The pilot who saved Apollo 11
“…(Werner) von Braun…would stand for eight hours a day soliciting money beside a display on interplanetary exploration. As part of his 1930 pitch, von Braun would bark, ‘I bet you that the first man to walk on the moon is alive today somewhere on this Earth.’ That very year, future moonwalker Neil Armstrong was born on a farm near the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio.” (From “American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race” by Douglas Brinkley)
On July 20, 1969, 1,300 feet above the moon’s surface, Apollo 11’s lunar landing vehicle, Eagle, entered the final stage of its powered descent. Aboard the spacecraft, Cmdr. Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, both steelnerved Korean War fighter-pilot veterans, monitored the rapidly changing telemetry data streaming through Eagle’s landing radar.
As chronicled in Jay Barbree’s excellent biography, “Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight,” Armstrong then looked out the window to survey the emerging rugged landscape below him, and gradually realized that something was terribly wrong. He knew from the countless hours he’d spent studying the lunar reconnaissance photos that Eagle was off-course, and the spacecraft’s auto-pilot was steering them towards a crater strewn with boulders. Armstrong would have to take manual control of Eagle. The success of the mission, and the lives of the astronauts, were now dependent upon the piloting skills of the kid from Wapakoneta.
The millions back on Earth who were tuned in to the television and radio broadcasts of Apollo 11’s historic descent to the lunar surface were unaware of the perilous drama playing out above the moon’s Sea of Tranquility. But if there was any American who was born for this moment, it was Armstrong. During the Korean War, he survived a dangerous, high-speed ejection from his heavily damaged Panther jet, and later piloted the powerful X-15 rocketplane. But it was a near fatal mishap during the Gemini 8 space mission in 1966, when Armstrong heroically succeeded in stabilizing the wildly spinning spacecraft, that he likely solidified his selection by NASA for the crew of the first mission to attempt a landing on the moon.
As Armstrong flew the spindly Eagle spacecraft over the rugged lunar surface, he spotted a smooth, flat area, safely distanced from the boulder-strewn crater. Armstrong then fired Eagle’s thrusters to maneuver towards it.
Despite their now-precarious situation, Buzz Aldrin remained calm as he continued to call out the telemetry data, “OK, 75 feet. There’s looking good.”
Mission Control in Houston was now racked with tension. “60 seconds,” CapCom Charlie Duke radioed to the crew, meaning that there was only 60 seconds of fuel left in Eagle’s tanks. The unanticipated change in the flight path resulted in precious fuel being used up in the maneuvering thrusters. If they ran out before landing, Eagle would then have to attempt a very risky abort procedure. “CapCom, you better remind Neil there ain’t no damn gas stations on that moon,” said Flight Director Gene Kranz.
The tension in Mission Control intensified when Buzz Aldrin told Armstrong, “Light’s on,” as the low-fuel signal began to blink, indicating that they were down to 30 seconds left of fuel.
Seconds seemed like hours. Mission Control could now only monitor the data, and listen to Armstrong and Aldrin as they descended. Finally, at 4:17:42 p.m. EDT, the historic words from Armstrong confirmed the data the engineers were seeing: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
In the months leading up to this 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, I’ve heard the familiar proclamations from NASA, as well as from private space organizations, that a return to the moon and a human mission to Mars are in the planning stages. Although I am skeptical of their optimistic timelines, I do believe that the first man or woman who will walk on the surface of the Red Planet is alive today somewhere on this Earth. But my advice to those who will determine who the commander of that mission will be is this: choose wisely. For, it is distinctly possible that the crew of that mission will face a perilous moment very much like that encountered by Apollo 11, and it would be prudent to remember that pilots like Neil Armstrong only come along once in a lifetime.
The author, who lives in Philadelphia, is a member of The Planetary Society.