APOLLO 11 RETURN BROUGHT END TO SPACE RACE
50 years ago, proud nation, NASA celebrated achieving what had once seemed impossible
The cigar smoke was thick and the voices were jovial at the Ellington Air Force Base Officer’s Club on July 24, 1969.
Parties were customary for NASA employees after successful space missions. But this time was different.
The world had watched in awe as Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the moon. But when word came four days later that the crew had returned safely to Earth just before noon, it was time to celebrate.
“It was a wild day,” remembers Richard Hergert, now 82, who worked in crew systems for the Apollo mission.
Fifty years ago Wednesday, the Apollo 11 crew — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins — splashed down at 11:51 p.m. Houston time in the Pacific Ocean, 825 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu.
And just like that, the U.S. successfully brought to a close a mission that had seemed impossible just eight years earlier, fulfilling a goal first voiced in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy.
The Space Race with the Soviet Union was over. The United States had won.
“It was over. It was behind us,” said Apollo 16 moonwalker Charlie Duke, who was in Mission Control on July 20, 1969, and accepted the transmission from Armstrong that Apollo 11 had landed on the lunar surface.
“The whole idea was to be first on the moon, and we won,” he said Thursday. “So I think that legacy and challenge we had … I think that will live on for a long time.”
An hour after splashdown, the three astronauts were safely on board the recovery ship, the USS Hornet, where they were immediately placed in quarantine — a precaution NASA felt necessary because of fears that the astronauts would bring home pathogens, or “bugs,” from the moon.
The return trip home for Apollo 11 left NASA employees — and much of the nation — wracked with anxiety, mixed with confidence. One wrong step and the mission could end in failure.
‘A huge relief ’
Milt Heflin, who worked in Mission Control during the Apollo era and retired from NASA in 2013, was in Hawaii when the astronauts splashed down. His job was to escort them back to Houston.
He was thrilled when the astronauts burst through the atmosphere and began speaking to Mission Control. And then parachutes released and began to billow.
“That was a huge relief,” he said. “We got to that point where we had no reason to worry.”
President Richard Nixon — who had not been present at the launch in Florida — was waiting for the astronauts aboard the recovery ship. Speaking to them from the other side of their quarantine van, Nixon congratulated the crew on their successful mission and invited them to a dinner in August at the White House.
“I want you to know that I think I am the luckiest man in the world, and I say this not only because I have the honor to be president of the United States, but particularly because I have the privilege of speaking for so many in welcoming you back to Earth,” Nixon said. “This is the greatest week in the history of the world since creation.”
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins spent the next 18 days in quarantine in Houston at the Manned Spacecraft Center, which has since been renamed Johnson Space Center. They emerged from quarantine to embark on a 22-nation tour with tickertape parades in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and, of course, Houston.
Apollo 11 changed the world, and 10 more men would walk on the moon before the Apollo program came to an end. Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt were the last men to step foot on the moon in December 1972.
No humans have returned since.
‘People were proud’
Hergert said he’s hopeful American astronauts will step foot on the lunar surface once again — especially with President Donald Trump’s recent directive to NASA to put astronauts on the moon by 2024.
But he’ll never forget the feeling of excitement when the Apollo 11 astronauts landed in the Pacific Ocean.
“When they returned to the carrier safely and came back to the Manned Spacecraft Center, I mean, it had been done,” Hergert said, “and people were proud of the accomplishment.”