Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure (9 page)

Mission Control: 'Apollo 11, this is Houston. Our preliminary data indicates a good cut-off on the S-IVB. We'll have some more trajectory data for you in about half an hour. Over.'

Mission Control: 'Apollo 11, Apollo 11, this is Houston. Over.'

Mission Control: 'Apollo 11, Apollo 11, this is Houston. Over.'

Armstrong: 'Hello, Houston. Hello, Houston. This is Apollo 11. I'm reading you loud and clear. Go ahead. Over.'

Mission Control: 'Roger, 11. This is Houston. We had to shift stations. We weren't reading you through Goldstone. We show pyro bus A armed and pyro bus B not armed at the present time. Over.'

Armstrong: 'That's affirmative, Houston. That's affirmative.'

Mission Control: 'Roger.'

Mission Control: 'Apollo 11, this is Houston. You're go for separation.'

Listening to the radio messages, Pat Collins tried to hide the tension behind a calm smile as she prepared to address the press gathered on her front lawn. She and her children – Kate was ten, Ann seven and Michael six – had watched the launch on television, accompanied by friends and relatives. Before stepping outside, Pat had told the children, 'Be polite, say that you thought it was nice or whatever you thought, and don't say too much.' The reporters were gathered around a fallen oak tree that had been brought down overnight by a thunderstorm. It had attracted quite a bit of attention in the Collins household and already somebody had called offering to chop it up. 'But that's my wishing tree,' sobbed Kate.
³

Meanwhile, more than 3,000 miles above the Earth, Michael Collins was preparing for his first big test of the flight. Three and a quarter hours into the mission, Apollo 11 consisted of the command module, followed by the service module and then the adapter, the long cone-shaped container holding the fragile lunar module (which was normally abbreviated to LM and universally referred to as the 'lem'). Beyond this was the instrument unit and then finally the S-IVB third stage. Having completed the TLI burn, the third stage was no longer needed. Before it could be discarded, however, the lunar module had to be extracted from the adapter. As the command module pilot, for Michael this would be one of the most complicated and delicate manoeuvres of the mission.

Swapping seats with Neil, he climbed into the left-hand couch and for the first time took control of the spacecraft. Pushing a switch to detonate pyrotechnic charges, Michael separated the command and service modules (shortened to CSM) from the rest of the vehicle. Then, by increasing his speed by just half a mile per hour, he was able to edge ahead. After 15 seconds, he pitched the CSM up by 180 degrees so that he was looking directly back towards the adapter, now 100 feet away.
⁴
Deprived of the CSM, the top of the slender container opened up like the petals of a flower. Four panels splayed open and then broke away entirely, revealing the precious cargo contained inside. Slowing down by the smallest margin, Collins allowed the adapter to approach them. With the Sun shining brightly on his target, he could see the LM crouching snug inside its shell. Meanwhile Buzz, who like Neil was largely a spectator during this part of the journey, was recording Michael's progress using a 16mm camera. Inch by inch, Collins flew the command module towards the LM, gently docking with it. Once he had accurately lined up the two vehicles Michael quickly operated a mechanism which automatically fired 12 spring-loaded latches, securing the connection between the LM and the command module.

Collins was dissatisfied. 'That wasn't the smoothest docking I've ever done.'

'Well, it felt good from here,' Armstrong reassured him.

Ten minutes after separation, Collins had completed the first part of his task. Sliding out of his seat he scrambled under the console in front of him and slipped into the lower equipment bay. Once he'd opened the hatch at the top of the command module Michael would later have to clear the elaborate docking mechanism out of the way. For a bon viveur who had somehow wound up as an astronaut, such fiddly mechanical work had proved difficult in training and he wasn't looking forward to doing it for real.

Armstrong: 'Well, Buzz is getting comm right now.'

Collins: 'Yes, let Buzz do his high-gain thing, and I'll get ready to go dick with the tunnel.'

On opening the hatch, Michael was struck by a smell of burning, resembling 'charred electrical wire insulation'. Later he would say it was 'enough to knock you down ... it was one strong odour'. Other astronauts have since noticed a similar sensation after completing a docking, some describing it as the 'smell of space'. (British scientists researching this phenomenon link it to 'high-energy vibrations' in particles associated with the solar wind.) Fifty minutes later, sitting back in his couch, Collins eased the command module away from the adapter, and like a cork from a bottle the LM came away with it. With its legs still folded, its protective gold foil shining in the sunlight and its two iridescent windows glinting like eyes, the LM resembled a giant insect drawn from its protective chrysalis. Flying through space, 12,600 miles from the Earth, Apollo 11 now consisted of two spacecraft, each capable of supporting a crew. Safely secured together, the two vehicles pulled ahead of the spent third stage as they continued their flight to the Moon.

( )

The decision to bring a second spacecraft along – with all the extra weight this implied – was one of the reasons why the Saturn V had needed to be so big. Controversial though it was, the LM was
the
vital component in the only viable plan to get to the Moon. When first raised, this plan was considered so risky it was barely taken seriously. It originated during the agency's first major discussions on the lunar landing and relied on concepts so ambitious they triggered one of the most emotionally charged rows in the history of NASA.

The debate arose a year before Shepard's Mercury flight, in 1960, when NASA's Space Task Group was looking for projects that could be pursued after the Mercury programme. Responsible for planning and developing manned missions, the group was led by Dr Robert Gilruth. Initially, his task was 'to put man in space and bring him back in good shape – and do it before the Soviets', but his brief later expanded. Based at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, Gilruth was a gifted aeronautical engineer who managed his team with the air of a Victorian gentleman, his reticent manner, old-fashioned values and paternal style of leadership masking his immense political acumen. Although Mercury remained the priority, Gilruth was looking towards the future. One idea involved a flight orbiting the Moon, a proposal which came to be called Apollo, after the Greek god of light. By October, staff at NASA HQ in Washington felt Apollo needed a clear objective and it was suggested the project should involve a series of manned lunar landings.
⁵
Beginning on 5 January 1961, ideas on how one might land on the Moon were presented to the agency's senior managers, and during two days of briefings it became clear that there were a number of ways this could be done.

A popular plan, known as direct ascent, suggested launching a huge rocket and sending it directly to the Moon where it would fly all the way to the lunar surface. This idea was depicted in films such as
Destination Moon
(1950) and adopted by Tin Tin and other space-travelling heroes. Already NASA was working on designs for a massive booster, named Nova, that would carry enough fuel to support its payload through two launches, the first from Earth, the second from the Moon. But from the start it was clear that landing such a huge rocket tail first on the Moon contained many challenges, not least the notion of an elevator that would carry the crew down to the surface.
⁶
Many believed it would be easier and safer to land a smaller spacecraft on the Moon, though this too brought problems. How, for example, could a small spacecraft travel all the way from the Earth to the Moon and back? During the January briefing sessions, it was suggested that a small vehicle should be launched into orbit where it should rendezvous with other rockets which would supply it with the fuel for the return trip to the Moon (no existing booster could carry the whole lot into space in one go). This idea, known as earth orbit rendezvous (or EOR), was supported by Dr Wernher von Braun, a rocket engineer from Germany, caricatured by Peter Sellers in the film
Dr Strangelove
.

Von Braun came to be fascinated by the prospect of space travel during his teenage years, and later pursued his interest in rocket engines by designing missiles for the German army during the 1930s. A shrewd political operator, von Braun found it expedient to join first the Nazi party and then the SS, while developing what became the V-2 rocket.
⁷
He also permitted the use of slave labour. Twenty thousand people died at the Peenemünde and Mittelwerk plants while building the V-2, the world's first ballistic missile.
⁸
After von Braun and his team surrendered to the American army in 1945, they were sent to the States together with examples of the V-2 and boxes of supporting documents. Continuing their work, they gave the army a leading edge in developing large liquid-fuel rocket engines, supersonic aerodynamics, and guidance and control systems. Their Redstone booster was used in America's first live nuclear missile tests (and later in the initial flights of Project Mercury). In 1958, a modified Redstone, the Jupiter-C, launched the West's first satellite, Explorer 1. Meanwhile von Braun was working on designs for a more powerful booster, named Saturn – 'the one after Jupiter'. This was intended to be able to send large payloads into Earth orbit, or smaller loads into lunar orbit. By 1959, plans for the Saturn rocket had become integral to the army's Project Horizon, a proposal for a military camp on the Moon, which was just as optimistic as the Lunex Project, the air force's dream of a lunar base staffed by airmen. In the spring of 1960, von Braun was told that he and his team were to be transferred from the army to NASA, and in July he became the director of the new Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. In this capacity he was invited to attend the landing discussions in January 1961.

The briefings led to the creation of a planning group which was set up in mid-January, more than two months before Gagarin's flight. Based at HQ and chaired by the Assistant Director of Manned Space Flight, George Low, the group looked at the various ways of landing on the Moon, particularly direct ascent and EOR. Direct ascent was favoured by influential members of the team including Max Faget, the designer of the Mercury capsule. Faget was asked to examine a third idea, involving a rendezvous not in Earth orbit but in lunar orbit, but he wholeheartedly dismissed it and the group barely returned to the subject again. Low's preliminary report
⁹
suggested manned flights to the Moon using EOR could be possible as early as 1968, while direct ascent could become a reality between 1970 and 1971. In addition to their work on a lunar landing, the group also agreed to support a second generation of spacecraft intended to maintain a presence in space after Mercury. This programme, which evolved into Project Gemini, laid the groundwork for future missions to the Moon, as did simultaneous development of the Saturn booster, the F-1 engine and hydrogen technology.
¹⁰

On 22 March 1961, NASA's senior managers discussed some of these plans with John F. Kennedy, the country's dynamic new president. A written summary, sent to the White House the next day, included references to 'manned circumlunar flight in 1967', Saturn rockets, and a landing that could be 'achieved in 1970' using Nova.
¹¹
A month later, on 11 April, George Low briefed a Congress committee on plans for a lunar landing, even though nobody had yet flown in space. To demonstrate that manned missions were possible he intended to a show a film of the successful sub-orbital flight made on 31 January by Ham the chimpanzee, but he ran out of time before the committee adjourned. That night Gagarin orbited the Earth, and by the time Low returned to Congress the country was smarting from Russia's success. Low later admitted that 'we thought it would not be in our best interests to show how we had flown a monkey on a sub-orbital flight when the Soviets had orbited Gagarin'. Under pressure, NASA managers told the Congress committee that Russia might even be aiming to land a man on the Moon in 1967, the fiftieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.
¹²
Then, just as Gagarin was getting used to his new status as an international hero, American pride was further dented by the Bay of Pigs debacle, which began just days after his triumphant flight.

Kennedy had to quickly find a way of restoring national prestige. Focused on domestic priorities, he was less than dazzled by the idea of orbital flight. But with the Cold War at its chilliest Kennedy recognised that a public show of affection towards space was necessary to score major political points. With the Russians chasing a claim for technical superiority, Kennedy was advised to beat them to it. 'This is, whether we like it or not, in a sense a race,' he told James Webb, NASA's newly appointed administrator.
¹³
Even if Mercury succeeded in putting a man into orbit, a race towards something more ambitious in space was only just beginning. The question was, what should the prize be?