “Apollo 11” by Todd Douglas Miller, who worked with newly discovered footage from the NARA and NASA.Photo: courtesy of Neon CNN Films. Photo of Alex Stuckey
MISSION MOON (https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/space/mission-moon/): Nearly 50 years have passed since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. Our special Apollo 50 anniversary coverage (https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/space/mission-moon/) explores how the country came together to fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s goal of reaching the lunar surface by 1970, NASA's bold missions - and crippling tragedies - since that historic day, and the future of space exploration and Houston as America's "Space City. (https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/space/mission-moon/)”
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Buzz Aldrin is nearly impossible to miss when he walks into a room.
That’s partly because he was the second man to walk on the moon — an achievement that not only landed him in the history books but resulted in guest appearances on popular shows including “The Big Bang Theory,” “The Simpsons,” “Futurama” and a spot on “Dancing With the Stars” in 2010. He even inspired the character of Buzz Lightyear in Pixar’s blockbuster “Toy Story.”
But he’s also, well, eccentric: the moon-boot-print lapel pin, the solar system rings, the alien-face bracelet, the watch on each wrist.
His outfit of choice appears to be a space-themed shirt tucked tightly into his jeans, often held up by American flag suspenders. During the Explorers Club Annual Dinner in March, the other living Apollo astronauts wore black tuxedos. Aldrin showed up in a silver tuxedo, tiny black rockets splashed across nearly every inch of the shiny fabric.
“I guess I didn’t get the black tuxedo memo,” he tweeted proudly.
He has lived life in the spotlight ever since he piloted the Apollo 11 lunar module to the moon on July 20, 1969, following astronaut Neil Armstrong to the surface. That day, he became the second of just 12 men to step foot on a celestial body he famously described as “magnificent desolation.”
Those who know Aldrin say he’s brilliant. A rocket scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a fighter pilot during the Korean War, he developed a way to get to Mars in 1985.
But his life has been anything but easy. After returning from the moon, he battled alcoholism and depression, went through several divorces and was so broke that at one point he sold cars.
Most recently, in 2018, two of Aldrin’s three children filed for guardianship. He turned around and sued them, along with his business manager, saying they had taken control of his credit cards, bank accounts and space memorabilia. Those cases have since been dismissed.
“This was the most charitable way to manage a difficult situation, as this year, which marks 50 years since we first step(ped) foot on the moon, is too important to my family, the nation and me,” Aldrin, now 89, said in a statement on Twitter in early March.
But Aldrin has not given up on the future of space, spending his days advocating for a human mission to Mars, NASA and space exploration in general.
And as the 50th anniversary approaches, he’s one of just four moonwalkers still alive.
“How am I feeling? Well, considering, I’m glad to feel anything,” Aldrin joked during an interview with the Houston Chronicle in April.
Becoming Buzz
Aldrin’s love of flight can be traced to his father, a U.S. Air Force colonel, who took little Buzz into the skies for the first time at the age of 2.
“Certainly, some people are born with innovation in their veins. I think I was,” Aldrin wrote in his book, “No Dream Is Too High,” published in 2016, noting that “something inside me responded far beyond what my father might have imagined.”
Aldrin attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York, earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He became an Air Force pilot, flying 66 combat missions during the Korean War. He returned home and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he eventually earned his doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics in 1963.
Inspired by Ed White — a classmate at West Point whom NASA selected as an astronaut in 1962 — Aldrin applied to be an astronaut. He was denied the first time because he wasn’t a test pilot.
He applied again, and in 1963, he joined the agency’s third class of astronauts. Three years later, in November 1966, he flew on the four-day Gemini 12 flight with Jim Lovell. The final flight of the Gemini program was designed to conduct three spacewalks, among other things.
Aldrin set the world record for spacewalks during that flight, staying outside the capsule for more than five hours.
Embracing ‘second’
By January 1969, the world knew who would be the first astronauts to head to the moon: Aldrin, Armstrong and astronaut Michael Collins.
For a time, Aldrin was to leave the first boot prints there. But then NASA changed its mind. Armstrong would be the first out of the spacecraft.
And so it was. On July 20, 1969, 600 million people — a fifth of the world’s population — watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history. Armstrong stepped out first. Then Aldrin. Collins piloted the command module in the moon’s orbit so that the trio could return safely to Earth.
Who’s No. 2?
Those who finish first get all the attention, but here’s a list of 10 prominent No. 2s:
2nd U.S. President: John Adams
2nd U.S. state: Pennsylvania
World’s 2nd-longest river: Amazon
2nd-largest continent: Africa
2nd Greek letter: Beta
2nd Zodiac sign: Taurus
2nd person to circumnavigate the globe: Sir Francis Drake
2nd person to fly solo across the Atlantic: Amelia Earhart
2nd person to go into space: Russian cosmonaut Gherman Stepanovich Titov
2nd “Star Wars” movie to be released: “The Empire Strikes Back”
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins returned home to ticker-tape parades, a worldwide tour and unfathomable fame. Armstrong and Collins largely stayed out of the limelight.
Aldrin, on the other hand, did not.
“Truth is, for years, I bristled at my notoriety, being known as ‘the second man on the moon,’” Aldrin wrote. But “eventually, I came to embrace the fact that Neil was the first man on the moon and I was ‘second,’ and that my position was not insignificant.”
These days, Aldrin still offers input on space-related issues. He’s on an advisory group for President Donald Trump’s National Space Council and continues to advocate for his plan to put humans on Mars — to stay.
But he knows that, as he pushes 90 years old, he can only do so much to change the course of the country’s space-exploration plans. And he’s largely OK with that.
“They used to call this an armchair quarterback or an armchair lawyer,” Aldrin told the Chronicle in April. “And now I’m an armchair Buzz Lightyear.”
Alex Stuckey is the NASA and science reporter for the Chronicle. Stuckey won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for her work on a project examining the rampant mishandling of sexual assault reports at Utah colleges while working for The Salt Lake Tribune. She is an Investigative Reporters and Editors award winner and a Livingston Award Finalist. She has won a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence in Public Service Journalism and a Frank A. Blethen Award for Local Accountability Reporting. She also has won a Society of Professional Journalists Don Baker Investigative Reporting Award.
An Ohio native, Stuckey has lived in five states since graduating from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism in 2012. She is an avid runner, bookworm and lover of elephants. She shares a birthday with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (girl power!) and the late Alan Bean, fourth man to walk on the moon.
Source: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/A-reluctant-No-2-Buzz-Aldrin-among-first-to-13782711.php
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What “First Man” Gets Fabulously Right About NASA: An Interview with Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden [Discover] (1)
By Corey S. Powell | October 13, 2018
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Neil Armstrong (left) as portrayed by Ryan Gosling in First Man (Credit: Universal)
First Man is not like other movies about the space race, and I mean that in a very good way.
I’ll admit, I was skeptical about the director of La La Land telling the story of Neil Armstrong’s historic landing on the Moon. (Would there be songs? A scowling J.K. Simmons?) It turns out to be a synergistic pairing of artist and material. First Man brushes aside the expected saga of space cowboys saddling up their steel horses, delivering instead a moving narrative of NASA’s glory days as seen through Armstrong’s eyes.
That’s an especially impressive achievement given Armstrong’s famously private and controlled personality. Director Damien Chazelle and actor Ryan Gosling (as Armstrong) use that reticence to their advantage, examining the personal, emotional, and intellectual rigor that made the Apollo 11 triumph possible. It all adds up to a nerve-wracking and fabulously engrossing story, but at times I wondered how closely it aligned with reality. So I spoke with Al Worden (http://www.alworden.com/), the Command Module pilot on Apollo 15, who knew Armstrong and also served as a technical advisor on the film. Worden strongly validated the authenticity of First Man. He also offered a lot of unexpected insights along the way.
A lightly edited version of our conversation follows. It’s longer than my usual column, but I think you’ll find it well worth your time.
What your relationship was with Neil Armstrong like? I notice that he does not play a big role in your memoir, Falling to Earth.
Al Worden: I would say that Neil and I were good friends. I wasn’t his closest friend; I was so much further along in the [NASA] program that we really didn’t mingle much back then, but I got to know Neil afterwards. I think part of the reason we became friends was that I didn’t bug him.
Everybody was after Neil for something. When I was chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (https://astronautscholarship.org/), I wrote him a letter saying that we could really use his help to raise money. He wrote back, “I can’t do it because I’m spending all my time raising money for Purdue, but I appreciate your letter,” and so on. I wrote back and said, “That’s fine, I just wanted to know where you stood, I will never bother you again.” And I never did. After that we became pretty good friends, because I didn’t bug him. That’s the kind of guy he was.
First Man presents Neil almost as a Greta Garbo-like figure in the way he guarded his privacy. Was that a reasonable reaction to the media frenzy around the first Moon landing?
Oh yeah, absolutely. He was being pounded from all sides by everybody who wanted something from Neil Armstrong (https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/bios/neilabio.html). He had to be very careful what he did. He took a page from Charles Lindbergh’s book and kind of lived his life the way Lindbergh did, stayed out of the limelight. When he went out to do something, it was for something that was very important to him or to the country. I don’t think Neil ever marketed himself at all. He didn’t need to. Everybody knew who he was.
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The real Neil (left), suiting up for Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969; the movie Neil (right) gets his closeup. (Credit: NASA, Universal)
How well did Ryan Gosling capture what Neil Armstrong was really like in person?
Ryan did a superb job. In the movie, they make Neil a little more aloof than maybe he really was, but that’s a very fine line. It all depends on your perspective, on whether you knew him or not, on how you saw him. I wouldn’t say that Neil was aloof, but he was very self-contained—put it that way. If he had a problem, he didn’t expose everybody else to his problem.
Like in the movie, when he parachutes out of the LLTV (https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/LLTV-952.html) [the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle, a test version of the Apollo Lunar Module, which Neil crashed], he didn’t even tell his wife. He just went back to the office started working. That’s the kind of guy he was. He didn’t let those kind of things run his life. He just kept plodding along and doing the right thing. He was very unusual that way. With Gemini 8, when he hit all the problems (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/geminis-first-docking-turns-to-wild-ride-in-orbit) [the spacecraft entered a near-fatal spin during a docking test], I don’t think he talked with anybody about that except to explain to the people at NASA what went wrong and what needed to be done. Outside of that, he was back in his office, figuring out other things. That was Neil.
Was Neil’s reserved style frustrating to the PR people at NASA? Would they have preferred more of a cheerleader?
I don’t know. See, Neil was kind of an icon even when he was still in the program because he had been involved in situations that could have killed him. He walked through them and hardly ever blinked an eye. He was kind of a special guy even in the program.
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The iconic shot of Buzz Aldrin taken by Neil Armstrong on the Moon. You can see Neil in the visor reflection. (Credit: NASA)
Is that why Neil ended up as the first person to walk on the Moon?
People ask me about that, and I say it was kind of coincidental. You see, all of the crews for Apollos 10, 11, 12 ,13 were already picked and in their slots. Apollo 10 was the first flight around the Moon with the Lunar Module, setting up the stage to make a landing. Back in Houston, I don’t think we ever considered that Neil would actually be the guy to make the first landing, because the first time you try something like that something is bound to go wrong and you can’t make it. You got to get over whatever went wrong, fix it, and then the next up would be the guy to make it.
We were kind of betting on Pete Conrad [who ended up on Apollo 12] making the first landing. But Neil overcame all that (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neil-armstrong-apollo-11/) [the initial failure to find a suitable landing suite for his Lunar Module], took over manually, and landed that thing. He did what he had to do.
Were there any places where First Man took artistic liberties with the Neil Armstrong’s life?
I’m not sure there is any fictionalized part of the story. It follows Jim Hansen’s book (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/First-Man/James-R-Hansen/9780743281713) [also called First Man] pretty religiously, other than maybe portraying Neil as a little more aloof than he really was. I don’t know the inner workings between Neil and [his wife] Jan and the family; I wasn’t privy to that. What I got from the movie, and what I related to in Neil as a person, is that he was very dedicated and persevering in following his path, from flying the X-15 to the Gemini program to the Apollo program. He had his ups and downs, and of course he lost his daughter—that affected him greatly. If there is a difference between how the movie portrays him and what he really was, it’s very very small.
What about the closing scene with the bracelet? I’m pretty sure that was fictionalized. Right? [For spoiler reasons, I won’t say anything more about it.]
I can’t answer that. That is something that I just I just don’t know about, but I don’t believe it actually happened. I don’t think Neil took anything like that personally on the flight. [Update: The great CollectSpace web site has investigated the scene and uncovered some interesting details. You can read it here (http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-101518a-first-man-moon-mission-mystery.html). But again, this is a major spoiler for the movie, so I don’t recommend reading the article unless you’ve already seen the film.]
How about the broader depiction of astronaut culture of the 1960s? Did that ring true?
Yeah, that was all pretty good. There have been a lot of movies made about the [NASA astronaut] guys. You have to separate this one out, because First Man is not a story about space flight. It’s a story about a man, and space is kind of tangential to the real story. Apollo 13 was all about the flight. There were parts of Apollo 13 that I didn’t like because it wasn’t real. They made Jack Swigert look very guilty of causing the problem, and he wasn’t. He had nothing to do with it. I objected to that strongly. I did not think that was very fair. But by that time Jack had already died—so who cares? I remember asking Ron Howard why he did that, and he said it was for the audience. He had to put something in there to keep the audience’s interest.
Or I go back to The Right Stuff. The book that Tom Wolfe wrote was very different from the movie that they made out of it. I loved the book, and I knew Tom; I used to see him all the time. When they made the movie, they changed a lot of things. They made it kind of charade, a parody of what things were really like. Like the scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qYHZzoXZNc) where Gordon Cooper is driving [his wife] Trudy in a convertible back to Edwards and keeps asking her, “Who is the greatest pilot in the world?” Well come on! That’s movie nonsense. They did a whole scene at the Lovelace Clinic, and the way they portrayed it, that’s nonsense also.
So history does get rewritten in some of these movies, but First Man is pretty true to the book. It’s pretty much the way it was. I think Ryan Gosling played it perfectly. And Damien—for a guy as young as he is, he did a fabulous job on First Man.
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Al Worden (center) with this Apollo 15 crewmates, David Scott (left) and Jim Irwin. (Credit: NASA)
What kind of advice did you give to the filmmakers to keep things accurate?
They asked me to come to Atlanta while they were doing their stuff is a studio, and out in the field where they had converted an old stone quarry to a lunar surface. What I did, it was kind of like: Jim Hansen talks about the characters and about the men and about what they do—but then there are a lot of mechanical details that never appear in the book. For instance, you take for granted that there is an instrument panel, that there are three couches, and there’s a hatch, and all that. When you make a movie, you’ve got to show those things, and they’ve got to be right.
That’s where I came in. When they put the three astronauts in the spacecraft before launch, how do they get in? Who goes first? How do they strap them in? What kind of shoulder straps do they have? What kind of lap belts do they have? There has to be a transition from how you write the book to how you visually show these things to a movie audience. I helped them with those details.
Were you satisfied with the result?
They did a superb job. It was interesting comparing the inside-the-cockpit scenes in First Man to the inside-cockpit scenes in Apollo 13. In Apollo 13, Tom Hanks did most of those scenes in a zero-g airplane where they were actually floating around. Damien decided to do it with wires instead. We had all the guys wired up, and I was standing there laughing because I just couldn’t see how that would turn out to look like these guys were in freefall. Well, once they finished and you look at it, you say, “Oh my God. Yeah! That looks real!” The wires worked just as well as doing freefall. I found it fascinating.
First Man culminates with the first footsteps on the Moon, so I wanted to get your perspective as the other kind of lunar explorer—the one who stayed in orbit. When did you know that would be your role on Apollo 15, akin to Michael Collins’s role on Apollo 11?
We knew that very early on. When we had the [Apollo 1] fire (http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-disasters/apollo-1-fire/) at the Cape back in 1967, the emphasis was on the Command Module: fixing it and making sure that it was safe, putting a new hatch on it, taking all the flammable materials out of it. I probably knew more about the Command Module than anybody else in the program, so was kind of a foregone conclusion that if I got on a flight, it was going to be as Command Module pilot.
Were you disappointed when you realized you wouldn’t be walking on the Moon?
No, not at all. You have to understand what was going on in the program back then. I was on a professional career path to become a commander. In the [astronaut] program back in those days, generally speaking, the Command Module pilot was the one who would become a commander on a future flight. A Lunar Module pilot got to walk on the Moon but chances are, he was never going to become a commander. To me, I was in the right spot at the right time.
What’s happened since then is that once the media got into the act of showing all the videos and all the pictures of the guys on the surface, it became more important to the general public to see a guy walking on the Moon than to see some guy float around in orbit by himself. For the guy in orbit, there are no pictures, no videos, no nothing that show him, so he kind of gets lost in the shuffle. Mike Collins had the same problem on Apollo 11. It’s gotten to be a big deal about twelve guys walking on the Moon. Nobody ever mentions the six guys who were in lunar orbit.
But I didn’t mind it at all. It was such a different world back then in terms of career path than we have assumed through the media in the meantime. That was just the nature of the game.
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What “First Man” Gets Fabulously Right About NASA: An Interview with Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden (2)
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Al Worden carried out the most distant spacewalk ever–196,000 miles from Earth–during Apollo 15. (Credit: NASA)
What was that experience like, being the only human being in the universe in orbit around the Moon?
It’s pretty surreal. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I did a lot of visual observations, I did a lot of photography. I had a complete set of remote-sensing devices that I used to scan the lunar surface. I was very busy in lunar orbit, probably did a thousand times more science than they did on the surface. The guys who go down to the surface, they have one thing in mind. Their goal was to pick up every different color rock they can find and bring it back. In the meantime, I’m photographing 25 percent of the Moon’s surface! So there was there was a lot involved in what I did, but it wasn’t romantic like walking on the moon. I didn’t have the facilities with me to take any pictures inside. Well, I’m not a selfie kind of guy anyway.
The isolation was wonderful. I was raised in the Air Force as a single-seat fighter pilot, so I was used to being by myself. As a matter of fact, I preferred to be by myself, because I didn’t really want to be responsible for somebody else on the flight. I didn’t feel lonely. There’s a difference between being lonely and being alone; I was alone but I wasn’t lonely. The best part of the lunar flight for me in those three days [at the Moon] was when I was on the backside of the Moon, cut off from Houston mission control. I didn’t even have to talk to them. I was very comfortable there. I wrote a book of poetry about the flight back in the 1970s. It’s called Hello Earth (https://archive.org/details/HelloEarth).
The climactic scene of First Man reminds me of something that happened on your Apollo 15 mission, when Dave Scott placed the “Fallen Astronaut” statue on the Moon in memory of those who died in space exploration. Were you involved with that?
We talked about it in the crew, but I had nothing to do with the agreements made with Paul van Hoeydonck [the artist who created “Fallen Astronaut”]. Dave did that on his own. I knew about it and I knew we carried it on the flight, but I was not really involved. I got involved with Paul much later, because he had a falling out with Dave. There were a lot of things that happened, and I think a lot of people got disillusioned with Dave. Paul was one of them. [For a full account, see my article “The Sculpture on the Moon (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/12/sculpture_on_the_moon_paul_van_hoeydonck_s_fallen_astronaut.html?via=gdpr-consent).”]
Paul’s a good friend and a talented artist. The guy’s like ninety five years old and going strong! He’s amazing. I have two of his art pieces in my house down in Florida. The memorial — the little Fallen Astronaut and the plaque that went with it listing all of those who died in space–I think it’s wonderful. As a matter of fact, Paul asked me to come to Berlin next April because there’s is going to be a big showing of his artwork. The Fallen Astronaut is going to be the centerpoint of that.
What do you see as the future of human space exploration? Are you encouraged by all the current activity in private spaceflight?
I gotta tell you, there is only one commercial operator out there. There are lots of companies that are working towards doing something in space, but there is really only commercial company doing it, and that’s Blue Origin (https://www.blueorigin.com/new-glenn/). They’re the only one completely funded by the people in the company. Everybody else is relying on the government to pave the way. I keep thinking, what’s different about this than it was in the Apollo program when they paid North American to build the Command Module and they paid Grumman to build the Lunar Module? I don’t see a whole lot of difference, except that companies like SpaceX build their stuff without a lot of NASA oversight.
What’s your opinion about sending humans back to the Moon?
Going back to the Moon has only one value as far as I’m concerned, and that’s to put a crew there for a period of time to make sure we can live in a harsh environment like that–probably at the Moon’s south pole, where we think there’s water. The most spectacular thing we could do if we went back to the Moon would be to build the biggest radio telescope we could build on the lunar backside. I think that would be spectacular (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08941-8). It would give us a great shot at looking farther into the universe. Outside of that, I don’t see a whole lot of value in going back to the Moon. The Moon has no has no charm for me. If we’re going to Mars, there are better ways than going to the Moon first.
OK, so what would be your preferred path to Mars?
I happen to be a fan of Lagrange points (https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/754/what-is-a-lagrange-point/), especially L5. A perfect place to launch to Mars. It’s in a stable equilibrium point. You could send all kinds of small packages up there and assemble it without fear of drifting into the atmosphere. You could build a huge, huge spacecraft to go to Mars and back. The Orion is a mistake in my mind. It can’t go to Mars, even though they sold it on the basis of going to Mars. The Orion is good for four people for 20 days.
Mars could take a year and a half, so they’re going to have to do a whole different thing. It’s going to be very difficult, because not only do you have a year and a half in space, but you’re going to run into radiation that we’re not even sure today we could handle. Going to the Moon didn’t have the same kind of radiation danger.
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Armstrong nearly died during the May 1968 crash of his LLRV-1 training vehicle–but he brushed it off and went straight back to work. (Credit: NASA)
There was a special spirit at NASA in the 1960s. How do you compare it to what you see now?
In the days when I was in the program, it was very different than it is today in terms of the management, in terms of how decisions are made, in terms of the bureaucracy. We had a great program back then. There was no bureaucracy involved making decisions. Committees would talk over whatever had to be done and the chairman of the committee would then make a decision based on all that talk. We were all so goal-oriented that little problems along the way seemed pretty insignificant.
Neil Armstrong could work his way through all the problems that he had on the way to the lunar landing and still keep his mind on the ultimate goal, which was to land on the Moon. When the goal is so important, all those other things recede into the background. And I think that’s what made the program so successful back in those days. When we lost a crew in January of 1967, that didn’t stop the program. As a matter of fact, because we lost those three guys, it made that Apollo spacecraft safe enough so that every single flight after that was OK.
We found out some big problems that we had, got them corrected, and we kept on going–because the goal was so important.
Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2018/10/13/al-worden-on-first-man/#.XR0QOtSLTwc
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“Apollonauts” reflect on lunar landing and return to the moon
by Jeff Foust — July 11, 2019 [SN]
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Five of the "Apollonauts" who developed the Apollo Guidance Computer — Dan Lickly, Jim Kerner, Peter Kachmar, Peter Volante and Hugh Blair-Smith — pose with a model of the moon at Draper Labs to mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Credit: Draper
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The engineers who developed the computers that enabled the Apollo 11 lunar landing had little doubt the mission could be a success, and half a century later have advice for how NASA should return to the moon.
In the 1960s, the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory had a NASA contract to develop the Apollo Guidance Computer, one of the first portable digital real-time computers, used on both the command and lunar modules. Engineers took advantage of emerging technologies from that era, like integrated circuits, to develop a system that guided Apollo to the moon and to six successful landings on the lunar surface.
The facility, now known as Draper Laboratory and spun out after Apollo as a nonprofit organization, is marking the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 with a “Hack the Moon” exhibition recalling its role in developing the Apollo Guidance Computer. At a media event at its headquarters here July 9, several of the engineers — dubbed “Apollonauts” by Draper — discussed their experiences developing the computer.
While the Apollo Guidance Computer pressed the limits of technology of the era, with the added constraints of schedule and size, those involved in the program said they never doubted they would be successful.
“The landing was kind of a nail-biter, but I don’t think anybody thought we weren’t going to do it,” recalled Peter Kachmar, a rendezvous engineer who still works at Draper today supporting work on the Trident missile’s guidance system. “Whatever we set our minds to do at the lab, we can do. I had always felt it was going to be successful.”
That confidence, though, didn’t mean development of the computer and its software was without problems. While advanced for its time, the computer had only 36,000 words, or 72 kilobytes, of memory. “That’s why we rolled mission phases in and out, but they caused errors,” said Margaret Hamilton, who led the team that developed the software for the computer.
One such example, she recalled, was something her young daughter discovered playing with a model of the computer. Inputting commands to start a pre-launch program while in the middle of the mission caused the computer to crash. She then advised her management at MIT and NASA about the problem, and suggested a software fix to prevent it from happening.
They rejected her suggestion. “We just can’t do it,” she said they told her. The astronauts, they reassured her, “are too well-trained. It’s not going to happen.” It, in fact, did happen on Apollo 8, resetting the navigation system. Afterwards, she said management agreed to the software change to prevent that from happening again.
The limited capacity of the computer also led to major cuts in the software. Jim Kerner, a lunar module software engineer, said that at one point the software exceeded 150 percent of the available storage. On a day dubbed “Black Friday” NASA management directed major cuts to the software in order to fit into available storage.
“Up until that point we all had the idea that the software would be self-contained and fly the mission without the help of the ground,” he said. “They chopped out a lot of the capability that was dear to hearts. Now the ground was preeminent, and we couldn’t fly the mission without the ground.”
Perhaps the best known issue with the computer system was the program alarms during the lunar module’s descent on Apollo 11. That was triggered by a rendezvous radar that was on during the lander’s descent, something the engineers said hadn’t been anticipated during development and testing of the computer.
Hugh Blair-Smith, who worked on the computer’s hardware and software, said that Buzz Aldrin had decided to leave the rendezvous radar on during descent, even though it wasn’t needed. That decision was based on the experience with Apollo 10, when the lunar module briefly lost attitude control as it prepared to return to the command module.
“He became doubly aware of the possibility that they’d have to abort and start using the rendezvous radar quickly,” he said. “He made sure in Apollo 11 that the rendezvous radar was as ready for instantaneous use as it could possibly be.”
The fact that the radar was on, as well as what Blair-Smith called a “weird situation” with the power supplies on the spacecraft, meant that the radar was taking up computer cycles, triggering the alarm. “Buzz gets a lot of blame” for that, unfairly, he said. “Everything he had done was perfectly rational and very well founded on the events of Apollo 10.”
The engineers worked directly with a number of astronauts on the computer system. Dan Lickly, a software engineer on the system, singled out Neil Armstrong as someone particularly interested in the computer. “We were giving a lecture to a group of astronauts that was supposed to take one hour, and it took an hour and a half because Neil would just not stop asking questions,” he said. “We had no trouble communicating, because it was one geek to another. We got along fine.”
Without the Apollo Guidance Computer, engineers said the Apollo landings would not have been possible. “There wouldn’t have been a mission,” said Peter Volante, a software engineer. He recalled comments made by Chris Kraft at a symposium 10 years ago about Apollo. “Among the things he said in his talk that day was that it would not have been possible to do Apollo without the modern digital computer.”
Computer systems have advanced remarkably in the half-century since Apollo, but the engineers who worked on the Apollo Guidance Computer still had advice for NASA as it returns to the moon with Artemis. One example of that advice is centralizing development.
“One of the most important features of the way the program was set up was that it was all here in one building,” Blair-Smith said. If someone ran into problems, “he didn’t send off an interdepartmental memo, he trots down two doors and asks me.”
Hamilton said that she’s still seeing the use of the “traditional lifecycle” approach to software engineering used in Apollo, which can be time-consuming and expensive. She called for the use of alternative approaches that avoid those problems. “It’s maybe going to happen, but it’s still going to take time,” she said.
“The most important thing is to understand exactly what miracles in project management were developed and worked,” Blair-Smith said. “We had plenty to complain about at the time, but it really was amazing.”
Source: https://spacenews.com/apollonauts-reflect-on-lunar-landing-and-return-to-the-moon/
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Commercial satellite images historic Apollo launch pads
July 9, 2019 Stephen Clark [SN]
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Launch pad 39A is now used by SpaceX for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket launches. In this view captured Monday, the strongback transporter structure is seen in the horizontal position at pad 39A, with a U.S. flag waving from the fixed service structure, a tower originally built for the space shuttle and modified for SpaceX’s use. Credit: Maxar Technologies
Maxar’s eagle-eyed WorldView 3 satellite captured high-resolution views Monday of NASA’s twin Apollo-era launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, both now home to new launch vehicles 50 years after humans took their first steps on the moon.
Launch pad 39A its now leased from NASA by SpaceX for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket launches. The commercial space company took over operations at the launch pad in 2014, and began launching missions there on Feb. 19, 2017.
In the photo captured by Maxar’s WorldView 3 satellite Monday, SpaceX’s strongback transporter structure is in the horizontal position at pad 39A, and a U.S. flag is seen waving from the facility’s fixed service structure, a tower originally built for the space shuttle and modified for SpaceX’s use.
The crew access arm at pad 39A is also visible. The swing arm will be used by astronauts boarding SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, one of two new commercial spaceships in development under contract with NASA to restore independent access to the International Space Station for U.S. astronauts, without relying on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.
WorldView 3 took the pictures of the two launch pads at NASA’s historic Launch Complex 39 from an altitude of roughly 383 miles (617 kilometers). Both launch pads are located less than a half-mile (less than a kilometer) from the beach at the Kennedy Space Center, and were built in the 1960s for the Apollo moon program.
Pad 39A has been the starting point for 112 launches since 1967, including 12 Saturn 5 moon rockets, 82 space shuttle missions, 15 Falcon 9 rockets and three Falcon Heavy flights.
The Apollo 11 mission, which launched 50 years ago July 16, famously departed from pad 39A on the first mission to land astronauts on the moon. Other notable launches from pad 39A include the liftoff of the Skylab space station, the first and last space shuttle flights, and the first launch of the Falcon Heavy, the most powerful commercial launcher ever built.
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NASA is readying launch pad 39B for the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket designed to send astronauts back to the moon. In this view captured Monday, the SLS mobile launch tower is seen at pad 39B after rolling out to the seaside complex last month for testing. Credit: Maxar Technologies
Pad 39B, located about a mile-and-a-half north of pad 39A, has hosted 59 launches since 1969. One Saturn 5 rocket, four Saturn 1B missions, 53 space shuttle flights, and a single suborbital test launch of NASA’s now-cancelled Ares 1 rocket have lifted off from pad 39B.
The most recent launch from pad 39A was June 25, when a Falcon Heavy took off with two dozen satellites. Pad 39B’s most recent launch was the Ares 1X test launch in October 2009.
But pad 39B is seeing more activity as NASA prepares for the first flight of the Space Launch System rocket, set for late 2020 or early 2021.
The mobile launch tower for the Space Launch System rolled out to pad 39B on June 27 to begin a three-month series of checkouts and tests, including sound suppression water testing, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant flows, and a full electrical compatibility check with the launch pad.
The mobile platform will carry the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) SLS rocket from NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building to pad 39B during launch campaigns.
Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/07/09/commercial-satellite-images-historic-apollo-launch-pads/
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Apollo 11 anniversary coins take ‘small step’ to space and back
by Robert Z. Pearlman — July 9, 2019 [SN]
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NASA astronaut Christina Koch displays a U.S. Mint Apollo 11 50th Anniversary commemorative coin on board the International Space Station in May 2019. Credit: NASA
A curved tribute to the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing recently completed a trip around the curvature of the Earth many times over.
Two commemorative coins from the United States Mint were flown on board the International Space Station (http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-070519a-apollo-11-coins-space-station-flown.html) for 28 days. The domed, half dollar coins traveled to orbit and back on a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch (http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-041719a-koch-record-mission-extension.html) displayed one of the two coins in a video recorded for the Mint.
“Fifty years ago, we took our first small steps onto the moon and made a giant leap that united and inspired the world. NASA accomplished this 50 years ago for all of humankind,” Koch said, referencing the July 1969 lunar landing (https://www.space.com/apollo-11-complete-guide.html). “We are honored by the U.S. Mint issuing this commemorative coin celebrating the accomplishment of NASA, our nation and every human who dares to dream.”
Gold, silver and clad coins were struck to mark the half-century since astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins achieved the world’s first moon landing mission in July 1969. The commemoratives are only the second coins in the U.S. Mint’s history to be curved.
The coins’ reverse, or tail’s side, is convex, resembling the outward curve of an astronaut’s helmet (https://www.space.com/17308-neil-armstrong-photo-legacy-rare-views.html) and feature a design based on an iconic photograph of Aldrin’s visor, showing the lunar module “Eagle,” the American flag and Armstrong on the moon’s surface.
The obverse, or head’s side, is concave, curving inward to the engraved image of Aldrin’s boot print in the lunar soil. The design also features the names of the three NASA human spaceflight programs that led up to the first moon landing: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.
“As with all U.S. Mint commemorative coins, they are made for all and available to all,” Koch said.
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The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary commemorative coins are only the second time the U.S. Mint has produced curved coins. Credit: U.S. Mint
In January, the U.S. Mint released the coins for sale (http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-012419a-usmint-apollo11-50th-coins-sale.html) in half dollar, dollar and five dollar denominations, in proof and uncirculated finishes, with limited editions of 50,000 to 750,000. Since then, the U.S. Mint has partnered with Australia’s and Spain’s mints to issue coin sets recognizing the tracking stations that supported the Apollo 11 mission.
Proceeds from the U.S. Mint’s sale of the Apollo 11 50th Anniversary coins (https://catalog.usmint.gov/interests/apollo-11-50th-anniversary/) benefit three space-related organizations that work to preserve space history and promote science education: the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, the AstronautScholarship Foundation and the National Air and Space Museum’s “Destination Moon” gallery, scheduled to open in 2022.
The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which awarded Koch (https://www.space.com/day-night-boundary-earth-from-space-photo.html) a scholarship when she was an undergraduate studying electrical engineering and physics, provided Sam Scimemi, director for the International Space Station at NASA Headquarters, with the two coins that were flown into space.
The proof-quality, clad half dollar coins were launched to the station May 4 and returned June 3 aboard SpaceX’s CRS-17 mission. Now back on Earth, one of the coins will be displayed by the U.S. Mint.
The second coin “will go on display in our upcoming Destination Moon exhibition (http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-102517a-smithsonian-air-space-museum-revitalization.html),” the National Air and Space Museum announced on Twitter.
Koch said that she hopes the trip to the International Space Station will be just the first launch for the Apollo 11 coins.
“These coins have made the small step here, to the International Space Station (https://www.space.com/christina-koch-andrew-morgan-extended-missions.html), and I hope when we are building a sustainable presence on the moon and make that next giant leap onto Mars, the coins will go along on our journey as a reminder of all the hard work and sacrifice that moves us all forward,” she said.
Source: https://spacenews.com/apollo-11-anniversary-coins-take-small-step-to-space-and-back/
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50 years later, Apollo 11's "one giant leap" remains a defining moment in human history (1)
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD JULY 14, 2019 / 8:00 AM / CBS NEWS
Watch the CBS News prime-time special "Man on the Moon," celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Tuesday at 10/9c.
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One of the first footprints on the surface of the moon. In the airless environment, the bootprints left behind 50 years ago will remain visible for uncounted millenia to come. NASA
In a culture steeped in high technology, from wearable computers to the internet of things and rockets that fly themselves back to pinpoint touchdowns, the Apollo 11 (https://www.cbsnews.com/feature/apollo-11-moon-landing-anniversary/) moon landing and Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" are slowly fading from memory, a forever remarkable but increasingly distant bit of history.
After all, for anyone born after July 20, 1969, the day Armstrong set foot on the surface of the moon, there has never been a time when humanity was bound to Earth alone. For many, the stories of Apollo 11, five subsequent moon landings and the near disaster of Apollo 13 (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/items-from-nasa-apollo-13-mission-up-for-auction/) are remembered from history class, not from personal experience.
But for an older generation, the sons and daughters of the "Greatest Generation" who designed, built, launched and flew the Apollo missions (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apollo-11-spacecraft-astronaut-graffiti-moon-landing/), the first moon landing will forever stand out as a seminal event in human history, a gripping life-or-death drama played out on live television (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-almost-didnt-film-the-first-moon-landing/) 240,000 miles from Earth.
On the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, virtually anyone watching television or listening to the radio that day can recall where they were at 4:17:40 p.m. EDT when Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, leaving crewmate Michael Collins behind in orbit, swooped to a nail-biting touchdown on the Sea of Tranquility.
With only a few seconds of fuel remaining, after disconcerting computer program alarms and a navigation glitch that forced Armstrong to take over manual control to avoid a boulder-strewn landing site, the four-legged spacecraft settled to the surface in clouds of fast-dissipating moon dust.
"Man on the moon!" CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite emotionally exclaimed, listening along with millions around the world as Armstrong and Aldrin worked through their engine shutdown checklist. "We copy you down, Eagle," astronaut Charlie Duke called from mission control in Houston as if seeking confirmation.
"Houston, Tranquillity Base here," Armstrong famously replied. "The Eagle has landed."
"Roger, Twan... Tranquillity, we copy you on the ground," Duke stammered in return. "You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."
They weren't the only ones. Cronkite, a long-time space enthusiast, was virtually speechless. "Oh, boy!" he exhaled in relief, taking off his glasses and rubbing his hands together with pent-up emotion.
Six-and-a-half hours later, with one of the largest global television audiences in history looking on, Armstrong stood poised on the lander's foot pad before stepping onto the lunar surface, clearly visible in a grainy black-and-white image.
"Boy, look at those pictures! Wow!" Cronkite marveled. "Armstrong is on the moon, Neil Armstrong, 38-year-old American, standing on the surface of the moon on this July 20th, nineteen hundred and sixty nine."
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Millions around the world watched Neil Armstrong, on live television from the moon, take his first step onto the surface. This shot shows that moment as Armstrong, his right hand holding the lunar module's ladder, stepped off a landing leg footpad and onto the moon. NASA
An instant later, at 10:56 p.m., Armstrong stepped off the footpad and onto the the finely-powdered surface.
"That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."
Whether he inadvertently dropped the "a" or simply misspoke in the thrill of the moment, Armstrong's words briefly united the people of planet Earth with shared pride for an achievement dreamed of since humans first looked up at the sky in wonder.
"For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one," President Richard Nixon radioed the moonwalkers from the Oval Office. "One in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth."
John Noble Wilford, leading The New York Times' coverage, started with just eight words: "Men have landed and walked on the moon." No embellishment was needed.
For many in mission control that day, the emotional impact of the landing and moonwalk did not immediately hit home. For flight controller Ed Fendell, it sank in the next day during breakfast at a Dutch Kettle restaurant near the Houston space center.
"Two guys walked in and sat down next to me," he recalled in an interview. "They were out of the gas station down on the corner, dirty nails, grease on their clothes. And they started talking and I couldn't help but hear them. One says, 'You know, I landed on D-Day in World War II,' and he said, 'I never felt prouder to be an American than I did yesterday.'
"All of a sudden, it hit me with a realization of what we had done. ... I threw my money down on the counter, went out to my car and started crying."
"A new stage for mankind"
One can debate the historical significance of the moon landing, but in 500 years, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in 1999, when "Pearl Harbor will be as remote as the War of the Roses," the Apollo 11 moon landing may well be remembered as the most significant event of the 20th century. And that includes two world wars, the development of Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum physics and nuclear weapons.
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Lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin climbs down the lander's ladder to join Armstrong on the surface. Armstrong took dozens of pictures of Aldrin on the surface but there are virtually no shots of Armstrong. NASA
Glynn Lunney, the flight director on duty for Apollo 11's climb back to lunar orbit, agreed, saying "for all the millennia that humans have walked on this planet and looked up at the moon and looked up at the stars, this was the first time when two of us walked and worked and lived on another planet.
"And in the big sweep of history yet to come, we may look back on this not as a technological achievement, we may end up looking back and seeing that it was the beginning of a new stage for mankind as we know it."
Now 82, Lunney said when he looks up at the moon today, "I think of all the people who worked on (Apollo) and how well they performed. I mean, they were doing something that five years earlier was the impossible, right? And they just said, yeah, it's impossible. But we're gonna do it anyway."
Fifty years after the fact, Apollo 11's story is long complete, a success so towering it has worked its way into everyday vernacular as an achievement against which daily frustrations are measured. Who hasn't heard someone ask, "If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they (fill in the blank)?"
"I think (young) people get it" Lunney said in June. "They didn't participate in it. They didn't know all the technical stuff and the whiz-bang stuff. But they know we did something really, really big. Nobody else had done it before, and nobody else has done it since. And it took a lot of courage."
Ten more American men would follow Armstrong and Aldrin onto the moon's stark surface, eventually roving about in high-tech dune buggies equipped with color TV cameras, bringing home a priceless collection of rocks and soil — 842 pounds total — that is still helping scientists decipher the history of the solar system.
But barring the dramatic Apollo 13 rescue in 1970, the moon program never again captured the world's attention to such a degree or garnered the political support needed for equally ambitious programs in its wake. By September 1970, three moon landings had been canceled.
"We didn't think it could be done"
The flight of Apollo 11, then, symbolized an end and a beginning. It was the beginning of humanity's first steps away from the home world, but it marked the end of a nation's willingness to provide unlimited support for the very exploration that came to symbolize its technological leadership on the world stage.
That visionary leadership is precisely what President John F. Kennedy gave the United States on May 25, 1961, when he told a joint session of Congress: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
In the month preceding that speech, on April 12, 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, completing one orbit around the planet in a Soviet triumph that shocked the American public, the media and lawmakers in Washington. Five days later, the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba began, ending three days later in a humiliating defeat at the hands of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Less than three weeks after that, as Kennedy was struggling to find a way forward for the United States after what were widely perceived as unacceptable setbacks, NASA launched Mercury 7 astronaut Alan Shepard on a brief 15-minute sub-orbital space flight. It was a poor second to Gagarin's orbital flight, but the nation was thrilled, at least some of its confidence restored.
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Speaking at Rice University in 1961, President John F. Kennedy tells the nation "we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
Kennedy was listening. Twenty days later, on May 25, the president set a trip to the moon, before the decade was out, as the nation's objective in space. It was a master stroke, an audacious, yet easy-to-understand goal that instantly captured the nation's imagination.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," the president said on Sept. 12 during a speech at Rice University. "Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
Lunney and many others in the nation's infant space program were stunned by the unexpected directive.
"When we were having a beer talking about that, we didn't think it could be done," Lunney recalled with a smile. "We were working on Mercury at the time. Mercury was a 2,000-pound ship. And what we had to deal with was getting 200,000 pounds in Earth orbit (just) to get started.
"It was a stunning thing," he went on. "It was a wonderful thing to see how well the Americans did pooling together our resources and our talents. And inventing a whole new world of space operations."
Gene Kranz, the legendary flight director (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-mission-control-room-restoration-gemini-apollo/) who managed Apollo 11's descent to the lunar surface, said Kennedy's vision "established the direction for the nation to get moving. And the nation started moving."
"The environmental movement was starting at that time, the Peace Corps was starting at that time, the civil rights movement was starting," Kranz said in an interview, sitting at his console in the recently restored Apollo 11 mission control room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"This was the start of not only the space revolution, but the technology revolution within our nation," he said. Looking across the iconic consoles and screens that once displayed the second-by-second heartbeat of Apollo 11, he added: "This is where it all began."
Long and difficult road to the moon
The road to the moon would be difficult, hugely expensive and in a few cases, marred by tragedy. Three astronauts — Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White — were killed Jan. 27, 1967, when a flash fire erupted and swept through their problem-plagued Apollo 1 command module during a launch pad test at Cape Canaveral.
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The Apollo 1 crew, left to right: commander Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. All three were killed in a flash fire that swept through their problem-plagued Apollo command module during a launch pad test. NASA
Five other astronauts — Theodore Freeman, Charles Bassett, Elliot See, Edward Givens and Clifton "C.C." Williams — were killed in aircraft crashes or car wrecks before getting a chance to fly in space.
The United States would eventually spend $25 billion — $288 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars — developing the technology to send 12 astronauts to the surface of the moon and to bring back 842 pounds of lunar soil and rocks. The bulk of those samples are carefully maintained at the Johnson Space Center.
While science was never the primary justification for Apollo, it remains, perhaps, its most enduring legacy.
"There is not a price tag on this collection," said geologist Ryan Zeigler, NASA Apollo sample curator, during a CBS News tour of the laboratory where the rocks are stored. "And nor will we ever put a price tag on the collection. They're truly priceless. That word gets thrown around a lot, but no amount of money would let me buy new Apollo samples."
Andrew Chaikin, author of "Man on the Moon" and an authority on the Apollo program, adds another enduring legacy: "the perspective, the change in awareness, looking back at the Earth from the moon and seeing it as a planet and in the words of (astronaut) Jim Lovell, a 'grand oasis in space.'"
"So many of the guys talk about the seeming fragility of Earth, that we live on a world that we need to protect and cherish," he said. "We had pictures of the Earth from the moon from the robotic missions, but there's nothing like having a person come back and talk about that experience.""
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One of the Apollo program's most iconic photos - "Earthrise" - captured by the crew of Apollo 8. NASA
The moon program got off the ground with the successful launch of Apollo 7 on Oct. 11, 1968, a shakedown cruise for the redesigned post-fire Apollo command module in low-Earth orbit. NASA originally planned to follow that flight with an Earth-orbit test of the command and lunar modules.
But the lander was behind schedule and in a bold step — some NASA insiders consider it the boldest decision of the Apollo program — program manager George Low suggested sending the Apollo 8 capsule, carrying astronauts Frank Borman, William Anders and Lovell, on a flight to orbit the moon, the first piloted launch atop a Saturn 5 rocket.
Launched Dec. 21, 1968, the mission was a resounding success. In a live television broadcast from lunar orbit that Christmas Eve, the astronauts took turns reading the first several verses of Genesis, a moving moment that provided a hint of the drama to come.
Time magazine named the Apollo 8 crew members "Men of the Year" for 1968, the same year Martin Luther King was assassinated and Richard Nixon was elected president. The dizzying pace of the Apollo program was enough to make Stanley Kubrick's 1968 vision of the future — "2001: A Space Odyssey" — with its commercial flights to orbit, giant space stations and moon bases, utterly believable.
NASA followed the Apollo 8 mission with a test of the strange-looking lunar lander in Earth orbit during the flight of Apollo 9 and then in orbit around the moon during Apollo 10, a dress rehearsal that tested all the maneuvers and procedures needed for a moon landing except the final descent to the surface.
The stage was finally set for Apollo 11.
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50 years later, Apollo 11's "one giant leap" remains a defining moment in human history (2)
A voyage into history
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The Apollo 11 mission gets underway with a ground-shaking roar, thrilling more than a million spectators lining area roads and beaches. NASA
More than a million spectators gathered along area highways, waterways and beaches to take in the historic launch. More than 3,000 journalists looked on from a press site 3.2 miles from launch complex 39A where Apollo 11's mammoth, 36-story-tall Saturn 5 rocket stood steaming in the morning sun as supercold liquid oxygen boiled off and was vented overboard.
At 9:32 a.m., the rocket's five huge F1 engines roared to life, generating 7.5 million pounds of thrust as they gulped a staggering 15 tons of fuel per second. Ever so slowly, the gigantic Saturn 5, still the most powerful rocket ever flown, majestically climbed skyward, the deafening roar of its engines overwhelming shocked spectators when it finally reached them.
"We are off! And do we know it, not just because the world is yelling 'lift-off' in our ears, but because the seats of our pants tell us so!" Collins wrote in his memoir "Carrying the Fire." "Shake, rattle and roll! Noise, yes, lots of it, but mostly motion as we are thrown left and right against our straps in spasmodic little jerks. It is steering like crazy."
Twelve minutes later, the third stage, carrying the command module Columbia and the lunar lander Eagle, was safely in orbit. After double checking the health of the spacecraft, the crew re-started the single hydrogen-fueled third stage engine at 12:22 p.m., blasting the crew out of Earth orbit and on toward the moon at an initial velocity of seven miles per second.
An hour and a half later, Columbia separated from the third stage and the lunar lander. Collins took manual control, flipped Columbia 180 degrees, docked with the lander and pulled it free of the no-longer-needed third stage.
Three days later, the astronauts flew behind the moon and out of contact with mission control in Houston. Flying backward, the main engine in Columbia's service module ignited at 1:21 p.m. on July 19, burning for five minutes and 57 seconds to slow the ship down enough to into orbit.
Armstrong wasted no time looking at the cratered surface below and comparing it to photos captured earlier by the crews of Apollo 8 and 10.
"Apollo 11 is getting its first view of the landing approach," Armstrong radioed. "It looks very much like the pictures, but like the difference between watching a real football game and watching it on TV. There's no substitute for actually being here."
The next day, slipping behind the moon during their 12th lunar orbit, Armstrong and Aldrin undocked Eagle from Columbia for the historic descent to the surface.
"The Eagle has wings!" Armstrong said.
A few minutes later, Collins, alone aboard the command module, said farewell to his crewmates: "OK, Eagle ... you guys take care."
"See you later," Armstrong replied. The stage was set for the most dramatic moments in the history of the space program.
The pressure was almost unbearable in mission control.
"You'd have had to be an idiot not to understand that this was the time we were going to try to land on the moon," guidance officer Stephen Bales told the author in an earlier interview. "I was just scared to death, mortified. I was really glad I could talk. I was that scared."
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Steve Bales, the 26-year-old guidance officer on duty for the Apollo 11 moon landing. He faced unexpected computer alarms during the descent but after conferring with Jack Garman, a computer whiz in a support room, he told flight director Gene Kranz the crew was "go" to proceed with landing. NASA
Despite initially poor communications, Kranz gave the crew a "go" for powered descent initiation, or PDI. Right on time, at 4:05 p.m., the lander's engine fired up at an altitude of 50,000 feet. From there to the surface — the finish line in the Cold War space race — would take just 12 minutes.
Flying backwards as the descent engine fired, Armstrong and Aldrin initially were oriented feet first and face down toward the moon's surface so they could visually monitor their trajectory. Armstrong realized Eagle would be "landing long," that is, somewhat beyond the center of the planned landing zone.
The lander then rotated around its long axis, putting the astronauts face up toward deep space so its landing radar could "see" the surface of the moon. And as soon as the radar locked on, Bales saw Eagle was descending 25 feet per second faster than expected. If the descent rate increased to 35 feet per second, the crew would have to abort and make an emergency climb back to orbit.
But as the seconds ticked by, the rate did not increase. It was clear by now that Eagle would be landing long, but there were no signs of any other guidance problems and Bales decided the crew's flight computer was behaving within acceptable limits.
Then, five minutes and 17 seconds into the 12-minute descent, an alarm suddenly blared in the cockpit and the crew saw a green alarm code — 1202 — flash on their guidance computer display.
"Program alarm," Armstrong called out. "It's a 1202."
Seconds ticked by.
"Give us a reading on that 1202 program alarm," Armstrong repeated.
Eleven days before launch, Kranz and the White Team, along with two astronauts standing in for Armstrong and Aldrin, went through a final landing simulation. In a remarkable stroke of either pure luck or prescient planning, the simulation engineers decided to throw a very similar program alarm into the practice run.
Bales, 26, and Jack Garman, a 24-year-old computer whiz in a nearby support room scrambled to come up with an explanation. Believing the computer was malfunctioning, Bales called for an abort.
As it turned out, the alarm simply meant the computer was overloaded, unable to complete all the required computations in a given cycle. As programmed, it was prioritizing its tasks and getting the most important calculations done before starting a new cycle. Bottom line? Bales should have allowed the landing to continue.
When Armstrong called down the 1202 alarm during the actual descent to the moon, Bales and Garman were ready. After verification from Garman, Bales told Kranz, "We're go on that alarm." More alarms cropped up as the descent continued, but Bales and Garman were increasingly confident they could be safely ignored.
Nearing the surface, Armstrong saw the flight computer's trajectory was carrying them toward a large crater and a field of boulders. Taking over manual control, he began flying Eagle like a helicopter, slowing the descent while continuing to fly downrange in search of a smoother landing site.
"Our auto-pilot was taking us into an area that wasn't a good area to land," Armstrong told "60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley. "It was a very large crater, about the size of a big football stadium with steep slopes covered with very large rocks about the size of automobiles. That was not the kind of place I wanted to try to make the first landing."
The unplanned maneuvering and extended flight time meant Eagle was burning up much more fuel than expected.
Nearing the surface, the crew was in a race against the clock.
"Sixty seconds," Duke called out from Houston, telling Armstrong and Aldrin that Eagle had an estimated one minute's worth of usable propellant left in the tank.
"We know we have two minutes, 120 seconds, of fuel at a 30% throttle setting," Kranz said. "We know they're landing long. ... But Neil Armstrong is now the guy in charge. And he is flying that spacecraft around, trying to find the place."
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Gene Kranz, the legendary flight director on duty for Apollo 11's moon landing, recalling the descent during an interview with CBS News in June, sitting at his recently restored console in mission control at the Johnson Space Center. WILLIAM HARWOOD/CBS NEWS
Aldrin was too busy to acknowledge the 60-second call. He was providing a running commentary for Armstrong, giving him Eagle's altitude, horizontal velocity and descent rate in feet per second.
"Down two and a half (feet per second). Forward. Forward. Good. 40 feet, down two and a half. Kicking up some dust. 30 feet, two and a half down. Faint shadow. Four forward. Four forward. Drifting to the right a little. OK. Down a half."
"I'm starting to get sorta uptight," Kranz recalled. "And pretty soon, it's 30 seconds (of fuel remaining). And now I'm starting to really sweat it out."
Then, just when Kranz was expecting to hear the 15-second warning, Armstrong set the lander down and shut down the engine.
"Houston, Tranquility Base here," Armstrong said. "The Eagle has landed."
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At the moment Apollo 11 touched down, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite found himself virtually speechless in the excitement of the moment. CBS NEWS
Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours and 36 minutes on the moon — two hours, 31 minutes and 40 seconds walking about its surface — before blasting off and rejoining Collins aboard Columbia. The astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean four days later, on July 24. They never flew in space again.
Collins, author of what many consider the best book ever written by an astronaut — "Carrying the Fire" — and Aldrin, a still-vocal space activist and proponent of human flights to Mars (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/buzz-aldrin-rolls-out-red-carpet-for-mars-48-years-after-moon-landing-kennedy-space-center/), would both participate in 50th anniversary celebrations, but without their crewmate. Armstrong (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/neil-armstrongs-sons-hope-his-personal-mementos-will-inspire-others/), the famously reticent "First Man," died on Aug. 25, 2012, at age 82, after complications following heart surgery.
Planning a return to the moon
Fifty years after Apollo 11's voyage into history, NASA is preparing to return astronauts to the surface of the moon (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-moon-landing-program-human-spaceflight-director-bill-gerstenmaier-replaced-today-2019-07-10/) by the end of 2024, using a huge new rocket called the Space Launch System, or SLS, and Orion capsules described as "Apollo on steroids." They will dock with a mini space station in lunar orbit and descend to the surface in a commercially-built lander.
The program is known as Artemis, the sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon in Greek mythology. The 2024 target date, imposed by the Trump administration, may or may not be doable depending on whether Congress agrees to the increased spending required to turn the plan into reality.
Chaikin warns that despite 50 years of progress on the high frontier a return to the moon (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-land-first-woman-moon-artemis-mission-space-exploration-moon-landing-project/) will not be easy despite having done it before. In an interview, he recalled a conversation with Max Faget, the brilliant engineer who designed the Mercury capsule and played a major role in the Gemini and Apollo programs.
Faget and Bob Gilruth, the first director of what is now the Johnson Space Center, were walking along a beach near Galveston, Texas, Chaikin said, and "there was a big moon up in the sky and they stood there looking at it." Gilruth then said to Faget, "Max, someday people are going to try and go back to the moon. And they're going to find out how hard it really is."
First published on July 14, 2019 / 8:03 AM
© 2019 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
William Harwood
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia."
50 photos taken on the moon (https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/apollo-11-50th-anniversary-50-photos-taken-on-the-moon/)
The 12 men who walked on the moon (https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-last-12-men-to-set-foot-on-the-moon/)
Inside Apollo 11 (https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/inside-apollo-11/)
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apollo-11-50th-anniversary-of-moon-landing-defining-moment-in-history/
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Myślę że warto posłuchać i obejrzeć.
https://youtu.be/8O-zKaaNkGg
Bill Whittle w b.fajny sposób opowiada o programie Apollo, jego genezie, oraz jak sam to pamięta.
Są już 2 części, mają być w sumie cztery.
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'Launch Commit': Celebrating Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Month (Part 1)
By Ben Evans, on July 7th, 2019 [AS]
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Illuminated by floodlights, the Saturn V for Apollo 11 stands ready on Pad 39A. Fifty years ago, this month, it delivered the first humans to the lunar surface. Photo Credit: NASA
Early in July 1969, Jan Armstrong called her friend, Lurton Scott, for help. Only a few days remained before her husband, Neil, blasted off in command of the most pivotal space mission in history—Apollo 11, the voyage which would attempt the first piloted landing on the Moon—and in doing so fulfil a national pledge by the late President John F. Kennedy (https://www.americaspace.com/2013/11/22/we-choose-50-years-after-kennedys-assassination-the-torch-of-apollo-still-burns-brightly/). Lurton, wife of astronaut Dave Scott, and Jan had remained good friends ever since their husbands flew together aboard Gemini VIII in March 1966. Jan had already been invited to watch the Apollo 11 launch from a motor cruiser, owned by North American Aviation and moored in the Banana River, and with Scott’s help she was able to fly from Houston, Texas, to Cape Kennedy in a corporate jet.
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All three members of the Apollo 11 crew had flown before: Neil Armstrong (left) aboard Gemini VIII, Mike Collins (center) aboard Gemini X and Buzz Aldrin aboard Gemini XII. Photo Credit: NASA
When she arrived in Florida, Jan beheld an astonishing, though unsurprising, sight: Over a million people crowded the roads and causeways of the Cape, anxiously awaiting an event whose significance which would never be seen again in their lifetimes. Half a century ago, the first human explorers set sail to make our species’ first landfall on the Moon. By mid-morning on 16 July 1969, the weather in Florida was sweltering; indeed, one observer described it as being so hot that the humid air felt like a silk cloth brushing his face. Yet the historic nature of what was about to happen was magnetic. “Everybody and his brother wanted to be at the launch,” wrote Deke Slayton in his autobiography, Deke, “senators, congressmen, ambassadors.” Twenty thousand VIPs were on NASA’s official guest list, including Gen. William Westmoreland—recently back from commanding U.S. forces in Vietnam—Johnny Carson, Vice-President Ted Agnew and even a direct descendent of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Former President Lyndon B. Johnson was there, as was former NASA Administrator Jim Webb. There were also two thousand journalists in attendance, almost half of them from abroad, representing 56 nations. One Czech writer noted an overwhelming sense of goodwill, even as the ugly cloud of war continued to hover overhead: “This is the America we love,” he told his readers, “one so totally different from the America that fights in Vietnam.” Others took the opposing view, with a handful of pro-communist newspapers operating from Hong Kong expressing criticism of the mission as an attempt to cynically distract the world from the horrors of the conflict and extend U.S. “imperialism” into the heavens.
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AS-6.12.13-AS11-0419-69H-670 Retro Space Images post of a NASA photo of Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong posted on AmericaSpaceApollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong practices his lunar surface activities. Photo Credit: NASA
In his role as Director of Flight Crew Operations, it was part of Slayton’s job to keep the media away from the astronauts, but even they found themselves taking late-night phone calls from long-lost relatives and old school friends in those final few days.
By launch morning, the headlights of a quarter of a million cars twinkled in the pre-dawn darkness as spectators arose from their backseats, from their tents, from beneath makeshift blankets, from inside their camper vans, and even from their boats anchored in the Indian and Banana Rivers. Those fortunate to have actually been there would later say that the proceedings did exhibit something of a “carnival” atmosphere—there were snack bars and bikini-clad spectators firing up barbecues and opening beer coolers—but the sensation was relatively calm. This was particularly true when astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin emerged into a glare of television lights. “You get a feeling,” CBS commentator Eric Sevareid told veteran anchorman Walter Cronkite, “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 that they bear some secrets that we will never entirely know.”
The eyes of the world were truly riveted on this event, none more so than in Armstrong’s home town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, where his parents, Steve and Viola, watched the proceedings on a color set donated by the television network. On the evening before launch, more than two hundred cars circled the area close to their home. The mayor requested that everyone display American flags in their windows, the local dairy sold its own “Moon Cheeze”, and restaurants provided daily supplies of pies, bananas and chips. Local children began to claim their father was Armstrong’s barber, their mother was Armstrong’s first girlfriend, and so on.
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Crowded along the roads and causeways of Cape Kennedy, the witnesses to the launch of Apollo 11 would remember the event for the rest of their lives. Photo Credit: NASA
Notwithstanding this public and media frenzy, some felt that the secrets of the Moon were better left alone, until other, more pressing, more earthly issues had been addressed. In many parts of America, Apollo’s $25 billion price tag had been a hard pill to swallow, and a hefty proportion of taxpayers felt improving the education system, dealing more effectively with poverty, improving the standard of living and the civil rights of minorities, and ending the conflict in Vietnam were far greater national priorities. Rev. Ralph Abernathy, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was planning a protest with four mules and 150 members of his flock at the Cape Kennedy gates; his particular focus was upon using Apollo money to help the poor. Still, even he was awed by the events of 16 July 1969 and the days that followed.
That Wednesday, launch was scheduled for 9:32 a.m. EDT, which dismayed Mike Collins because he had to awaken at the ungodly hour of four in the morning. His last mission, Gemini X (https://www.americaspace.com/2016/07/17/something-fierce-50-years-since-the-double-rendezvous-double-spacewalk-mission-of-gemini-x-part-2/), had blasted off in the late afternoon, allowing Collins and his commander, John Young, to get up at a more civilized time of the day (https://www.americaspace.com/2016/07/16/otherwise-engaged-50-years-since-the-double-rendezvous-double-spacewalk-mission-of-gemini-x-part-1/), “but no such luck this time”. It was Slayton who came knocking on all three men’s bedroom doors and, after showering and dressing, they headed down to the crew quarters’ exercise room, where their nurse, Dee O’Hara, waited to perform final medical checks. Next came a final appointment with the astronauts’ cook, Lew Hartzell, and the traditional “low-residue” breakfast of steak and eggs, toast, fruit juice and coffee—shared with Slayton and Collins’ backup, Bill Anders—followed by the laborious process of donning their space suits.
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Like three extraterrestrials, clad in their bulky suits and protective yellow galoshes, the Apollo 11 astronauts depart the Operations and Checkout Building on launch morning. Photo Credit: NASA
In his autobiography, Carrying the Fire, Collins related that, during the Gemini project they had suited-up in a trailer near the launch pad, but now, on Apollo, NASA had built “an elaborate suit maintenance, storage and donning facility near the crew quarters”. As each man’s helmet was snapped into place, he felt the welcome whoosh of pure oxygen rushing past his face and the knowledge that, for the next eight days, he would breathe no more outside air; all would come from their portable, hand-carried supplies, from the spacecraft’s atmosphere or, for Armstrong and Aldrin on the surface of the Moon, from their backpacks. Lumbering outside into the blaze of television lights, all three men looked extraterrestrial, sealed as they were in their bulky suits, their protective yellow galoshes adding a slightly comical touch to their appearance.
When the transfer van arrived at already-historic Pad 39A (https://www.americaspace.com/2017/11/12/pad-39a-americas-moonport-celebrates-over-100-launches-in-50-years-of-service/), the astronauts ascended to the white room and were greeted by the closeout crew, including backup crewman Fred Haise, clad in clean-room garb and hat, who had been there for almost two hours making sure that each one of the command module Columbia’s switches was set correctly for launch. As Armstrong clambered aboard, he was handed a bon voyage gift by pad leader Guenter Wendt—a small crescent-shaped trinket, fashioned from foil-coated styrofoam—and was told that it was the key to the Moon. Unable to take it with him, Armstrong asked Wendt to keep it until he returned home, and then gave the self-styled pad “fuehrer” a mock space-taxi ticket, good between any two planets.
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Lyndon Johnson (centre) watches the launch of Apollo 11. To his immediate left is Vice President Spiro ‘Ted’ Agnew. Photo Credit: NASA
It was traditional, Mike Collins wrote, to present Wendt with light-hearted gifts. “Guenter has spent the past couple of weeks telling me what a great fisherman he is,” he explained in Carrying the Fire, “and how he regularly plucks giant trout from the ocean. In return, I have located the smallest trout to be found in these parts, a minnow really, and have had it, uncured, nailed to a plaque and inscribed “Guenter’s Trophy Trout”. Secreted in a suspicious-looking brown paper bag, Collins presented the “tribute” to Wendt, then took his place in the command module’s right-hand seat.
Normally, the Command Module Pilot (CMP) occupied the center position, but Buzz Aldrin’s previous stint as backup senior pilot on Apollo 8 made it more practical to continue that way. “Collins had been out for a while” following neck surgery, wrote James R. Hansen in First Man, his acclaimed 2005 biography of Armstrong, “so rather than retrain Buzz for ascent, NASA just left him in the center and trained Mike for the right seat.” Finally, Aldrin squeezed himself through Columbia’s hatch and dropped into the center couch.
As the minutes ticked away and the three astronauts steeled themselves for launch, one of Collins’ greatest worries was the risk of screwing up on this of all missions, under the spotlight, with a third of the world’s population watching or listening. Of key concern was the handle next to Armstrong’s left knee, which the commander could twist counterclockwise to fire the Saturn V rocket’s escape tower and pull the command module to safety in the event of an abort. Looking across the cabin, Collins noticed with horror that the pocket adorning Armstrong’s suit leg was uncomfortably close to the handle. Collins feared that the pocket had the potential to ruin the mission. “It looks as though if he moves his leg slightly, it’s going to snag on the abort handle,” he wrote. “I quickly point this out to Neil, and he grabs the pocket and pulls it as far over toward the inside of his thigh as he can.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UExTN3_UOIY
Three minutes before launch, the automatic sequencer took command of the countdown and began a computerized run-through of each step required to pressurize the Saturn V’s internal systems before liftoff (https://www.americaspace.com/2017/11/05/without-breaking-the-shell-50-years-since-the-saturn-vs-maiden-launch/). At 50 seconds, the gigantic rocket switched to internal power and four of the nine servicing arms linking it to utilities on Pad 39A were disconnected. Seventeen seconds to go: The final alignment of the launch vehicle’s guidance computer was completed, and it was transferred to internal power.
Throughout each of these steps, the commentator continued to report what was occurring, with growing tension and excitement.
“T-15 seconds…guidance is internal…12, 11, 10, nine…”—then came the start of the ignition sequence, as pressurized liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene began to enter the combustion chambers of the five F-1 engines—“six, five, four, three…” as internal turbines built up the supply of propellants to full flow and brought the first stage up to near-full power. As the final milliseconds of the count evaporated, all five engines were running at 90 percent of rated thrust. Finally, as the launch pad’s deluge system flooded the flame trench with water to reduce the reflected energy, the Saturn’s internal computer carried out its last checks.
All was well.
“…two, one, zero…all engines running…”
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The launch of Apollo 11 on 16 July 1969 was arguably Pad 39A’s finest hour. Photo Credit: NASA
At 9:32 a.m. EDT on 16 July 1969, the “Launch Commit” signal released a series of clamps holding the Saturn V to the pad and the monster began its climb for the heavens. “Liftoff…we have a liftoff, thirty-two minutes past the hour…”
Twelve long seconds elapsed before the lumbering Saturn cleared the tower, and the hundreds of thousands of spectators began to feel the vibration and shockwaves pummeling their chests and the soles of their feet. From the commander’s seat, Armstrong could be heard announcing the onset of the “roll program” maneuver, as the Saturn V’s computer began actively guiding it out over the Atlantic Ocean and onto its proper heading for low-Earth orbit and rendezvous with the Moon.
To the onlookers, it was nothing short of spectacular, according to Dave Scott, who was watching from the motorboat on the Banana River with Jan Armstrong. Sitting in the blockhouse at the Cape, Deke Slayton could only watch silently as the rocket thundered into a clear sky. “I think most of us felt like we were lifting it all by ourselves,” he wrote later. Tom Stafford, having ridden one of these beasts a few weeks earlier on Apollo 10, now found himself seated in Cape Kennedy’s VIP area between Lyndon Johnson and Ted Agnew, his chest blasted by the intense staccato crackle.
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Phenomenal view of the Saturn V during its initial boost towards low-Earth orbit. Photo Credit: NASA
For the Apollo 11 crew, encased in their space suits within the very nose of the behemoth, the sensations were unlike their previous experiences. All three men had previously ridden the Titan II rocket, but, rather than the sudden G forces at the instant of liftoff, “there was an unexpected wobbly sway,” wrote Buzz Aldrin in his memoir, Men from Earth. “The blue sky outside the hatch window seemed to move slightly as the huge booster began its pre-programmed turn after clearing the tower. The rumbling grew louder, but it was still distant.” For his part, Collins felt that the Saturn was “a gentleman” compared to the Titan; despite the shock of staging, the G loads seemed to build no higher than 4.5 and the whole ride proceeded as “smooth as glass, as quiet and serene as any rocket ride can be”.
The Saturn behaved with perfection, executing each step of its flight regime precisely. Despite having launched into orbit atop the largest and most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status in human history, the men of Apollo 11 had yet to even begin their primary mission. Even the three-day journey to the Moon was a trail already blazed by two previous Apollo crews. Not until 20 July 1969 would Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin truly enter the realm of the unknown.
Source: https://www.americaspace.com/2019/07/07/launch-commit-celebrating-apollo-11-50th-anniversary-month-part-1/#more-108118
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'Distinctly Forbidding': Celebrating Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Month (Part 2) (1)
By Ben Evans, on July 14th, 2019 [AS]
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The Home Planet creeps slowly above the lunar horizon, as viewed from Apollo 11. Only a handful of men have seen this view in more than two million years of human history. Photo Credit: NASA
When Apollo 11 and its three-man crew—Neil Armstrong (https://www.americaspace.com/2012/08/28/neil-armstrong-a-hero-of-all-time/), Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin—rose into space 50 years ago, this month, they embarked on the grandest adventure ever undertaken in human history: the first piloted voyage to the surface of the Moon. Yet, strangely, even after surviving a tumultuous launch atop the mammoth Saturn V rocket (https://www.americaspace.com/2017/11/05/without-breaking-the-shell-50-years-since-the-saturn-vs-maiden-launch/), performing the translunar injection burn, and entering the mysterious region between Earth and the Moon, known as “cislunar space”, the main part of the mission had yet to begin. Their mission would really start after Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) on 19 July, and the series of increasingly bold and epochal events thereafter.
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Spectacular view of Earth, captured during Apollo 11’s translunar coast. The spacecraft was approximately 11,500 miles (18,520 km) from the Home Planet, heading for the Moon, when this photograph was acquired. Photo Credit: NASA
The resultant quietness of those three days was not helped, in the opinion of mission controllers, by a lack of conversation from the astronauts. “It’s all dead air and static,” a Houston official complained at one stage of the cislunar coast. The lengthy spells of silence were, however, punctuated by televised shows in which the crew guided a worldwide audience around their ship, revealing the dismantling of the probe and drogue mechanism, a shimmy through the tunnel and an “upside-down” glimpse of Lunar Module (LM) Eagle’s tiny cabin, with Aldrin, toting dark aviator sunglasses, hard at work.
Several of these shows were made by Collins, who enjoyed rotating the camera 180 degrees to turn his Earthbound audience on its head and back again; but, in reality, none of them had ever had much chance to practice with the camera on the ground and its late delivery to Cape Kennedy had not helped matters. “We simply didn’t have time to fool around with it,” he wrote in his autobiography, Carrying the Fire. “Neil and Buzz didn’t even know how to turn it on or focus it, and my knowledge of it was pretty sketchy.” With this in mind, they were advised by a helpful instructor that an audience of perhaps a billion or more people would be watching and that screwing up one of their shows was not an option.
The quiet time was interspersed with inevitable chores, mainly performed by Collins: purging fuel cells, charging batteries, dumping waste water and urine, preparing food, dechlorinating the ship’s water supply, and, notably, performing a midcourse correction burn to refine their path toward the Moon. Twenty-six hours into the mission, and almost 110,000 miles (175,000 km) from home, the Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine of the Command and Service Module (CSM) Columbia roared silently into the void for three seconds in what flight controllers lauded as an “absolutely nominal” firing.
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Clad in aviator sunglasses, Buzz Aldrin offers a televised tour of the Lunar Module (LM) Eagle, early in the Apollo 11 mission. Photo Credit: NASA
Collins related that, for those few seconds, he was in active control. Several months earlier, in December 1968, his young son had asked who was “driving” Apollo 8 to the Moon (https://www.americaspace.com/2018/12/23/he-lost-his-record-remembering-apollo-8-50-years-on-part-2/): was it Mr. Borman, the ship’s commander? No, Collins replied, it was Sir Isaac Newton—or, at least, the influences of Sun, Earth and Moon, which affected the spacecraft’s path just as the great English scientist’s law of universal gravitation had helped predict three centuries before.
The accuracy of the midcourse burn was so good that two subsequent SPS firings were deemed unnecessary, and late on 18 July, precisely on schedule, some 43,500 miles (70,000 km) from their target, Columbia and Eagle slipped into the Moon’s sphere of influence. For the past three days, still under the tug of Earth’s gravity, their speed had rapidly decreased from 24,200 mph (39,000 km/h) immediately after Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) to just over 2,000 mph (3,200 km/h); now, as the Moon’s gravitational pull became dominant, they began to “fall” toward it, gradually speeding up to 5,600 mph (9,000 km/h). Earlier in the evening, Collins had again removed the probe and drogue from Columbia’s docking mechanism and reopened the tunnel to allow Armstrong and Aldrin to enter Eagle and begin checking out its systems.
Both men considered the “down-up-up-down” trip into the lunar module—as they moved from the “floor” to the “ceiling” of Columbia, then found themselves diving headfirst toward Eagle’s “floor”—as one of the most unusual sensations of their mission, although Aldrin described the transition as “perfectly natural,” akin to the motions of a swimmer. For two and a half hours, they verified that the lander was ready to support an undocking and a landing attempt on the afternoon of 20 July and viewers in the United States, western Europe, Japan and most of South America were treated to the sight of Aldrin performing an equipment inventory inside the tiny cabin.
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The forbidding face of the lunar farside, as seen from Apollo 11. Photo Credit: NASA
That evening offered some more quiet time before the historic events to come. Aldrin recalled asking Armstrong if he had decided what he was going to say when he stepped onto the lunar surface, to which the commander, between sips of fruit juice, replied that no, he was still thinking it over.
The sheer grandeur of the Moon itself was something totally different from the ever-present pale lamp in the sky that they had watched nightly as they grew from infancy. “The Moon I have known all my life,” Collins wrote, “has gone away somewhere, to be replaced by the most awesome sphere I have ever seen. To begin with, it is huge, completely filling our window.” It also appeared more menacing than the two-dimensional circle in Earth’s skies; he perceived it to be an intensely unwelcoming and forbidding place, “formidable” and “utterly silent” as it hung “ominously” in the void.
Back on Earth, journalists had frequently posed an inevitable question before the flight: Was Collins jealous that Armstrong and Aldrin were about to take the first steps on the Moon, while he remained in orbit? Collins had responded that in all honesty he was more than happy and content to be flying 99.9 percent of the journey. He would, it is true, be mad to suppose that he had the best seat on the mission, but he had already decided that this would be his final space flight; the strain on his wife and children, the constant grind of training, and the lengthy spells away from home were too much for them.
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“You cats take it easy,” yelled Mike Collins from the Command and Service Module (CSM) Columbia, as seen in this view from Eagle’s windows. Photo Credit: NASA
Shortly before Apollo 11 was launched, during a cross-country T-38 flight with Deke Slayton, the man who picked crews had offered Collins the chance to serve as backup commander of Apollo 14 and most likely command Apollo 17 to the Moon (https://www.americaspace.com/2016/08/20/i-didnt-feel-any-obligation-45-years-since-the-apollo-17-decision-part-1/). This would give Collins the chance to walk the lunar surface himself. Collins had declined. Now, as he neared the Moon on this midsummer’s evening in 1969 and looked down onto the threatening barrenness of its terrain, then recalled Earth with its waterfalls and valleys and enchanting iridescence of life, he knew he had made the right choice.
Getting into orbit around the Moon on the afternoon of 19 July was a triumph of celestial mechanics and human ability in itself. The Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) maneuver actually comprised two firings of the SPS engine. The first, lasting five minutes and 57 seconds, reduced their speed from 5,600 mph (9,000 km/h) to 3,700 mph (5,970 km/h) and “dropped” them into an elliptical orbit of 168 x 60 miles (270 x 97 km) with the high point on the nearside; and the second, lasting only 17 seconds, came about four hours later and almost circularized their path at roughly 65 x 54 miles (105 x 87 km). To this day, it remains remarkable that they could be guided so precisely across such an immense distance and achieve such a perfect orbit around the Moon. “Those big computers in the basement in Houston,” wrote Collins, “didn’t even whimper but belched out super-accurate predictions.” When one considers that the computing power of one of today’s mobile cellphones would dwarf the entire computing power that guided Columbia and Eagle to the Moon, the act of inserting Apollo 11 into lunar orbit was truly a stupendous achievement.
During the four-hour interval between the two burns, dubbed “LOI-1” and “LOI-2”, the opportunity arose to closely examine the surface of the strange world upon which Armstrong and Aldrin would shortly take humanity’s first steps. Initially, the television camera panned across the terrain and the crew were silent, until Mission Control requested that they describe some of what they were seeing. A group of astronomers from Bochum in West Germany had asked that they take a look at Aristarchus—a prominent, extremely bright impact crater—which had exhibited unusual luminescence over the preceding weeks.
“Hey, Houston,” radioed Armstrong, after finding the crater, “I’m looking north up toward Aristarchus now, and there’s an area that is considerably more illuminated than the surrounding area.”
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'Distinctly Forbidding': Celebrating Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Month (Part 2) (2)
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Lunar Module (LM) Eagle, with the Lunar Contact probes on three of its extended landing legs, performs a pirouette shortly after undocking. Photo Credit: NASA
Other regions and landmarks were enthusiastically identified by the crew by their nicknames—the small hills of Boot Hill and Duke Island, the snake-like rilles of Diamondback and Sidewinder and the twin peaks of “Mount Marilyn”; the latter unofficially bestowed by Apollo 8 astronaut Jim Lovell in honor of his wife—although, of course, the vast plain of Mare Tranquilitatis (the Sea of Tranquility) was of principal interest. “The Sea of Tranquillity,” wrote Collins, “is just past dawn and the Sun’s rays are intersecting its surface at a mere one-degree angle. Under these lighting conditions, craters cast extremely long shadows, and to me the entire region looks distinctly forbidding.” In Collins’ mind, it looked far too rugged to set a baby’s buggy down, let alone a lunar module.
By the early evening of 19 July, following the LOI-2 burn, which Collins had timed to the split second using a stopwatch, everything was ready for the final checkout of Eagle in advance of undocking and the Powered Descent. Luckily, since Aldrin had successfully lobbied to do much of the checkout a day early, the task took barely 30 minutes, and by 8:30 p.m. EDT all was in place as the three astronauts bedded down for a night of surprisingly fitful sleep in Columbia.
Next morning, a very groggy Mike Collins responded to Mission Control’s wake-up call and, after breakfast and a round-up of the morning news, all three men plunged into their respective checklists. Among the most important tasks were donning their space suits and, in the case of Armstrong and Aldrin, getting into the liquid-cooled underwear which would help to maintain a comfortable body temperature during their time on the lunar surface. Collins shoved the remainder of their gear— “an armload of equipment”—through the tunnel to them, then disconnected umbilicals, reinstalled the docking probe and drogue and sealed the hatch. “I am on the radio constantly now,” he wrote, “running through an elaborate series of joint checks with Eagle. In one of them, I use my control system to hold both vehicles steady while they calibrate some of their guidance equipment.” Inside the lander, anchored to the floor by bungee-like cords, Armstrong and Aldrin also had their hands full: punching entries into the computer keypad, aligning their S-band antenna with the Earth-based tracking network, checking and cross-checking VHF communications with Collins, and deploying Eagle’s landing gear.
At length, it was time to bid farewell. “You cats take it easy on the lunar surface,” Collins called cheerily. “If I hear you huffing and puffing, I’m going to start bitching at you.” A few minutes later, at 1:44 p.m. EDT on 20 July, he flipped a switch to cast Eagle loose. Yet this momentous beginning of Eagle’s descent occurred unseen by Earth, for both craft were behind the Moon at the time. Before losing radio contact, Capcom Charlie Duke gave them the good news that they had a “Go” for undocking. His infectious North Carolina drawl and endearing personality would certainly help to lift some of the tension in the hours ahead.
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Capcom Charlie Duke (left) and Apollo 11 backup commander Jim Lovell (center) and Apollo 11 backup Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Fred Haise are pictured at their consoles in the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) during the landing phase. Photo Credit: NASA
The Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, Texas, was packed with virtually everybody who mattered in the space program—Wernher von Braun, Tom Paine, George Mueller, Sam Phillips, Chris Kraft, George Low, Deke Slayton and many astronauts, all waiting for more than a decade of hard work to pay off. In addition, an estimated third of the world’s population was either watching or listening on television or radio.
Still out of direct radio contact with the ground, Collins watched, his nose pressed against one of Columbia’s windows, as Eagle drifted serenely into the inky darkness. Armstrong executed a little pirouette, fully rotating the lander to enable Collins to verify that the landing gear was in good condition. This had required Collins to take a trip to the Grumman assembly plant in Bethpage, N.Y., to familiarise himself with the lunar module, its fully extended landing legs and the long sensor prongs affixed to three of its four footpads. (One leg—the one holding the ladder—was originally to have had a sensor, too, but according to biographer James Hansen in First Man, Armstrong requested its removal, lest he or Aldrin trip over it during their climb down to the surface.)
There were other worries. One side of the descent stage held the Modular Equipment Storage Assembly (MESA), a carrier brimming with a television camera, rock boxes, and geology tools, which Armstrong would use on the lunar surface. Was it still firmly secured in place or had it accidentally swung open during the separation process? Collins assured him that all was well, Armstrong requested its removal, lest he or Aldrin trip over it during their climb down to the surface.) There were other worries. One side of the descent stage held the Modular Equipment Storage Assembly (MESA), a carrier brimming with a television camera, rock boxes, and geology tools, which Armstrong would use on the lunar surface. Was it still firmly secured in place or had it accidentally swung open during the separation process? Collins assured him that all was well.
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Artist’s concept of Eagle’s final descent to the lunar surface. Image Credit: NASA
With such assurances ringing in their ears, all three men could afford a brief moment of light-hearted banter, with Collins telling Eagle’s crew that they had a pretty fine-looking machine, despite being upside down, to which Armstrong retorted that, from his perspective, someone was upside down.
At 2:11 p.m. EDT, Collins fired his thrusters for a nine-second separation burn, “to give Eagle some breathing room”. And at 3:08 p.m. the first of two firings of the lander’s descent engine got underway. Known as Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI), this lasted 30 seconds and reduced the lowest point (or “perilune”) of Eagle’s orbit to a height of 9.4 miles (15.2 km), at a position convenient for initiating powered descent. The laws of celestial mechanics now became increasingly evident to Collins: In a lower orbit, Eagle was moving faster and was actually ahead of Columbia by about one minute.
As they descended toward perilune, it was necessary for Armstrong and Aldrin to cross-check their instruments, specifically the Primary Navigation, Guidance and Control System (PNGS) and Abort Guidance System (AGS). The former processed data from an inertial platform of gyroscopes and guided the lunar module along a predetermined flight path to its landing site, whilst the latter offered the ability to perform an abort if necessary. “We couldn’t land on AGS,” Armstrong told James Hansen in First Man, “unless we got right down close to the surface, because you couldn’t navigate the trajectory with it.” However, both systems had to be operating throughout the descent phase—if an emergency arose, Armstrong might need to switch instantaneously from PNGS to AGS—and it was imperative that the two systems had the same data. “If tiny errors were allowed to compound,” Hansen wrote, “gross errors in computing the LM’s course and location could result.”
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This view of Armstrong in the lunar module simulator during training illustrates the smallness of Eagle’s cabin. Photo Credit: NASA
The higher altitude of Columbia meant that Collins was first to regain contact with Houston as the two craft emerged from behind the Moon. The acquisition of signal was what the MOCR had been waiting for. When queried by Capcom Charlie Duke over the progress of the DOI burn, Collins responded simply that it had gone “just swimmingly…beautiful”.
Ninety seconds later, at 3:49 p.m., Aldrin confirmed that the DOI had gone well. Eagle’s radar was activated, verifying a perilune of 9.4 miles (15.2 km), and Duke issued a firm “Go” to begin Powered Descent. Brief, but persistent communication dropouts forced Collins to relay this to Armstrong and Aldrin and the lander’s descent engine ignited for the second time at 4:05 pm. By the time it shut down, in barely 12 minutes’ time, they would be on the Moon. Although Collins could certainly speak to them, he could no longer see them; despite having tied a small black patch over his left eye and squinting through Columbia’s sextant, the bug-like lander steadily diminished in size until it looked “like any one of a thousand tiny craters—except that it is moving.”
Eventually, it was gone.
The best thing Collins—and an anxious world—could do now was keep quiet and wait.
Source: https://www.americaspace.com/2019/07/14/except-that-it-is-moving-celebrating-apollo-11-50th-anniversary-month-part-2/#more-108136
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'The Eagle Has Landed': Celebrating Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Month (Part 3)
By Ben Evans, on July 21st, 2019 [AS]
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Perspective of humanity’s first naked-eye view of the lunar surface at the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility, 50 years ago, this week. Photo Credit: NASA
Fifty years ago, this weekend, on Sunday, 20 July 1969, the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC)—later to become the Johnson Space Center (JSC)—in Houston, Texas, was filled with tension and expectant quiet. Gene Kranz, the flight director of the “White Team,” one of four shifts supervising Apollo 11’s voyage to plant the first human bootprints on the Moon, had already order Security to “lock the doors” in anticipation of the momentous events to follow. No one would be permitted to disturb the intense concentration of himself or his control team as they steeled themselves for the most audacious engineering challenge in history.
Already, Apollo 11 and its crew of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin had launched atop the most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status (https://www.americaspace.com/2017/11/05/without-breaking-the-shell-50-years-since-the-saturn-vs-maiden-launch/) and had traveled across 240,000 miles (370,000 km) of cislunar space to reach their mysterious destination. Now, four days after liftoff, their real mission could begin.
When Kranz took the flight director’s seat from colleague Glynn Lunney at 7:00 a.m. CDT, he struggled to hear the hushed voices of the flight controllers. The air was rich with the scent of coffee and tobacco smoke from dozens of ashtrays and the Capcom was nonchalantly reading the morning news to Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin. The center’s deputy director, Chris Kraft, patted Kranz on the shoulder and wished him and his team good luck. On the flight director’s loop, Kranz his team that today they were going to land on the Moon. This was their final exam after months of preparation. “And after we finish the son-of-a-gun,” he concluded, “we’re gonna go out and have a beer and say ‘Dammit, we really did something!’”
More than 240,000 miles (370,000 km) away, in low orbit around the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin undocked their spidery lunar module, Eagle, from the command and service module, Columbia, and began their Powered Descent toward the surface. For the first 26 seconds, as Eagle’s descent engine burned, Armstrong kept it at 10 percent of its rated thrust, producing a gentle acceleration which enabled the computer to gimbal it and ensure that the thrust was directed precisely through the center of mass, before going full-throttle.
Flying with the engine bell facing the direction of travel and the windows toward the surface, he noticed that they were coming in “long”—they flew over the crater Maskelyne W a few seconds early, for example—and so were likely to overfly their intended landing site. After the flight, it would be judged that very small residual pressures in the tunnel between Eagle and Columbia during undocking had imparted a slight radial velocity that had perturbed their trajectory. (On future flights, approval for undocking would not be granted by Mission Control until the tunnel’s atmosphere had been fully vented.) To Armstrong, however, it really did not matter on the first landing attempt; as he told his biographer, James Hansen in First Man, “I didn’t particularly care where we landed, as long as it was a decent area that wasn’t dangerous.”
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The lunar module Eagle, photographed by Mike Collins in the moments after undocking. Photo Credit: NASA
Four minutes into the Powered Descent, Eagle rotated “face up” so that the radar on its underside was able to acquire the lunar surface and supply data on altitude and rate-of-descent. “We needed to get the landing radar into the equation pretty soon,” Armstrong told Hansen, “because Earth didn’t know how close we were and we didn’t want to get too close to the lunar surface before we got that radar.” This showed them to be 6.3 miles (10.1 km), somewhat lower than the computer reckoned, because it was tracking their mean height above the surface, rather than their actual height. Aldrin knew that the radar offered the most reliable calculations and planned to instruct the computer to accept that data, but he had to wait for Mission Control to verify it. When they did, he keyed a command to monitor the convergence of the two estimates as Eagle maneuvered. At this point a yellow caution light lit on the instrument panel and an alarm tone sounded.
“Program alarm,” called Armstrong, then glanced down to the computer display and added, “it’s a 1202. Give us a reading on the 1202 program alarm.”
Neither he nor Aldrin had any idea which of the dozens of different alarms the 1202 represented and certainly had no time to flip through their data books to find out. Fortunately, seated in Mission Control was Steve Bales, the guidance officer and an expert on the lunar module’s computer. He checked with Jack Garman, a colleague in the mission support room, and assured Gene Kranz that 1202 was an “Executive Overflow,” meaning the computer was momentarily overloaded, but it would not jeopardise the landing. With typical enthusiasm, Bales yelled into his mouthpiece: “We’re Go on that, Flight!”
Bales’ call was relayed to Armstrong by Capcom Charlie Duke—“We’re Go on that alarm”—but it was not to be the end of the 1202: It flashed onto Eagle’s display a further three times, but so long as it was only intermittent it did not pose a risk because the computer was able to recover. Three minutes before the scheduled touchdown on the Moon, the computer flashed another alarm: “1201.” This was another form of executive overflow and was quickly cleared, with Duke telling Armstrong and Aldrin “We’re Go…Same type, we’re Go.” For Armstrong, the alarms were little more than an irritation and, as long as everything continued to look fine, he had every intention of pressing on.
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The rugged far side of the Moon, as seen from Apollo 11. Photo Credit: NASA
However, Buzz Aldrin, in his 1989 autobiography, Men from Earth, stressed that the alarms were a potentially serious obstacle in which “hearts shot up into throats” at Mission Control. Even Steve Bales, who quickly diagnosed the alarms and advised Kranz appropriately, had only become familiar with which of the various alarms mandated an abort, and which did not, a few days earlier.
On the afternoon of 5 July 1969, the Apollo 12 backup landing crew of astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin had been in the lunar module simulator in Houston, running practice descents when a 1201 alarm was thrown at Kranz’s flight control team. From his seat, Steve Bales could only discern that, although everything looked okay with the hardware, there was something amiss with the computer. He advised an abort and Kranz made the call. Scott punched the Abort Stage button and completed a successful return to lunar orbit, but later that evening Bales and Kranz came under fire from the simulation supervisor who had thrown the problem at them. Kranz was criticized on two counts: for ordering an abort when it was not needed (if the guidance system was working, if the thrusters were working, if the descent engine’s performance was good, and if the astronauts’ displays were working, he should have pressed on) and for violating a basic rule of Mission Control, that flight directors had to have two independent cues before calling an abort.
It was a tough, but valuable lesson. By the time Apollo 11 lifted off, Bales had drawn up a list of those program alarms which would make an abort mandatory and those which would not. Neither 1201 nor 1202 were on his list. When the first alarm flashed up, Charlie Duke—who had been sitting at the Capcom’s console during the 5 July simulation—and backroom expert Granville Paules instantly recognized it as “the same one we had in training.” Gene Kranz did not want to be stampeded into an abort now that they were flying the mission for real. On the other hand, if the alarms continued, they could bring Eagle’s computer grinding to a halt and make an abort unavoidable.
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Armstrong and Aldrin captured this view of the command and service module, with Mike Collins as its sole human occupant. Photo Credit: NASA
By the time the 1201 alarm appeared, Eagle was already descending below 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) and had performed the “pitch-over” maneuver and was now flying tilted backward, about 20 degrees off-vertical. The astronauts could now “see” the lunar terrain spread out before them. After polling his team, Kranz received a collective “Go for Landing,” a message which Duke now passed on to Armstrong and Aldrin. Yet the furore over the program alarms meant that it was another minute or so, not until a few seconds after 3:15 p.m. CDT, that Armstrong had chance to look at the surface…and behold a particularly nasty sight: the near slope of a vast crater, as big as a football field, its hinterland dotted with boulders the size of small cars.
At first, he considered landing “short” of the crater—later dubbed “West Crater”—then picking a spot somewhere amidst the boulders, although the risk of touching down on a slope or in a tight place quickly changed his mind. At an altitude of around 500 feet (150 meters), a little higher than he had intended, Armstrong selected the semi-automatic mode that would enable him to control attitude and horizontal velocity, while the computer operated the throttle. He pitched Eagle almost upright in order to direct virtually all of its thrust downward and slow the rate of descent, then selected “Attitude Hold” and let Eagle fly a shallow trajectory over the obstacles. As soon as he was clear, he began to seek a suitable location to land.
Drawing closer now, and dropping below 200 feet (60 meters), Armstrong began to discern lunar dust, kicked up by the descent engine, obscuring the surface. The dust, he told James Hansen, was not a “normal” cloud of dust, like those encountered in the high desert on Earth, but effectively a “blanket”—a sheet of moving particulates which essentially wiped out visibility, apart from several boulders poking through it. Moving almost horizontally, the dust “did not billow up at all; it just moved out and away in an almost radial sheet.”
In Mission Control, Kranz’s team knew that Armstrong had intervened early, but they did not yet know why; they could not have known about the yawning crater and the forbidding field of boulders. “The partnership,” between Mission Control and the astronauts, wrote Andrew Chaikin in his 1994 book A Man on the Moon, “had all but dissolved.” In this final phase, everyone on Earth had to understand that Armstrong, the man in command, was now running the mission.
Charlie Duke called to Kranz: “I think we’d better be quiet!”
“Rog,” agreed the flight director. “The only call-outs from now on will be fuel.”
Gradually, it seemed, the situation improved and Armstrong began arresting Eagle’s forward and sideways motion with the thrusters; he intended to land in the first clear spot that he could find. He was virtually silent in those final minutes, the only voice coming from Aldrin, who called out a steady stream of altitudes and velocity components to guide Armstrong—and a tense, listening world—down. “Once I got below 50 feet,” Armstrong told Hansen, “even though we were running out of fuel, I thought we’d be all right. I felt the lander could stand the impact…I didn’t want to drop from that height, but once I got below 50 feet I felt pretty confident we would be all right.”
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Apollo 12 backup commander Dave Scott, here pictured in Mission Control during the Apollo 11 landing, had encountered a similaR program alarm situation during a simulation on 5 July 1969. Photo Credit: NASA
The fuel was of primary concern, and at 3:16 p.m. CDT Kranz received notification that the “low-level” light had illuminated. Less than 100 feet (30 meters) above the surface, Aldrin reported “Quantity Light,” indicating that only five percent of fuel remained in Eagle’s descent engine. In Mission Control, a 94-second countdown started; when this countdown reached zero, the lander would have only 20 seconds left in which to either touch down on the surface or abort. “I never dreamed,” Kranz recounted years later, “that we would still be flying this close to empty.” Watching the fuel gauge on his display like a hawk, lunar module control officer Bob Carlton reported that only 60 of the 94 seconds remained—an urgent report passed on to Eagle by Charlie Duke—although the astronauts were too preoccupied to respond. “They were too busy,” Kranz said later. “I got the feeling they were going for broke. I had this feeling ever since they took over manual control.” In Mission Control, the silence was so pervasive and so enduring that one could have heard a pin drop. Kranz crossed himself and prayed.
Still, the notion that Armstrong may have been going for broke did not mean that he and Aldrin were being reckless; if they had been still too high when the Quantity Light came on, there would have been no alternative but to abort, but at relatively low altitude it seemed safer and more prudent to press on with the landing attempt. After all, during several of his Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) runs above Ellington Field, Texas, Armstrong had successfully touched down with less than 15 seconds of fuel in his tanks, so he was not particularly “panic-stricken” about the low levels.
At 3:17:26 p.m. CDT, Aldrin called out that they were barely 20 feet above the surface and, 13 seconds later, announced “Contact Light” as one of the sensor prongs projecting below Eagle’s footpads touched alien soil. Armstrong would later tell Hansen that he did not react instantaneously when the light glowed blue, thinking it to have been an anomaly and not entirely certain, thanks to the dust, that they had really touched down. As a result, he was a second or two late in shutting down the engine. Forty seconds had now passed since Charlie Duke’s last call, yet post-mission analysis would reveal that—due to propellant sloshing around in the descent stage tanks and giving inaccurate readings—Eagle actually had around 45 seconds of fuel remaining.
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The lunar module Eagle is silhouetted against the grey terrain of the Sea of Tranquility. Photo Credit: NASA
“Shutdown!” called Armstrong, punching the Engine Stop button. Meanwhile, Aldrin began reciting each step of his post-landing checklist and they jointly took the requisite actions to shut down now-unneeded systems—“ACA out of detent, Mode controls: both auto, Descent engine command override: off, Engine arm: off.” Lastly, Aldrin added, “413 is in,” which told Eagle’s Abort Guidance System (AGS) to remember the attitude of the vehicle on the surface.
Outside, the dust which had lain undisturbed for a billion years or more began to settle. The altimeter ceased flickering and the surface shuddered, then fell still. It was later determined that Armstrong landed about 4 miles (6 km) downrange of their intended spot, at co-ordinates 0.67409 degrees North by 23.47298 degrees East. The color of the surface seemed to be a mixture of ashen greys, tans, and browns and brightened into an intense, chalky white. Some nearby rocks seemed fractured or disturbed by the descent engine; Armstrong thought they looked like basalt. The surreal stillness of the scene and the silence of ages surrounded them. Inside their bulky space suits and bubble helmets, their mouths bone-dry from ingesting pure oxygen for so long, both men were breathing hard; yet they took a few seconds to grin at each other, before Armstrong keyed his mike.
“Houston,” he radioed, “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed!”
Charlie Duke’s response was entirely appropriate for his personality, defusing with humor the enormity of what had just happened. “Roger, Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue! We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.” Prior to launch Armstrong had told Duke and Aldrin that he intended to change Eagle’s radio callsign to “Tranquility Base” whilst on the Moon, but it came as something of a surprise to those who did not know. Aldrin did not expect him to use it so soon after landing and even Duke seemed tongue-tied when he tried to pronounce it in those euphoric first seconds.
In Mission Control, “euphoria” was an understatement. “The whole [room] was pandemonium,” wrote Deke Slayton in his autobiography, Deke, co-authored with Michael Cassutt. “It took about 15 seconds to calm down.” Around the world, the feeling was the same. Walter Cronkite was uncharacteristically speechless. Seated in the CBS studio next to former astronaut Wally Schirra, he stumbled over his words as he stammered to his audience: “Boy…Man on the Moon!”
In Houston, the lighting of cigars, the waving of flags, the slapping of backs and the free-flowing of tears which only Americans could produce in such copious quantities would go on long into the night. Another compliment was paid to someone else that evening. For more than five years, John F. Kennedy, the president who committed America to landing a man on the Moon (https://www.americaspace.com/2013/11/22/we-choose-50-years-after-kennedys-assassination-the-torch-of-apollo-still-burns-brightly/), before the decade was out, had lain in his grave at Arlington National Cemetery. On the hot midsummer’s evening of 20 July 1969, amid all the excitement and celebration, someone placed a small bouquet of flowers onto his grave.
The card bore a poignant inscription.
“Mr President,” it read, “the Eagle has landed.”
Source: https://www.americaspace.com/2019/07/21/the-eagle-has-landed-celebrating-apollo-11-50th-anniversary-month-part-3/
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'For One Priceless Moment': Celebrating Apollo 11, 50th Anniversary Month (Part 4) (1)
By Ben Evans, on July 28th, 2019 [AS]
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Buzz Aldrin stands before the U.S. flag at the Sea of Tranquility. Photo Credit: NASA
On Sunday, 20 July 1969, the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, Texas, was filled with tension and expectant quiet. More than three billion people lived on Earth and three others—Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin—occupied an environment far more distant, far more hostile and far more exotic. Leaving Collins behind in lunar orbit aboard the command and service module Columbia, Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the lunar module Eagle and alighted smoothly on the surface of the Moon. Against all the odds, a perfect touchdown on alien soil had been accomplished on the Sea of Tranquility, and the time rapidly approached when they would take the steps which would earn them immortality: the first “Moonwalk.”
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Pictured here during the trans-lunar coast, Buzz Aldrin would spend a few moments on the Moon celebrating Communion. Photo Credit: NASA
For the first time in four days, Armstrong and Aldrin could now feel something of their Earthly weight—albeit a mere sixth of it—as the weak lunar gravity took its toll. It enabled Aldrin to celebrate Holy Communion. Opening a personal stowage pouch, given to him by his Presbyterian minister, Reverend Dean Woodruff, he pulled out a tiny wine flask and chalice and a handful of wafers and put all three on Eagle’s small keypad. “This is the LM Pilot speaking,” he said at 5:57 p.m. CDT on 20 July 1969, two hours after landing. “I’d like to request a few moments of silence. 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.” Upturning the flask, Aldrin watched as the wine curled its way, sluggishly, into the chalice. In silence, he read from the Book of John:
I am the vine and you are the branches
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit
For you can do nothing without me
There was much to do. After confirming that Eagle was undamaged, the conservative flight plan called for the astronauts to take a four-hour nap before beginning preparations for the Moonwalk. This was about as likely as telling a child to sleep on Christmas morning. In the weeks before the launch, the idea of skipping this brief sleep period and proceeding directly into “EVA Prep” had been discussed and when Armstrong formally requested it at 5:11 p.m. CDT it did not take long for Capcom Charlie Duke to respond with Mission Control’s full approval.
“Houston, Tranquility?”
“Go, Tranquility. Over.”
“Our recommendation,” said Armstrong, “at this point is planning an EVA—with your concurrence —starting about 8 o’clock Houston time. That is about three hours from now.”
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An early view of Tranquility Base through Eagle’s window. Photo Credit: NASA
“Stand by,” said Duke, turning to Flight Director Gene Kranz. Notwithstanding the 2.6-second time delay as radio signals crackled back and forth across the 240,000-mile (370,000-km) cislunar gulf, Duke’s next words reached the astronauts just nine seconds after Armstrong made his request.
“Tranquility Base, Houston. We thought about it. We will support it.”
Donning of their lunar surface equipment was far more complex than it had been in Earth-bound simulations and was not aided by the fact that Eagle’s tiny cabin was filled with checklists, food packages, stopwatches and other assorted equipment. Armstrong and Aldrin spent an hour preparing their gear, then three hours putting it on: rubber-soled lunar overshoes, backpacks, oxygen hoses, coolant umbilicals, outer helmets, chest-mounted control units; the list went on. In his 1989 autobiography, Men from Earth, Aldrin described them as like a pair of fullbacks in a Cub Scout tent, whilst Armstrong told his biographer, James Hansen, that it was “pretty close in there, with the suits inflated.”
After a brief struggle to open Eagle’s hatch, the men were exposed to vacuum as the last vestiges of air rushed out in a flurry of ice crystals. At once, Armstrong clumsily dropped to his knees, his head facing the back of the cabin, his feet inside the yawning square opening that marked the threshold to a dream which had captivated humanity for thousands of years. His backpack extended to some height, and he had to move delicately to avoid causing damage. At length, he was on the lunar module’s porch and was reminded by the duty Capcom, astronaut Bruce McCandless, to pull a lanyard to deploy a black-and-white television camera to monitor his descent to the surface.
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Silhouette of Eagle against the barren lunar terrain. Photo Credit: NASA
The images—replayed so many times over the decades—still retain their ethereal quality as the first record of our footsteps into the Universe around us. Armstrong was difficult to see in Eagle’s shadow, but the bright plain of the Sea of Tranquility and the black sky could be easily discerned. Descending the nine-rung ladder was by no means dizzying, and he felt so light that he dropped with the grace of a snowflake down each step and into the footpad. To check his abilities, he sprang back up to the first rung, then returned to the footpad. Glancing around, he told his terrestrial audience what he saw: “The surface,” he began at 9:55:38 p.m. CDT, “appears to be very, very fine-grained as you get close to it. It’s almost like a powder.”
Thirty-seven seconds later, the first man set foot on the Moon.
According to NASA’s official flight transcript, the epochal moment came at 9:56:15 p.m. CDT, when he raised his left boot over Eagle’s footpad and planted it on the lunar soil. Seconds later came the historic words: “That’s one small step for man…one giant leap for mankind.”
In those few steps, he tested his weight and found that he could pick up the soil loosely with his toe; it adhered to the soles and sides of his boots like layered charcoal. The prints imprinted the surface only slightly, but left clear impressions, and moving around in one-sixth of terrestrial gravity felt entirely natural. (Armstrong’s mother, Viola, watching his steps on television, described him as “buoyant” and “almost floating”—an entirely appropriate choice of words, both figuratively and literally.)
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Humankind’s greatest achievement was broadcast live on TV, courtesy of NASA’s Deep Space Network. Image Credit: NASA
Eagle’s descent engine had left no appreciable crater, although erosive “rays” on the surface illustrated the effect of its impulse, just prior to touchdown. Next came the arrival of the large Hasselblad camera, via the clothesline-like Lunar Equipment Conveyor, and Armstrong became so engrossed in photographing the hinterland of Tranquility that he almost forgot to collect a contingency sample of soil. It took Aldrin and Bruce McCandless a couple of calls to remind him. Digging the sample was a strange sensation: Although the upper layer of the surface was soft, he very quickly ran into a hard, very cohesive material. “It has a stark beauty of its own,” he remarked, “much like the high desert of the United States. It’s different, but it’s very pretty out here.”
Sixteen minutes into the Moonwalk, it was Aldrin’s turn to venture outside, and this enabled Armstrong to use the Hasselblad to acquire dramatic images of his crewmate departing Eagle and taking his first steps.
As he looked around, two words came to mind: Magnificent desolation. “Nothing prepared me for the starkness of the terrain,” Aldrin recalled later. “It was barren and rolling and the horizon was much closer than I was used to. Earth’s diameter is such that its inhabitants have no personal awareness of the curvature; it’s easy to understand why, for centuries, it was believed to be flat…but on the smaller Moon, my impression was that we were on a ball, or on the knoll of a hill. I even felt a bit disorientated because of the nearness of the horizon.”
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Buzz Aldrin’s descends Eagle’s ladder to the surface. Photo Credit: NASA
As they walked, Armstrong found that the most “natural” gait was a loping motion, in which he alternated feet, pushed off with each step, and floated ahead, before planting the next foot. Others included a kind of “skipping stride” and a “kangaroo hop.” Although the weight of their backpacks was reduced by five-sixths on the Moon, its effect on their balance meant that they were always slightly pitched forward as they walked; and when Armstrong jumped he felt a tendency to tip over backward as soon as he landed. They had to take care in turning and halting. “I noticed immediately,” Aldrin recounted in Men from Earth, “that my inertia seemed much greater. Earthbound, I would have stopped my run in just one step…an abrupt halt. I immediately sensed that if I tried this on the Moon, I’d be face-down in the lunar dust. I had to use two or three steps and sort of wind down. The same applied to turning around…on Earth, it’s simple, but on the Moon, it’s done in stages.”
Having assured themselves of a more-or-less solid footing on alien soil, the astronauts’ next task was to unveil a commemorative plaque on the strut of the lander that held the ladder. At 10:24 p.m. CDT, less than half an hour after setting foot on the surface, Armstrong described the plaque to his television audience.
As Apollo 11 was an American venture, and paid for by the American public, but one undertaken in the name “of all mankind,” the problem of what kind of flag to plant on the Moon arose frequently in the months before launch. Some felt that the flag of the United Nations was appropriate, but others argued with equal vigor for the Stars and Stripes. At President Nixon’s inauguration six months earlier, he had spoken of going “to new worlds together…not as new worlds to be conquered, but as a new adventure to be shared.” Was he hinting that a United Nations flag should be raised on Apollo 11? Some spectators believed so, and it was perhaps with this in mind that in February 1969 newly appointed NASA Administrator Tom Paine formed a Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing to determine how one of the most historic events in human history should be marked. The committee heard convincing arguments in favor of a UN flag and in favor of depositing a collection of miniature flags of all nations, but finally it decided that the Stars and Stripes would be erected.
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One of the iconic images from Apollo 11 was Buzz Aldrin’s photograph of his own bootprint in the ancient lunar soil. Photo Credit: NASA
When NASA formally notified members of Congress on 10 June 1969 that it intended to raise the national flag on the Moon, its appropriations bill for the next fiscal year was immediately approved. Later in the year, when the final version of the $3.7 billion bill was agreed by a House and Senate conference committee on 4 November 1969, a provision stated that “the flag of the United States, and no other flag, shall be implanted or otherwise placed on the surface of the Moon, or on the surface of any planet, by the members of the crew of any spacecraft…as part of any mission…the funds of which are provided entirely by the Government of the United States…” It was, indeed, a symbol of national pride.
The development of the flag is a long and intriguing story in itself, but the photographs which Armstrong took of Aldrin snapping a smart military salute, against the backdrop of the desolate lunar surface, proved to be some of the most iconic. Yet Armstrong’s absence from most images has been described by James Hansen as “one of the minor tragedies of Apollo 11.” Over the years, outrageous claims have been made that Aldrin “intentionally” avoided taking direct photographs of his commander on the Moon, with some even ludicrously pointing to a perceived bitterness over losing the chance to be first on the surface. In reality, of course, both men were outside Eagle for little more than two hours and virtually every minute of that time was spent on assigned tasks: getting the contingency sample, unveiling the plaque, erecting the flag, deploying a pair of instruments, and conducting geological inspections and taking specimens.
Having said this, the primary reason that there were so few images of the First Man was because Armstrong had possession of the Hasselblad for most of the time. “As the sequence of lunar operations evolved,” Aldrin wrote later, “Neil had the camera…and the majority of the pictures taken on the Moon that include an astronaut are of me. It wasn’t until we were back on Earth and in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, looking over the pictures that we realized there were few pictures of Neil. My fault, perhaps, but we had never simulated this during our training.” For his part, Armstrong cared little about who took pictures of whom, as long as those pictures were good. “I don’t think Buzz had any reason to take my picture,” he told James Hansen, “and it never occurred to me that he should.”
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'For One Priceless Moment': Celebrating Apollo 11, 50th Anniversary Month (Part 4) (2)
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Grainy television image of Armstrong (left) and Aldrin on the surface. Photo Credit: NASA
The historic nature of the mission, indeed, made it inevitable that there would be a live telephone conversation with the astronauts’ head of state … and this was the event that both men blamed for their inability to get a good photograph of the First Man. According to Aldrin, seconds after Armstrong had taken the picture of him saluting the Stars and Stripes, Mission Control came on the line to say that President Nixon wished to talk to them. Apparently, Aldrin explained, the men were just about to swap the Hasselblad at that point, with the intention of taking some images of Armstrong, but were distracted by the request and the subject was later forgotten in the hurry to get everything done.
None of this, of course, even implies that the failure of either man to suggest taking a posed photograph of Armstrong was anything less than an oversight, and something neither man thought important at the time. “I was intimidated by the enormity of the situation,” Aldrin recalled later. Almost all of the pictures that he did take on the few occasions that he had possession of the Hasselblad were pictures which the flight plan called for him to take. A picture of Neil Armstrong was not on the list. Whatever the reality, at 11:47:47 p.m. CDT, Bruce McCandless called both men from their respective work.
“We’d like to get both of you in the field of view of the camera for a minute.” McCandless paused for a second, then continued: “Neil and Buzz, the President of the United States is in his office now and would like to say a few words to you. Over.”
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Buzz Aldrin at Tranquility Base. Photo Credit: NASA
“That would be an honor,” replied Armstrong.
“All right. Go ahead, Mr. President. This is Houston. Out.”
“Hello, Neil and Buzz,” Nixon began. “I’m talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. 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 all 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 a 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.”
Then, Nixon added the words which would bring a lump to many a throat and reinforce the reality that the human race had never been as unified as it was on the night of 20-21 July 1969: “For one priceless moment,” he said, “in the whole history of man, all the 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.”
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Since Armstrong had the camera for much of the Moonwalk, many of the photographs of are Aldrin…including this one. Photo Credit: NASA
Armstrong had been told by Deke Slayton, before launch, that there was a likelihood of some form of “special communication,” but it would seem that he had little idea who it might be. Judging from his response to the president—a polite “thank you,” a couple of instances of “it’s an honor,” and a brief note about his desire for “peace for all nations”—the brevity of Armstrong’s words would seem to suggest that both men felt unprepared, nervous, and decidedly ill at ease. His mother, Viola, could tell from her son’s voice that he was “emotionally shaken” and detected an unmistakable “tremor” in his tone.
With the unveiling of the plaque and the raising of the flag and the words with Nixon now behind them, the astronauts could set to work on the scientific side of their mission. Armstrong’s role during this time would be to collect samples of lunar material. “The geology community had hoped we would provide what they called “documented samples”,” he explained to James Hansen, “that is, samples whose emplacement was photographed prior to and after lifting the samples. Time did not permit our doing as much of that as we had hoped.”
As Armstrong labored with the samples, it was Aldrin’s responsibility to take the lead in setting up an automated research station on the surface. This Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP) was a forerunner of the more sophisticated Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) which would be deployed by subsequent landing crews. As their time outside drew toward its close, one of the few changes in the plan came when Armstrong took it upon himself to go and photograph a yawning bowl-shaped crater about 180 feet (55 meters) east of Eagle which has since become known as “East Crater.” To get there as quickly as possible, he adopted a loping, foot-to-foot stride. He took half a dozen Hasselblad images, including outcroppings in the crater. By the time he returned to Eagle, his adventure had lasted a little over three minutes.
It was now 11:45 p.m. CDT and Aldrin had been advised that they had only a few minutes left before packing their equipment away. “There was just far too little time to do the variety of things that we would have liked to have done,” Armstrong explained in the post-flight press conference. “When you are in a new environment, everything around you is different and you have the tendency to look a little more carefully. In a simulation, you just picked up the rock and threw it into the pot!” Similarly, both men had seen rocks through Eagle’s cabin windows before they set foot on the surface—rocks which may have been pieces of lunar bedrock, potentially priceless geological specimens—which they did not have time to inspect, photograph, or collect. President Nixon’s telephone call had eaten more time out of their excursion, as had the assembly of the flag and the reading of the plaque.
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Pictured in the lunar module Eagle, shortly after his historic Moonwalk, Neil Armstrong would gain eternal fame which will endure through the ages. Photo Credit: NASA
As Aldrin headed up the ladder at 11:56 p.m. CDT, Armstrong sealed the last rock box. Then, working together, the two men hauled the film magazines, the Hasselblad and the two rock boxes into Eagle. At 12:09 a.m. CDT on 21 July, the First Man on the Moon jumped with both feet into Eagle’s footpad and set his gloved hands on the ladder; after a little more than two full hours, this was his last direct contact with lunar soil. He then crouched into a kind of deep-knee bend, getting his torso as close to the footpad as possible … and sprang himself upward, easily reaching the third rung. Two minutes later, he was back inside Eagle and Aldrin had pushed shut and sealed the hatch.
All in all, the world’s first excursion on alien soil had lasted two hours and 31 minutes from depressurisation to repressurization of the cabin, of which Armstrong had actually been on the surface for two hours and 14 minutes and Aldrin for one hour and 46 minutes.
After an uncomfortable night’s sleep, the two men left the Moon at 12:53 p.m. CDT on 21 July 1969, a little more than 21 hours since landing, and their ascent into lunar orbit and rendezvous with a happy Mike Collins aboard Columbia was charmed. Aldrin’s words to Collins as he passed the sample containers through the tunnel—“Get ready for these million-dollar boxes”—was entirely appropriate; for not only were the specimens of the Sea of Tranquility now priceless, but so too were the men themselves. From the moment the scorched and blackened cone of Columbia descended through the clouds and splashed into the Pacific Ocean on 24 July 1969, the names of Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin would gain immortal status and their lives would never be the same again.
Source: https://www.americaspace.com/2019/07/28/for-one-priceless-moment-celebrating-apollo-11-50th-anniversary-month-part-4/
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50 Years Ago, On the Way to the Moon: Lunar Science Announced
Nov. 19, 2018 [NASA]
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Left: A mockup of the passive seismometer experiment.
Right: Astronauts training to deploy the passive seismometer experiment before flight.
The primary goal of the first Moon landing mission was to demonstrate that the Apollo spacecraft systems could safely land two astronauts on the surface and return them safely to Earth. During the first lunar surface Extravehicular Activity (EVA), the crew were to spend about two hours outside the Lunar Module (LM). In addition to collecting rock and soil samples for return to Earth, the astronauts would also conduct science. On November 19, 1968, NASA announced that when Apollo astronauts first land on the Moon, possibly as early as during the Apollo 11 mission in the summer of 1969, they would deploy three scientific experiments – a passive seismometer, a laser ranging retro-reflector, and a solar wind composition experiment.
The passive seismometer experiment was a self-contained 100-pound seismic station to detect any Moonquakes. The experiment was solar-powered and had its own communications capability so that it transmitted its results back to Earth after the astronauts departed the lunar surface. If the Moon is seismically active, the instrument could provide information about its internal structure and possibly yield clues about its formation. The Principal Investigator for this experiment was Gary Latham of Columbia University’s Lamont Geological Observatory in Palisades, New York.
The laser ranging retro-reflector was a passive experiment weighing about 70 pounds. It consisted of an array of precision optical reflectors to serve as a target for Earth-based lasers. By precisely measuring the time it takes a laser beam to travel from Earth and bounce back from the retro-reflector, scientists calculated the Earth-Moon distance to an accuracy of eight centimeters. Measurements taken over time and from different stations on Earth helped determine fluctuations in Earth’s rotation and also recorded continental drift. The Principal Investigators for the seismic experiment were Carroll Alley of the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, and Donald Eckhardt of the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Left: A mockup of the laser ranging retro-reflector.
Right: Astronauts training to deploy the laser ranging retro-reflector before their mission.
The solar wind composition experiment consisted of a sheet of aluminum to trap particles of the solar wind, in particular the noble gases helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon. The astronauts unfurled the aluminum foil collector near the beginning of their EVA and then rolled it up and returned it to Earth for laboratory analysis. The Swiss government sponsored the one-pound experiment. The Principal Investigator was Johannes Geiss of the University of Bern in Switzerland.
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Left: A mockup of the solar wind composition experiment.
Right: An astronaut during training to deploy the solar wind composition experiment
During their flight from Earth, the experiments were stowed in the Scientific Equipment Bay of the LM’s Descent Stage. The crew manually retrieved the packages once on the lunar surface and deployed the experiments within 60 feet of the LM. Beginning with the second Moon landing, astronauts deployed more sophisticated experiments as part of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) and conducted more extensive geological surveys around their landing sites.
Source: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/50-years-ago-on-the-way-to-the-moon-lunar-science-announced
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The Apollo Experiment That Keeps on Giving
July 25, 2019 [NASA]
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Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. moves toward a position to deploy two components of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP) on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity. The Passive Seismic Experiments Package (PSEP) is in his left hand; and in his right hand is the Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector (LR3). Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Credits: NASA
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins departed from the Moon 50 years ago, but one of the experiments they left behind continues to return fresh data to this day: arrays of prisms that reflect light back toward its source, providing plentiful insights. Along with the Apollo 11 astronauts, those of Apollo 14 and 15 left arrays behind as well: The Apollo 11 and 14 arrays have 100 quartz glass prisms (called corner cubes) each, while the array of Apollo 15 has 300.
The longevity of the experiment can be attributed at least in part to its simplicity: The arrays themselves require no power. Four telescopes at observatories in New Mexico, France, Italy and Germany fire lasers at them, measuring the time that it takes for a laser pulse to bounce off the reflectors and return to Earth. This allows the distance to be measured to within a fraction of an inch (a few millimeters), and scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyze the results.
The orbit, rotation and orientation of the Moon are accurately determined by lunar laser ranging. The lunar orbit and the orientation of the rotating Moon are needed by spacecraft that orbit and land on the Moon. For instance, cameras on spacecraft in lunar orbit can see the reflecting arrays, relying on them as locations accurate to less than a foot (a fraction of a meter).
Laser ranging measurements have deepened our understanding of the dance between the Moon and Earth as well. The Moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers), but lunar laser ranging has accurately shown that the distance between the two increases by 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) a year.
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A close-up view, taken on Feb. 5, 1971, of the laser ranging retro reflector (LR3), which the Apollo 14 astronauts deployed on the moon during their lunar surface extravehicular activity. Credits: NASA
Tides in Earth's oceans are highest not when the Moon is overhead, but hours later. The highest tide is east of the Moon. There are two tidal bulges, the second one half a day later. The gravitational force between the tidal bulges and the Moon pull against and slow Earth's rotation while also pulling the Moon forward along the direction it moves in its orbit about Earth. The forward force causes the Moon to spiral away from Earth by 0.1 inches (3 millimeters) each month.
In a similar way, Earth's gravity tugs on the Moon, causing two tidal bulges of the lunar rock. In fact, the positions of the reflecting arrays vary as much as six inches (15 centimeters) up and down each month as the Moon flexes. Measuring how much the arrays move has enabled scientists to better understand the elastic properties of the Moon (a measurement of this, called the Love number, is named after scientist A. E. H. Love).
Analysis of lunar laser data shows that the Moon has a fluid core. This was a surprise when discovered two decades ago because many scientists thought that the core would be cool and solid. The fluid core affects the directions in space of the Moon's north and south poles, which lunar laser detects.
Einstein's theory of gravity assumes that the gravitational attraction between two bodies does not depend on their composition. The Sun's gravity attracts the Moon and Earth. If this attraction depended on the composition of the two objects, it would affect the lunar orbit. Earth contains more iron than the Moon. Analysis of data from the lunar laser ranging experiment finds no difference in how gravity attracts the Moon and Earth due to their makeup.
The north star Polaris is nearly overhead at Earth's north pole. That pole changes direction compared to the stars due to the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun on Earth's shape (the diameter at the equator is larger than the diameter at the poles). The pole will trace out a circle in the sky returning to the north star in 26,000 years. This motion of the pole is sensed and measured by lunar laser ranging.
With renewed interest in the exploration of the Moon, NASA has approved a new generation of reflectors to be placed on the lunar surface within the next decade. The improved performance of new reflectors and their wider geographical distribution on the Moon would allow improved tests of Einstein's relativity, study the deep lunar interior, investigation of the history of our celestial neighbor, and support of future exploration. The legacy of the first human visit to the Moon half a century ago will be continued.
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Source: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/the-apollo-experiment-that-keeps-on-giving
2 18.04.23) 2021 SIE 04 19:17 KOSMONAUTA.NET
Sięgnąć Księżyca...
Pół wieku, jakie upłynęło od kiedy człowiek pierwszy raz postawił stopę na innym niż Ziemia ciele niebieskim, to w astronautyce czas wielkich wyzwań, często bezpardonowej rywalizacji, politycznych przesileń, niesamowitego postępu naukowo-technologicznego, spektakularnych sukcesów i takichże porażek.
Polecamy tekst autorstwa Pana Przemysława Rudzia z Polskiej Agencji Kosmicznej dotyczący wypraw księżycowych.
https://kosmonauta.net/2016/07/maly-krok-dla-czlowieka-ale-wielki-skok-dla-ludzkosci/
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Apollo 11 astronaut Mike Collins dies at 90
April 28, 2021 William Harwood [SFN]
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NASA astronaut Michael Collins inside an Apollo command module simulator. Credit: NASA
Michael Collins, the man who stayed behind aboard the Apollo 11 command module while crewmates Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the moon and walked into history, has passed away after a battle with cancer, his family announced Wednesday. He was 90.
“Mike always faced the challenges of life with grace and humility, and faced this, his final challenge, in the same way,” his family tweeted. “We will miss him terribly. Yet we also know how lucky Mike felt to have lived the life he did. We will honor his wish for us to celebrate, not mourn, that life.”
One of the most articulate astronauts to emerge in the early days of America’s space program, Collins orbited the moon alone on July 20, 1969, when Armstrong and Aldrin touched down on the Sea of Tranquility, the first humans to set foot on another world.
Collins was very candid about the technical challenges the crew faced, saying their lives depended on a long “daisy chain” of events that all had to work perfectly for the astronauts to make it home alive.
“The daisy chain, that’s what worried me,” he said in an interview with CBS News on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. “The idea that in order to have a successful moon landing, you had to have a series of relatively minor events, each one of which was successful. If one of ’em was unsuccessful, the whole scheme went down the drain.”
Near the top of the list, perhaps, was the single engine that had to fire successfully to propel Armstrong and Aldrin from the lunar surface back to Collins in the Apollo command module. If that engine failed, Collins knew, he would have to return to Earth alone, leaving his friends behind.
“The lunar module ascent engine, that was it,” he said. “It was a singular thing. There was one combustion chamber. It was not duplicated. That engine had to work perfectly. If it would fail to start for some reason, that was the end of them, they were dead, I was going home by myself. Those were the things that worried me.”
But the mission was a resounding success, the first of six lunar landing signaling the end of the Cold War space race. While Armstrong and Aldrin got the credit for the first moon landing, Collins said he had no regrets about the role he played. He was thankful to have had it.
“Did I have the best seat on Apollo 11? No, but I was absolutely thrilled to have the seat that I did have,” he said in the CBS interview. “It was a culmination of John F. Kennedy’s mandate. And I was proud to be a part of that.”
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Michael Collins, Apollo 11 command module pilot, during suit-up before liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969. Credit: NASA
Andrew Chaikin, author of “A Man On the Moon: Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts,” described Collins as “a delightful guy, just a pleasure to talk to, a great dry wit and of course the soul of a writer.”
“He was clearly the best writer among the (astronauts), wrote the best book by an astronaut and had a bit of the poet in him,” Chaikin said in an interview. “Very perceptive, very keen insights, a very balanced view of life. He did not enjoy fame at all. That wasn’t what he was in this for.”
Said NASA acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk: “Today the nation lost a true pioneer and lifelong advocate for exploration. As pilot of the Apollo 11 command module – some called him ‘the loneliest man in history’ – while his colleagues walked on the Moon for the first time, he helped our nation achieve a defining milestone.”
With Collins’ passing, Aldrin is the lone remaining member of NASA’s most famous crew. Armstrong died on Aug. 25, 2012.
The son of a career military officer, Collins was born Oct. 31, 1930, in Rome, Italy. Following his father and older brother, he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1952.
He subsequently joined the Air Force and went on to become a jet pilot, serving in various capacities until his admission to the fabled Air Force test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base in 1960. Classmates included future astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Irwin and Tom Stafford.
After marveling at John Glenn’s flight to orbit in a Mercury capsule in 1962, Collins applied to NASA to become an astronaut, only to be rejected. He applied again in 1963 and this time, he was accepted.
On July 18, 1966, Collins and commander John Young, who would later walk on the moon and command the first space shuttle mission, blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida in a cramped Gemini capsule atop a Titan rocket booster for the most complex space flight to date for the budding American space program.
Among the mission’s accomplishments were the dual rendezvous with two Agena target satellites and a then world-record altitude of 475 miles. Collins also walked in space twice to become the third American astronaut to venture outside his spacecraft.
“My first impression (was) a feeling of awe at the wide visual field, a sense of release after the narrow restrictions of the tiny Gemini window,” Collins wrote. “My God, the stars are everywhere.
“We are gliding across the world in total silence, with absolute smoothness; a motion of stately grace which makes me feel God-like as I stand erect in my sideways chariot, cruising the night sky.”
Collins resigned from NASA shortly after the Apollo 11 mission and took a position at the State Department. But after little more than a year he left to become director of the Smithsonian Institution’s new Air and Space Museum in Washington. After a stint in private industry, he retired to private life in 1985.
“I didn’t find God on the moon, nor has my life changed dramatically in any other basic way,” he wrote in “Carrying the Fire.” “But although I may feel I am the same person, I also feel that I am different from other people. I have been places and done things you simply would not believe.
“I have seen the sun’s true light, unfiltered by any planet’s atmosphere. I have seen the ultimate black of infinity in a stillness undisturbed by any living thing. I have been pierced by cosmic rays on their endless journey from God’s place to the limits of the universe, perhaps there to circle back on themselves and on my descendants.”
Collins “really kept out of the limelight,” Chaikin said. “People used to talk about Neil as a recluse, which he wasn’t. Neil just rationed himself. … Mike was even moreso. In many ways, Mike was even more averse to that kind of attention than Neil was and has in the last many years led a fairly quiet life, painting. He’s quite a good artist, actually.”
In the Air and Space Museum, the Apollo 11 command module sits on display, a monument to one of the nation’s greatest triumphs. On the wall of the spacecraft’s lower equipment bay, Collins had scribbled: “Spacecraft 107, alias Apollo 11, alias Columbia. The best ship to come down the line. God Bless Her. Michael Collins, CMP.”
“We are a nation of explorers,” he told reporters before the 20th anniversary of his flight. “We started on the East Coast, we went to the West Coast and then vertically. Starting with the Wright brothers, (Chuck) Yeager through the sound barrier, Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon, it’s in our tradition, it’s in our culture.
“It’s a fundamental thing to want to go, to touch, to see, to smell, to learn and that, I think, will continue in the future.”
Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/04/28/apollo-11-astronaut-mike-collins-dies-at-90/