Fwd: Forty-Five Years After Apollo 11

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: July 22, 2014 9:55:06 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Forty-Five Years After Apollo 11

 

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 15th, 2014

Commentary: Forty-Five Years After Apollo 11—An Inspiration For the Future, or Just Another Anniversary? (Part 1)

By Leonidas Papadopoulos

 

Artist's concept image of a boot print on the Moon and on Mars. This week marks the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11′s landing on the Moon, in 20 July 1969. Will this anniversary be celebrated as just another historical event ever-receding further into the past, or as a source of inspiration for future achievements in space? Image Credit: NASA

"We are not made wise by the recollections of the past,
but by our responsibility for the future."

— George Bernard Shaw

 

The date is 16 July 2014 and the preparations for the celebration of the upcoming Apollo 11 anniversary are in full swing on NASA's Moon base Artemis, as well as on the various complexes that have been built on the lunar surface by private space companies in recent years. Thirty-three thousand miles above them, on the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point, the Expedition 50 crew of the International Lunar Gateway Station is in the middle of its own preparations for the arrival of the next-generation Nautilus-X hardware and Bigelow crew habitats that will be part of the massive Prometheus spacecraft currently being assembled there, which will propel the first humans ever beyond the asteroid belt, for NASA's long-awaited manned flyby of Jupiter. There are high hopes that the mission will be able to launch on time, so as to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and the 20th anniversary of the first manned landing on Mars. Meanwhile, on the Martian base Ares, a team of engineers from NASA and the private space industry are giving the final touches on the local in-situ resource utilisation hardware that will be responsible for filling up the orbital fuel depots with the necessary propellant that will return Prometheus home, following its long journey toward the outer Solar System.

An artist's concept of a NASA manned mission to Mars. Image Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center

The paragraph above may read like science fiction today, but for anyone growing up during the 1960s this was the vision of a future that seemed imminent. And how could it not be? By the time Apollo 11 had launched the first humans to ever walk on the Moon, 45 years ago this week, NASA was already considering the U.S.'s next steps in space which included a manned landing on Mars that was scheduled for no later than the mid-1980s. And just a year before Neil Armstrong's "small step" on the lunar surface, the seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey dazzled audiences everywhere, by presenting what was widely perceived at the time as the shape of things to come.

Forty-five years after those heady days in July 1969, we live in a very different, much more introspective and Earth-bound world. NASA's ambitious plans that called for the creation of a human base on the Moon and trips to Mars were cancelled and put on hold indefinitely, while the (frustratingly slow) exploration of the Solar System was left solely to robots. Today, Mars seems more distant and difficult to reach than what it was in 1969 during the peak of the Apollo program, while on a more basic level NASA currently lacks the capability to even launch anyone in low-Earth orbit, let alone the Moon or Mars.

Despite this disheartening state of affairs, there has been much optimism lately within the space community that a golden age of space exploration still lies ahead. Private companies have been making great strides in recent years by recovering the capability to launch cargo (and eventually crew within the next couple of years) to the International Space Station, a capability that carries with it the promise of a greater, more permanent, and sustainable human presence in low-Earth orbit, through the commercialization of human access to space. In the meantime, NASA hopes to restart manned deep-space exploration after more than four decades of low-Earth orbit activities by developing its next-generation heavy-lift launch vehicle called the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft. Could this resurgence of space activities finally lead to a new golden era of space exploration?

Political leadership: An imperative, or just a prerogative for U.S. space achievement?

One man who thinks that could be the case is Dr. Buzz Aldrin, legendary lunar module pilot of the Apollo 11 mission and the second man to walk on the Moon on 20 July 1969. A true icon of human accomplishment, Aldrin has long been an advocate of a robust U.S. human space exploration program and of Mars colonisation in particular. In order to commemorate the upcoming 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, Aldrin launched a social media campaign on July 8, called #Apollo45, inviting people all over the world to send their own videos via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+, describing where they were during the first manned landing on the Moon, or how this monumental event inspired them and affected their lives."I consider myself a global statesman for space, so I spend most of my time travelling the country and the world, to remind people what NASA and our space program has accomplished and what is still in our future at Mars," explains Aldrin in the introductory video of his social media campaign on Youtube. "I feel we need to remind the world about the Apollo missions and that we can still do impossible things." As part of his space advocacy efforts, Aldrin called for the next U.S. president who will succeed President Obama in 2016 to announce a new space exploration initiative that will commit the U.S. to sending people on Mars within the next two decades. "These anniversaries mean a lot to me, especially with the 50th anniversary coming up with a new president," said Aldrin during a recent interview with NBC News. "That individual, that president, has a potential of going down in history more than almost anyone who has lived on the planet Earth, by committing human beings to an international, American-led permanence on the planet Mars."

Video Credit: Buzz Aldrin Enterprises, LLC

Aldrin's call has a definite feeling of déjà vu. On July 20, 1989, during the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11, he had stood alongside his Apollo 11 crewmates Mike Collins and the late Neil Armstrong, when the then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush announced his Space Exploration Initiative, or SEI, atop the steps of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., directing NASA to return humans to the Moon and continue on to Mars, by the year 2019. Unfortunately, SEI's fate was sealed right from the start, with Congress balking at the initiative's $500 billion-dollar price tag. A similar announcement by President George W. Bush in 2004, better known as the Vision for Space Exploration, or VSE, didn't fare much better and was eventually cancelled by the succeeding Obama administration in 2009, on the grounds of its pressing financial and technical problems.

Could a new presidential initiative as envisioned by Aldrin result in a meaningful path forward for the U.S. human space program allowing for a manned mission to Mars, in the same way that President Kennedy's commitment for the Moon in 1961 resulted in the Apollo 11 Moon landing just eight years later? That would depend on the reasons for which such an initiative would be announced in the first place, within the context of the geopolitical and economic climate of its time. "There may be no way to send humans to Mars in the comparatively near future—despite the fact that it is entirely within our technological capability," wrote American astronomer Carl Sagan in his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. "Governments do not spend these vast sums just for science, or merely to explore. They need another purpose, and it must make real political sense." Seen in this light, Kennedy's 1961 mandate to NASA to send people to the Moon before the end of the decade served a real geopolitical purpose of trying to secure the U.S.'s dominance over the Soviet Union in the Cold War arena. When Armstrong's and Aldrin's first steps on the lunar surface achieved that goal, the Apollo program wound down and was eventually discontinued, without succeeding in creating a permanent human presence on the Moon or the rest of cislunar space, as envisioned by most space advocates at the time.

45 years ago this week, humans took their first steps on another world. Where will our next 'giant leap' be and when? Image Credit: NASA

For space historian Roger Launius and space policy expert Howard McCurdy, over reliance on presidential leadership has helped to create false and unrealistic expectations about the future path of the U.S. space program. "Most space supporters did not understand how truly exceptional the Apollo mandate was," they argue in their book Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership. "After the glamor of Kennedy's moment dimmed, space policy came to rest alongside all the other priorities of government, for which presidential leadership played a diminishing role. This eventually disappointed those who believed in the power of presidents to make space exploration special. The Apollo decision was therefore, an anomaly in the history of the space program." That view isn't shared by many, who see the absence of national leadership in space as the biggest cause for NASA's perceived detriment in the post-Apollo era. "The first law of bureaucracy is to guarantee its own continuance," wrote Sagan. "Left to its own devices, without clear instructions from above, NASA gradually  devolved into a program that would maintain profits, jobs, and perquisites. Pork-barrel politics, with Congress playing a leading role, became an increasingly powerful force in the design and execution of missions and long-term goals. The bureaucracy ossified. NASA lost its way." A series of studies on the state of NASA's human spaceflight program that have been conducted during the last few decades have reached a similar conclusion, by acknowledging that without a stable, long-term continuous political and financial support by Congress and the White House, and a consistent, clearly defined space policy, NASA's deep space aspirations for sending humans back to the Moon and on to Mars will remain unrealised indefinitely. That fact became painfully obvious when the George W. Bush administration failed to properly support its own Vision for Space Exploration, leading to its later cancellation by the Obama administration. Furthermore, President Obama's passionate rhetoric toward the Apollo 11 crew during the White House 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 2009 was indicative of the attitude of most U.S. presidents, who treat these anniversaries as just PR opportunities for their own political gain, delivering grand speeches of support for the space program while silently go on to de-fund it.

Would then a new national mandate for sending astronauts to deep space destinations hold more water than the previous ones? According to American astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, in order for such a mandate to be successful it would have to satisfy either one of the two drivers he considers as being the most important for the successful outcome of any kind of huge and expensive long-term projects: military and economic. "[Kennedy] could have said: 'Let's go to the Moon: what a marvelous place to explore!'," said Tyson during a past interview for Rationally Speaking."But that's not enough to get Congress to write the check. At some point, somebody's got to write a check … Science alone has never been a driver of expensive projects. Below a certain level, depending on the wealth of a nation, money can be spent on science without heavy debate … Raise the cost of a project above $20 billion or $30 billion and if there's not a weapon at the other end, or you won't see the face of God, or oil wells aren't to be found, it risks not getting funded … Unless we're going to believe we're a fundamentally different kind of population and culture than those that have preceded us for the past five thousand years, I'm going to take my cue from the history of major funded projects and say that if we want to go to Mars, we'd better find either an economic driver, or a military driver for it."

A scene from the British science fiction TV series "Space:1999," showing an Eagle Transporter on a launchpad on Moon base Alpha. Moon bases have been a staple of science fiction for many decades. Will scenes like this become a reality someday? Image Credit: Network Video/Granada Ventures

A great number of space advocates, disillusioned with this chronic lack of leadership by the U.S. government to fund and execute an outward-moving and meaningful human space exploration program, tend to view NASA as being largely irrelevant, while placing their hopes at the hands of the private space industry instead. The private space sector has, without a doubt, seen a tremendous growth during the last decade, while also taking on all the low-Earth orbit transportation activities that were historically the domain of NASA. All this activity has created an impression among space enthusiasts and the general public alike, that a free-to-innovate private space sector unconstrained by the trappings of a slow and bureaucratic government can take on the challenge of deep-space exploration alone, and that the first human expeditions to the Moon and Mars are just a few years away. A past AmericaSpace article had taken a critical look at these assertions, by arguing that these ambitious announcements by various private space companies which call for the massive, fast, and affordable colonisation of Mars, starting in just a few years, conflict with the reality of the great financial and engineering challenges that these aspirations entail.

Furthermore, many of these companies tend to announce highly ambitious deep space goals which are often perceived by the public as a done deal, without many times having demonstrated even a basic spaceflight capability. "[These companies] cheer and proclaim the advent of a new era in spaceflight, but their launch manifests don't begin to match the pace and predictability of their press releases," comments Dr. Paul Spudis, a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, and a long-time advocate of human space exploration, in his blog Spudis Lunar Resources. "Their endless demands to re-direct shrinking NASA funds to them, belies their proclamation of being either 'new' or 'commercial' … Got a wild idea for a space mission? You say you want to build a vacation resort on Jupiter? Hold a press conference and you'll have instant credibility as a space 'entrepreneur'. As for any skeptics in the audience – just ignore them or label them 'dinosaurs', 'old space fossils', 'cold-war warriors', 'senile', or shills for government space 'pork'. Got a difficult question for the space entrepreneur? There's the exit. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Far from trying to provide any answers to the issues raised, this article has tried to examine some of the reasons behind the mismatch between the dreams of space advocates during and after the Apollo program, and the underlying political realities that dictated its rise and eventual demise in the first place. The upcoming 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, besides being a cause for celebration of past achievements, is also an opportunity for contemplation on these issues, which in the end will play a huge role on shaping our future in space and the kind of role we would likely have in it. Does that mean that our future in space (if there will be any at all) will be entirely dependent on the whims of Congress and the White House? "If you ask me, If I were head of NASA and I get the chromes that the nation handed me, how would I spend it, to prioritize [NASA's human spaceflight program] and make it exciting, I'd answer 'no, it's the wrong question!" argued Tyson during his launch keynote address at the 28th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, in 2012. "That's asking for handouts. That's just trying to make NASA a vanity project for engineers. That's the wrong attitude. It's the wrong understanding of [NASA's] role in our society. So, I don't want to lead anything. I want to convince the public that the right NASA budget will get us out of [the current] economic doldrums, because at the end of the day it's not what the President feels like, or Congress feels like, it's what we feel like doing,  because the President works for us."

Buzz Aldrin's social media campaign serves as a reminder that humans are a curious, exploratory species. Yet these exploratory urges have consistently clashed with the political and economic factors that have plagued the U.S. space program since its inception and the real motives for which it was funded in the first place. Still, if the public's opinion of the U.S. human space program is the most decisive factor for its future, as Tyson argues, then what are the public's views and beliefs about man's greatest adventure and how can these affect its course? Seen in this light, will the public celebrate the upcoming 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission as just another historical event, ever-receding further into the past, or as a source of inspiration for future achievements in space?

Video Credit: Space Foundation

 

 

Copyright © 2014 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 19th, 2014 

Commentary: Forty-Five Years After Apollo 11—An Inspiration For the Future, or Just Another Anniversary? (Part 2)

By Leonidas Papadopoulos

New York City welcomes the crew of Apollo 11 during a ticker tape parade in August 1969, a couple of weeks after the astronauts' return to Earth. In the aftermath of Apollo 11′s landing on the Moon, public interest toward the space program waned and quickly evaporated. Image Credit: NASA

"What was it we were really celebrating?
Three men who had done what no man before had done?
A technological feat which was believed to be beyond the realm of possibility?
The fulfilment of an age-old dream?
Were we celebrating simply because there had been a long time since we've had anything to celebrate?
Or was this something that touched an irrational, unthinking instinct in us all?"

 — Laurence Luckinbill, 'Moonwalk One' documentary (1970)

 

Putting humanity's greatest achievement in the proper historical context, Theo Kamecke's seminal "Moonwalk One" documentary chronicled mankind's first steps on another world during Apollo 11′s mission to the Moon in July 1969, while at the same time documenting the world's varied reactions to this monumental event as it unfolded. As explored in the first part of the article, Apollo 11 was widely perceived at the time as being just the first step in mankind's continuing expansion into the Solar System—an expectation that in reality was in sharp contrast to the geopolitical reasons for which the Apollo missions were undertaken in the first place. As a result, in the decades following the cancellation of the Apollo program, there has been no shortage of criticism regarding the lack of national vision and leadership that led to the abandonment of human space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. Yet what most of this criticism often fails to acknowledge is that the most important stakeholder of the U.S. public space program is, by definition, the general public itself. "NASA depends on the will of the people, as expressed through their Senators and Representatives and the President, for its funding and direction. NASA has to take the pulse of the American people and obtain its good will," states the space agency's Headquarters Library website. Appropriately, the second part of this article examines the current state of NASA's budget and whether that could be a result of the public's views and attitudes toward the costs of human space exploration.

Space and the "wasteful expenditure" meme

Of all the concerns historically surrounding the U.S. space program, there hasn't been a bigger one than that of funding and the allocation of resources. The main argument that has underlined the opposition toward funding for space exploration, as expressed by a large part of the American public, has been that this money could be better spent to fix much more pressing social issues on Earth, like poverty and the public's lack of education, instead of being "thrown away" in space. As described in a recent AmericaSpace history series article by Ben Evans, this attitude toward the space program at the time of the Apollo program was reflected in a protest organized by Reverend Ralph Abernathy, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Arriving at the gates of Cape Canaveral at the eve of Apollo 11′s launch in 15 July 1969, alongside a team of 200 other protesters, Abernathy expressed his vocal opposition to what he considered an inhumane expenditure, in light of the suffering of millions of Americans who remained impoverished. The reply by Thomas Paine, then-NASA administrator, to Reverend Abernathy is perhaps the best answer to this line of argument, which has remained constant throughout the history of the space program, even during periods when the U.S. economy was booming: "If we could solve the problems of poverty by not pushing the button to launch men to the Moon tomorrow, then we would not push that button."

NASA's budget saw an explosive increase in the mid-1960s during the development of the Apollo program, only to be massively curtailed shortly thereafter. Image Credit: Huffington Post

Such financial arguments against space exploration unfortunately come from a lack of understanding on the public's part of the space program's value to the U.S. economy and a widespread ignorance of the real levels of government spending on NASA, compared to the rest of the federal budget. Indeed, with the exception of the first half of the 1960s when NASA was allocated an impressive 4 percent of the total federal budget for meeting President Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the Moon by the end of that decade, there hasn't been a single fiscal year since when the space agency didn't have to fight hard for every single penny it received. More specifically, from 1967 onward NASA's annual budget has been in a steady decline, hovering on average around the 1 percent mark of the federal budget, while plummeting down to 0.5 percent during the last decade, which translates to an amount of $17 billion per year. "If I had a nickel for every time someone said 'why are we spending money up there, when we have problems down here?'" exclaims astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has been one of the most prominent science communicators in recent years, as well as a tireless vocal space advocate. "The [current] NASA budget is four-tenths of one penny on a tax dollar. If I held up the tax dollar, and I cut horizontally into it, four-tenths of one percent on a tax dollar does not even get you into the ink!"

Yet there has been a continuing mismatch between the real levels of NASA's budget and the public's perception of it. In a study published in the Space Policy journal in 2003, former NASA Chief Historian Dr. Roger Launius observed that "in 1997, the average estimate of NASA's share of the federal budget by those polled, was 20 percent. Had this been true, NASA's budget in 1997 would have been $328 billion. If NASA had that amount of money, it would have been able to send humans to Mars. It seems obvious that most Americans have little conception, of the amount of money available to NASA." This false perception doesn't seem to have changed throughout the years. A survey made in early 2013 by the non-profit organisation Explore Mars Inc. found that 95 percent of Americans believe that NASA's budget is somewhere between 0.75-4.11 percent of the federal budget, indicating that many people think that NASA is actually receiving today the same amount of money that it did during the Apollo program in the 1960s. It's worthy of note that, according to the same survey, when informed about the actual percentage of NASA's budget, 75 percent of respondents were in favor of doubling it to 1 percent in order to fund a human mission to Mars.

In addition, many of the people opposing space exploration on the grounds of its financial costs fail to acknowledge the actual amount of money that the U.S. has historically spent on social programs, compared to discretionary spending, which includes NASA. According to a report issued in 2013 by the Congressional Budget Office, funding on mandatory spending (which covers the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs) has grown over the past 40 years from 7.5 percent of the U.S. GDP in 1973 to 13 percent in 2012, which translates to an amount of $2 trillion out of a $15.5 trillion-worth of GDP in 2012. "The spending portfolio of the US currently allocates 50 times as much money to social programs and education than it does NASA," said Tyson during his testimony in 2012 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. "So, [the answer to] the old argument 'why we spend money up there and not down here?' is 'we are spending money down here!' to the credit of the lawmakers understanding where priorities need to land." Indeed, by examining the numbers in the U.S. federal budget, it is difficult to imagine how the reduction, or even total elimination of that 0.5 percent of the federal budget that goes to NASA, would have any meaningful contribution to the solution of the major social issues facing the U.S. today, or to the reduction of the U.S. budget deficit, as opponents of human spaceflight among the government and the general public alike often proclaim.

NASA's budget (second from the top in yellow color), compared with the rest of the U.S. federal budget for FY2013. Image Credit: Callum C. J. Sutherland

Ironically, the Vietnam War, for which the Apollo program was eventually cancelled in the early 1970s, was one of the bigger contributors to the increasing U.S. budget deficit at the time. A report issued in 2010 by the Congressional Research Service, titled 'Costs of Major U.S. Wars,' calculated the total expenditure for the Vietnam War between 1965 and 1975 to $738 billion (in 2011 dollars). Furthermore, U.S. military operations in subsequent years have been even more expensive, contributing greatly to the ongoing budget deficit which the U.S. strains to control. "Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress has appropriated more than a trillion dollars for military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world," notes the same report. Besides military expenditures, the U.S. government paid trillions of dollars on loans and bail-out packages to support a crumbling financial sector in the aftermath of the 2007 financial crisis. Compared to these expenditures, the cost of the Apollo program of approximately $170 billion (in 2005 dollars), which many have viewed as being the biggest wasteful expenditure in U.S. history ever, can really be seen as a bargain.

Another factor that also escapes the public's perception regarding NASA's funding is how insignificant the latter really is when compared to a list of other things the American public chooses to spend money on each year. As it turns out, Americans spend $44 billion on tobacco, $50 billion on alcohol, an estimated $10 to 14 billion on porn, $350 billion on legal gambling, $165 billion on wasted food, and $110 billion on junk or fast food. In addition, it is interesting to note that total spending for Valentine cards in 2014 amounted to $17 billion, while medical costs for cosmetic medical procedures in 2006 reached an estimated $14 billion. Put into context, the money spent by the American public in a single year for all the aforementioned activities nearly equals the total sum of money that NASA has received since its inception in 1958 up to 2012—an estimated $790 billion in today's dollars.

While the intent here is not to criticize or condemn the activities described above, the latter nevertheless serves as a reminder that NASA's annual bare-bones funding doesn't result so much from a lack of resources, but is rather indicative of the American public's overall financial choices and funding priorities. Several studies regarding public support of NASA have reached a similar conclusion, by also noting that since the electorate and its elected officials form a close feedback loop with the one reacting to the other's attitudes and vice versa, they both affect the shaping of public space policy. "In [today's] cultural environment, the general public has defaulted to an attitude reflective of the mid-1950s," concludes a 2004 NASA-mandated study by the Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis, in Philadelphia, Penn. "They believe space exploration is not a fantasy, but an achievable possibility. They believe it is a noble endeavor. They have a generally positive view of NASA, based primarily on the success of the manned space Mercury and Apollo programs. But they do not believe the government should spend billions of dollars to achieve it." This belief, in turn, translates to an analogous space policy, according to Dr. Alan Steinberg, a Postdoctoral Fellow of Political Science at the Sam Houston State University, in his 2011 study titled "Space policy responsiveness: The relationship between public opinion and NASA funding." "Findings suggest that the public supports the idea of space exploration, while also feeling that spending on space exploration is 'too high.' Therefore, the government appears to be giving the people exactly what they want in regards to NASA's budget – more money each year – but at the same time a smaller percentage of the federal budget."

As with all aspects of public policy, in the end the most important deciding factor for its formation might be the public itself. If the American public really wants a more meaningful space program, it has to demand it from its elected officials. But first it has to be informed about the real challenges and value of the space program and appreciate it in its true dimension. That may constitute a difficult, but ultimately not impossible, proposition.

Video Credit: Callum C. J. Sutherland

 

Copyright © 2014 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 19th, 2014

 

'Tranquility Base Here': 45 Years Since Apollo 11 Changed the World (Part 3)

By Ben Evans

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

Forty-five 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 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. A bouquet of roses, sent by some unknown admirer before each mission, stood on a low table by the wall. The center's deputy director, Chris Kraft, patted Kranz on the shoulder and wished him and his team good luck. Kranz was a man of conservatism and service: An ex-fighter pilot and Korean War veteran, he regarded the space program for what it was—a grand and noble endeavour of scientific discovery—and one of his traditions was to don a white vest, sewn by his wife, Marta. This morning he had walked into the MOCR wearing white brocade with a delicate silver thread. On the flight director's loop, he told 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.

The lunar module Eagle, photographed by Mike Collins in the moments after undocking. Photo Credit: NASA

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."

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!"

Pictured at their consoles during the landing operation (foreground to background) are Capcom Charlie Duke and Apollo 11 backup commander Jim Lovell and backup lunar module pilot Fred Haise. Photo Credit: NASA

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.

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.

Artist's impression of the final stages of Powered Descent. Image Credit: TRW Inc.

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."

Pictured in the weeks before launch, aboard the lunar module simulator, Neil Armstrong was one of the astronaut office's most accomplished pilots. Humanity's first landing on the Moon required all of that experience. Photo Credit: NASA

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."

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. …

"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 to remember the attitude of the vehicle on the surface.

Ashore on a silent, waterless sea, this is amongst the earliest views of Tranquillity Base: our species' first toehold on another world. Photo Credit: NASA

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. They had set down on a broad, roughly level plain. 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, in perhaps the most electrifying statement of the 20th century, "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!" To paraphrase the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter, the first landing on the Moon may well be the only occurrence from the 20th century to be remembered clearly a thousand years from now.

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. John Houbolt—the NASA engineer who advocated lunar-orbital rendezvous for Apollo—recalled Wernher von Braun turning to him, shaking his hand and saying warmly "Thank you, John." For Houbolt, being so honored by the man who created the Saturn V, it was one of the greatest compliments of his life.

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 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, an anonymous someone placed a small bouquet of flowers onto his grave.

The card bore a poignant inscription.

"Mr President," it read, "the Eagle has landed."

 

 

Copyright © 2014 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 20th, 2014 

 

'For One Priceless Moment': 45 Years Since Apollo 11 Changed the World (Part 4)

By Ben Evans

 

One of the relatively few images of Neil Armstrong at work on the lunar surface, close to Eagle. Photo Credit: NASA

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 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 to land on the Moon had begun. The next phase was to take humanity's first faltering footsteps onto its dusty surface.

Forty-five years ago, today, more than 3.5 billion people lived on Earth … and three others inhabited an environment far more distant, far more hostile, and far more exotic. The Apollo 11 crew were the third team of human explorers to reach the Moon, but whilst Collins remained in orbit, aboard the command and service module Columbia, his comrades Armstrong and Aldrin had descended in the lunar module Eagle to the surface. 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."

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 …

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

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."

"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.

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.

Captured from a remote camera, this ghostly image records the instant of our species' first steps into the Universe around us. Even humanity's first footfalls on the Red Planet or any other world in the years to come, nothing can ever match the history-making audacity of what Neil Armstrong achieved one hot summer's night in 1969. Photo Credit: NASA

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." The origin of the statement has been the subject of much debate over the years, but its significance underlines the value that humanity places in its symbolic gestures, words, and deeds. As a pragmatist, Armstrong may not have realized the extent to which the public expected him to utter a profound comment, but even in the modern world people still regard the Moon as an object of wonder, a final resting-place for ancestors, and an intensely holy land. Armstrong's words treated the first steps with dignity, reverence, and respect, as the technical journey now faded and the human journey—our species' first pilgrimage to the lunar surface—took precedence.

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.)

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."

Neil Armstrong's departure from Eagle was followed, 16 minutes later, by Buzz Aldrin. Many of the Moonwalkers described the laborious process of backing themselves through the hatch and onto the lunar module's porch as like being born. 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: Other objects left on the surface included a small silicon disk, bearing statements from Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon, together with good tidings from more than 70 other heads of state. Pope Paul VI had quoted the Eighth Psalm, and, touchingly, the astronauts left medals and shoulder patches in memory of fallen comrades and adversaries in the exploration of the heavens: the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, together with Soyuz 1 pilot Vladimir Komarov and the Apollo 1 crew of Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.

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.

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.

Buzz Aldrin poses with the Stars and Stripes on the Sea of Tranquility. Photo Credit: NASA

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. They were not there to "smell the roses," said Aldrin. Rather, they had a job to do.

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."

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.

During his brief time on the surface, Buzz Aldrin photographed his own bootprint for posterity. Photo Credit: NASA

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."

"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 intoned quietly, "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."

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." Most of the samples were basalts—a dense, dark-gray-colored, finely grained igneous rock, composed mainly of calcium-rich plagioclase feldspar and pyroxene—and the oldest of the specimens were later pegged at 3.7 billion years old.

Backdropped by the lunar module Eagle, Buzz Aldrin works on the surface. Photo Credit: NASA

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.

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.

 

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