On to The Moon
July 29, 1969. Where were you when Neil Armstrong spoke those immortal words. "That's one small step for Man, One Giant leap for mankind." Some of you may be too young to remember when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, but many of you were glued to your television sets to watch one of the most momentous events in the history of mankind.
I was fortunate enough to part of a team of engineers and technicians who manned the tracking stations around the world. It was our job to track the spacecraft from liftoff to touchdown and to record and transmit data back to the Cape and the Johnson Space Center in Houston. This allowed us to monitor the medical conditions of the astronauts and the integrity of the spacecraft.
I was assigned to Grand Bahama Island. In some ways this was the most important station in the net. With our proximity to Florida, and ten minutes into the flight, we were the first station to acquire the spacecraft after launch. As it came over the horizon, if there were any problems, it gave the controllers in Houston an opportunity to issue a go/no go. Fortunately, most of the Apollo flights went off without any major problems.
It took 96 minutes for the spacecraft to complete each orbit around the earth. There were twelve stations in the net. They stretched from the Cape to Spain, to Australia, to Hawaii to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. On each orbit a station tracked it for about ten or twelve minutes and then we handed it over to the next station. Lunar missions required that station equipment be manned twenty-four hours a day for the entire mission. We slept when we could and we were never very far from our equipment.
The mission profile for each flight varied according to the objectives of that particular mission. Before we could go to the moon we spent years testing every component and every system of the launch vehicle and the spacecraft to make them as safe and reliable as possible. In spite of all our hard work, and all the precautions we took, Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee died in a flash fire in the command module of Apollo 1 while practicing a simulated countdown for their upcoming flight.
The interior of the spacecraft was a pure oxygen atmosphere. The most likely cause of the fire was a spark from a short circuit in a bundle of wires. It spread through the cabin in a matter of seconds. The last communication with the crew ended 17 seconds after the fire started.
Under normal circumstances the hatch could be opened in ninety seconds, but because the hatch opened inward and was held closed by a number of latches, the crew was unable to open it. The hatch was also held closed by the interior cabin pressure, which was higher than the outside pressure. It had to be vented before it could be opened.
When the space race began, we didn't have a rocket powerful enough to send a man to the moon. We needed a rocket that could not only carry a heavy payload, but it also had to be reliable. The rocket chosen to get us to the moon was the Saturn V.
The Saturn was the largest liquid propellant rocket in existence at the time. It was taller than a 36-story building and the largest, most powerful rocket ever launched. It was a three-stage rocket and had a cluster of five powerful engines in each of first two stages. They generated 7,500,000 pounds of thrust. The single engine in the upper stage generated 1,250,000 pounds of thrust. The interior of the rocket contained three million parts in a labyrinth of fuel lines, pumps, gauges, sensors, circuits, and switches. They all had to work and they did. Not one Saturn rocket ever failed.
It was flight-tested twice without a crew and in December 1968, it sent the Apollo 8 astronauts into orbit around the moon. After two more missions to test the lunar excursion module, the Saturn V launched the crew of Apollo 11 on the first manned landing on the moon.
Apollo 8 was the first mission to take men to the moon and back and it was an important prelude to landing on the moon. After translunar injection, it completed eight orbits around the moon. Astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders were the first humans in history to see the dark side of the moon.
We had some pretty tense moments during that mission. We lost telemetry data and radio contact for eight minutes each time they disappeared behind the moon. Those lost minutes were the longest and scariest minutes of the entire mission. They orbited the moon at an altitude of sixty miles and transmitted the first images of the lunar surface for live television broadcast on Earth.
From launch to splashdown, Apollo 8 was a flawless success. However, before we could land a man on the moon, we had to be certain the astronauts could successfully separate the lunar module from the spacecraft and rendezvous and dock with the command module. Apollo 9 was the first crewed flight of the LEM and was conducted to qualify it for lunar operations.
Apollo 10 was the second mission to orbit the moon and the first one to travel to the moon carrying the Command and Service module and the LEM. The astronauts tested every operation except the landing itself. Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan placed the LEM into an orbit to allow low-altitude passes over the lunar surface. After eight hours and 31 orbits "Snoopy" rendezvoused with "Charlie Brown."
Now that we proved it was possible to get to the moon, our next test was to see if we could actually land men on the lunar surface and bring them safely back home. After all of our years of testing and hard work, Apollo 11 sat on the launch pad at complex 39 ready to lift off on its historic journey. Can you imagine what the astronauts were thinking as they waited to blast off into space?
At a post mission news briefing, Buzz Aldrin described what he was feeling as he waited to enter the command module. "We were up early, ate, and began to suit up. While Mike and Neil were going through the complicated business of being strapped in and connected to the life support system I waited on the elevator on the floor below. I waited alone for fifteen minutes in a sort of serene limbo. As far as I could see there were people and cars lining the beaches and the highways. The sun was just beginning to rise out of an azure-blue ocean. I could see the massiveness of the Saturn V rocket below and the magnificent precision of Apollo above. I savored the wait and marked the minutes in my mind as something I would always want to remember."
Mike Collins saw it differently as he sat in his couch on top of that mighty firecracker, "I am far from certain that we will be able to fly the mission as planed. I think we will escape with our skins, or at least I will escape with mine, but I wouldn't give better than even odds on a successful landing and return. There are just too many things that can go wrong."
Fortunately, nothing did go wrong. With the whole world holding its collective breath, at 9:32 a.m. EDT, on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 lifted off pad 39 and raced toward the moon. Once the spacecraft was in orbit, the first two stages separated and dropped back to earth. After one and a half orbits, the third stage fired sending the Apollo 11 on its outward journey to the moon.
In space, the command and service module Columbia separated from the third stage, turned around and docked nose to nose with the LEM. With Eagle attached to its nose, Columbia pulled away from the third stage and continued toward the moon.
Before they could land on the moon, they had to place the Columbia in a lunar orbit. Three days after leaving earth, they went behind the moon and fired Columbia's single rocket. After twenty-four hours in orbit around the moon Armstrong and Aldrin separated Eagle from Columbia and began their descent. Collins remained aboard Columbia and continued to orbit the moon.
On July 20, at 4:18 p.m. EDT, the lunar module touched down on the moon. From Tranquility Base Neil Armstrong spoke those now famous words, "THE EAGLE HAS LANDED." Six and a half hours later, he climbed down Eagle's ladder, placed one foot on the moon's surface and announced, THAT'S ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND."
We didn't know what was going to happen when it was time for the Eagle to lift off. The LEM only had one engine and if it didn't ignite they wouldn't get off. If it shut down while they were taking off they'd crash back on to the moon. Fortunately everything worked just the way it was supposed to. 18 hours after landing on the moon, Armstrong and Aldren blasted off on a tower of flame. They rendezvoused with Columbia, climbed back into the service module and jettisoned Eagle into space.
Columbia also had only one engine. If it failed to ignite, they'd remain in orbit until they crashed on the moon. Once again, everything worked the way it was supposed to. They fired the engine to break free of the moon's gravitational pull and at a speed of 25,000 mph, headed for home.
Entering the earth's atmosphere presented it's own set of problems. If they came in at too sharp an angle they'd hit the atmosphere and bounce off into space. If they came in at to shallow an angle they'd burn up on reentry. With Collins at the controls and the help of an onboard computer, they came in at exactly the right angle.
Reentry went off without a hitch. The parachutes deployed and Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. With the success of Apollo 11 our goal to put men on the moon and return them safely to heart was accomplished.
Apollo 11 wasn't the end of the story. We still had five more mission to complete. Now that the excitement of the first moon landing had worn off, the public thought of the landings as routine. Even the news media lost interest. The Apollo program was old news, but everything changed with Apollo 13.
Apollo 13 was planned as the third lunar landing. Everything appeared normal until an explosion ruptured the number 2-oxygen tank and damaged a valve in the number one oxygen tank. One whole side of the spacecraft was missing. The interior of the service module was exposed to the vacuum of space. Within three hours the spacecraft lost all of its oxygen, water, electrical power, and the use of the propulsion system.
The number 2 oxygen tank was originally installed on Apollo 10. When it was removed for modification, it was dropped 2 inches, slightly jarring an internal oxygen fill line. NASA engineers weren't aware of the damage when they installed it on Apollo 13.
Prior to launch, the oxygen tanks were redesigned to work on a higher voltage. All the components were upgraded except the thermostatic switches. They were overlooked in the redesign. They were designed to turn the heaters off when the temperature reached 80 degrees Fahrenheit, but the increased current welded the contacts shut. The temperature rose to more than a thousand degrees and melted the Teflon insulation on the electrical wires. The gauges in the spacecraft were only designed to measure 80 degrees so no one noticed the extreme temperature in the oxygen tank.
56 hours into the mission, the power fans in the oxygen tanks were turned on. The exposed fan wires shorted and the Teflon insulation caught fire. The fire heated and increased the pressure of the oxygen causing the tank to rupture and explode. If you saw the movie, Apollo 13, you know the rest of the story.
Whenever people talk about the space program, they always ask the same questions. What did we get from the space program? Why did we waste our tax dollars going to the moon when there are so many problems right here on earth? To answer these questions, all you have to do is to look around you to see the thousands of products that make our lives so much easier.
Tens of thousands of spin-offs came from space research and many of them have been adapted for medicine. For example, reflective blankets used to retain an accident victim's body heat, kidney dialysis machines, special beds for burn patients, miniaturized television cameras worn on a surgeon's head during operations, an insulin pump for diabetics. The MRI was the result of an image-enhancement technique to improve the sharpness of moon photographs. Robot and laser technology is now used in equipment for people with disabilities.
The micro-miniaturization of parts for space were adapted for use on earth. Your home computer, big screen TV, cell phones, and all those electronic devices in your home and car can be traced back to the space program. Artificial limbs with controls as small as coins have been developed to replace damaged limbs. Devices no larger than a pinhead are placed in the human heart to monitor its rhythm. Laser beam voice synthesizers restore speech for people who have lost the ability to speak. Dentist use metal alloys wire that was originally developed for space antennas as braces for teeth.
Everyday items like food wrapping were developed from the reflective film used on satellites. Car-control systems for one-handed drivers came from the one-handed technique used in the Lunar Rover. Smoke detectors were a direct result of the smoke detection system used on Skylab.
Space spin-offs are everywhere. Digital watches with glass capable of surviving intense gravitational pressures, lightweight thermal fabrics developed from space materials, athletic footwear with stay-dry insoles, and sports helmets and shin guards lined with shock-absorbing foam. Protective clothing designed for the astronauts is now used on the ski slopes. The helmet design, which gave the astronauts fog-free sight has been adapted for use in ski goggles. Even the bar code in the grocery store was developed for Apollo.
The days of Apollo are gone, but not forgotten. In the last forty years, NASA launched the Hubbell telescope opening science to a broader and more accurate exploration of distant galaxies. Other projects include, but are not limited to Skylab, biomed and pharmaceutical research and development in zero gravity, and unmanned satellite exploration of other planets,
We are scheduled to go back to the moon in 2020 go back to the moon on our way to Mars. If the politicians don't kill it, NASA wants to build a permanent manned station on the moon. A few weeks ago, NASA shot a rocket into the moon to see if there is water below the lunar surface. Last week they launched the Aires rocket as a possible vehicle to replace the aging space shuttle fleet. It may very well be the Aires rocket that takes America back to the moon.
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