Small Steps, Giant Leaps - Part 5B: Contact Light
July 16, 1969
5:30 A.M., Eastern Daylight Time
Steak and eggs. Always steak and eggs.
Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom had been an astronaut for over a decade, and yet had attended surprisingly few pre-launch breakfasts.
He hadn't gotten a pre-launch breakfast on Mercury-Redstone 4 - launch had been moved up by an hour, the day after a previous scrub; nobody'd thought to inform the chef the morning of, so the second American in space had experienced his 15-minute flight - and subsequent near-drowning - on an empty stomach. He'd have given anything for some steak and eggs during that ordeal, but the canteen food aboard the USS
Randolph afterwards did just fine.
Before Gemini 3, he and John had had steak and eggs with Al Shepard and some of the NASA brass - and of course, John had packed lunch for orbit, without his knowledge. That was by far the more memorable of the day's meals, even if it did piss Mission Control off after the fact.
For Apollo 7, the crew had eaten steak and eggs with Deke Slayton and the backup crew; nothing eventful that time around.
Now, here he sat again, at that same table, eating pretty much the same meal he'd eaten those two times before. It was a bit of a sparse one again this time - just him and his two crewmen, Deke again, and backup Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly. It was quiet, relaxed, intimate - and yet, there was a tangible excitement to the air.
----
Suiting up was the same as always, a pack of white-clad technicians securing gloves and tubes and helmets with the practiced precision of a racing pit crew and the careful pace of an operating surgeon.
The walk out to the van felt stranger than all the ones before, for all three men. NASA staff lined the halls, clapping and waving as the cavalcade made their way past. Ken was already waiting beside the door, and shook each crewman's black-gloved hand as he passed. As the crew stepped through the door outside, the pre-dawn darkness was broken sporadically by the flash of a hundred camera bulbs, as the gathered crowd of reporters rushed to capture an image of the three men. They looked to the crew with a distant reverence, as if they were ancient gods come down from Mount Olympus. Gus clutched his oxygen supply tighter out of nervous instinct, exiting first, but waved and flashed a smile nonetheless. Mike came next, nodding politely to the crowd. John carefully kept pace behind him, beelining straight for the van. The sky above seemed to almost glow with a dark, rich blue, the first light of day barely bleeding into the void of night.
The transfer van, at least, was a moment of respite - the driver and suit techs respectfully avoided talking much, everything already having been said during suit-up; the three crewmen were left to their thoughts, on the long drive out to the pad.
----
There she stood, then; the Saturn V, in all her glory. Great billows of white vapor swirled off of its gleaming black-and-white structure, puffing and hissing like some great beast awakening from its slumber. Gus almost felt the need to comfort the mighty rocket, seeming almost impatient there on the pad.
I know, babe. We're on our way. Hang in there.
----
Walking across the access arm into the White Room, Gus was greeted by a familiar sight - the smiling, bespectacled face of Pad Leader Guenter Wendt. He greeted Gus like an old friend, and produced from behind his back with a flourish a bright orange life jacket, labeled "Lunar Commander Safety Equipment" in bold black font - a good-natured jab that only Guenter could get away with, of course, in reference to Gus’ first flight on Mercury. “I’ll be sure not to sink this one,” Gus laughed, clapping Guenter on the shoulder.
Michael Collins was next into the White Room, greeting the technicians cordially as he moved towards his ultimate destination. He paused for a moment at the hatch, gently placing a gloved hand on the side of the Boost Protective Cover over the capsule. For the next 8 days,
Columbia, this spacecraft, would be effectively his responsibility. Sink or swim, landing or no, this beautiful machine was in his hands the moment they were off the Earth.
----
In the capsule, already strapped into the leftmost chair, Gus reviewed some pre-launch settings with backup Lunar Module Pilot Ed White, very much dressed true to his name in all-white coveralls, who sat crouched in the Lower Equipment Bay alongside a suit technician.
"Okay, got your ELS auto switch on up?"
"ELS is up."
"Delta-V CG CSM?"
"CG CSM."
"Event timer reset and start switches should be center."
"They're center."
"Alright, that’s all, Gus. Say, how's about you scoot over a bit, see if we can't share the seat? I don't weigh more than a couple of moon rocks."
Gus laughed. "Not this time, Ed. Hey, you'll be walking up there yourself, next couple flights or so. John and I make sure this whole thing works, and then you're off to parts unknown on Apollo 14 or 15 or some such."
Eventually, both Mike and John joined Gus aboard
Columbia, strapped into the center and right chairs respectively. Ed clambered out of the LEB and up through the hatch, and Mike gave one final thumbs-up to Guenter before the pad crew closed and sealed the hatch. The crew of Apollo 11 were cut off from the world.
This is Apollo Saturn Launch Control. All elements are Go at this time for the launch of Apollo 11 as we continue the countdown. All three astronauts now aboard the spacecraft with the hatch sealed...
Slowly, the minutes ticked down to launch.
Apollo 11 MET 0 Hours, 0 Minutes
“LIFT-OFF! We have a lift-off, 32 minutes past the hour. Lift-off on Apollo 11.”
"Lift-off. Clock running, yaw program."
The vibration was intense, and the sound deafening. 100 meters below, the five massive F-1 engines strained against the weight of the mighty Saturn V, gulping down 20 tons of fuel per second as the vehicle began its ascent to orbit. All three men could feel as the engines swiveled and gimbaled. Gus continued to call out events as they went.
“Roll program.”
“Roger, Roll.”
“Roll complete, pitch is tracking. Beautiful.”
The Saturn V clawed its way into the sky, faster and faster. Abruptly, the noise ceased: the ship was now moving so fast it was outrunning its own sound.
----
“Apollo 11, Houston. You’re good at 1 minute.”
“Roger.”
The F-1s burned ever harder, the acceleration mounting - 2 G’s, then 3, nearly up to 4, pushing the crew down into their seats.
“Inboard engine cutoff.”
The acceleration stuttered back down to 3 G’s as the central F-1 shut off to lessen the stress of staging, before rapidly climbing back towards 4. The other four engines burned on still, the first stage’s remaining fuel rapidly dwindling.
“11, you are go for staging.”
“Roger, go for staging.”
The crew braced for staging. John, remembering previous crews’ comments about S-IC staging, called out to his crewmates, “Here comes the train wreck!”
The remaining four engines cut off, their job complete; the three men were briefly thrown against their seatbelts as the S-IC ceased firing.
The S-IC fell away with a clatter of retrorockets, while ullage motors on the interstage fired to settle the fuel in the S-II. All five J-2 engines roared to life, boosting the upper portions of the stack away from the spent S-IC. Staging complete, the interstage skirt fell away, tumbling in the exhaust from the S-II’s engines.
The S-II burn felt much smoother than the rattle of the S-IC, helped by the fact that the rocket was now beyond much of the atmosphere. The monumental shaking had largely subsided, replaced by a smooth, slow buildup of G’s back up to a peak of around 2, feeling almost gentle after the S-IC’s high of 4.
“There’s the tower.”
The Launch Escape Tower perched atop the spacecraft jettisoned, taking with it the Boost Protective Cover and uncovering
Columbia’s remaining windows. Mike looked over to John on the right seat - who, to this point, had been the only one of the three with no view of the outside - and remarked with a laugh, “Hey, they finally gave you a window to look out of!”
----
It was now just over six minutes into the week-long flight, and the vast majority of Apollo 11's launch mass had already been lost. The J-2 engines continued burning as hard as ever, still several kilometers per second short of orbit, clawing their way out of the deepest gravity well of any solid object in the Solar System.
With a jolt, the center engine of the S-II cut off as expected to reduce pogo oscillation. 90 seconds later, so too did the outboard engines cut off. The S-II smoothly fell away from the S-IVB.
“Staging, ignition.”
“Roger, 11. Thrust is go.”
The third stage’s single J-2 engine burned proud and true, pushing Apollo 11 through the last leg of its ascent with no issues. After some 2 minutes and 30 seconds of burn time, the engine cut off. Apollo 11 was in orbit.
“SECO. We’re showing 101.4 by 103.6.”
“Roger, shutdown. We copy 101.4 by 103.6.”
A loose flight plan floated up from the Lower Equipment Bay, as if to greet the crew; a reminder that they were, in fact, in space once more.
“Okay 11, The booster has been configured for orbital coast. Both spacecraft are looking good. Quite a show from down here.”
July 20, 1969
Apollo 11 MET 99 hours, 32 minutes
“It's nice and quiet over here, isn't it?”
It’d been a long, busy journey out to the Moon. Over the course of the last 4 mission days, Apollo 11 had aced every single objective. TLI occurred without issue; CSM
Columbia had flown like a dream during Transposition & Docking, and had arrived at the Moon with LM
Liberty in tow. 13 orbits of the Moon later, here they were, on the precipice; Two crews had come here before them - three, if you count the Russians - but none had taken that final step, that last leg of the journey to the surface of another world.
Aboard the Command Module, Michael Collins prepared for undocking. Tunnel closed and hatch sealed,
Columbia and
Liberty were very nearly two independent spacecraft; all that Mike needed to do was flip a couple switches on the panel in front of him, breaking the final docking connection holding the pair together.
“We got just about a minute to go. You guys all set?”
Over the comm from
Liberty, Gus Grissom responded in his calm, even tone.
“We’re lookin’ good over here on our end, Mike. Hold down the fort for us topside. Ready when you are.”
“Roger that. You cats don’t make any trouble down there.”
15 seconds later, with the flick of a switch and an audible
thunk, the two spacecraft separated. Over the next few minutes,
Liberty and
Columbia drifted apart, correcting for the motion of separation before holding a short distance from one another for inspection. The two spacecraft were back over the near side now, and the duet had once more become a trio as CAPCOM Charlie Duke now occasionally chimed in.
“Okay Liberty
, If you are ready to copy the PDI data, I have it for you…”
Out the window, Mike got his first good look at
Liberty since they’d pulled her from the upper stage 4 days ago. She was a spindly, fragile-looking thing, a contraption of angled grey metal up top with a crumpled skirt of gold and copper-colored foil down below; a strange insectoid creature very fitting for the alien world she was designed to land on. The craft pirouetted end-over-end in a careful yaw maneuver, allowing both Michael and the camera mounted in the window to survey her for any issues - of which both found none.
“I think you've got a fine looking flying machine there,
Liberty, despite the fact you're upside down.”
Gus responded over the comm in a deadpan, “Maybe everyone else is upside down, and we’re the only ones right-side up.”
“Apollo 11, Houston. You are go for separation burn.”
[Apollo 11 Lunar Module Liberty, as seen from Command Module Columbia after separation. Image credit: NASA]
Apollo 11 MET 102 hours, 38 minutes, 26 seconds
Callsign:
Liberty
“Program Alarm. 1202.”
The first lunar landing was, so far, turning up plenty of problems to make up for the near-flawless launch and coast out. First there’d been comms issues leading up to Powered Descent Ignition. Then, there’d been trouble with the RCS. They’d gone past their mark early as well, meaning they were gonna land longer than they’d expected to. And now, the computer had decided that right this moment, 33,000 feet above the Moon and dropping fast, was the perfect time to start complaining as well. And of course, like any good computer problem, it was one Gus hadn’t even heard of in training, let alone seen in the simulator.
“What’s a 1202?” He looked to John, who glanced up from the console in front of him just long enough to give an unspoken look of
‘how the hell should I know?’ With a tense exhale, Gus called home.
“Houston, what’s the word on that 1202 Program Alarm?”
CAPCOM Charlie Duke sounded stressed, but came back with good news a few seconds later:
“Roger, Liberty
, you’re, uh, we’re Go on that alarm.”
That’s all I needed to hear.
Gus and John spent the next couple minutes focused almost entirely inside the LM, making sure their computer troubles were all in order. The Lunar Module pitched over towards the horizontal, the lunar surface now much more visible, without Gus ever catching more than a glance out the window. What he did see all really looked the same - it was hard to gauge distance on the Moon, no air meaning no normal depth perception, so the craters out there could be 2 feet or 2 football fields wide, or anywhere in between.
“Liberty
, Houston, you’re Go for landing.”
“Copy, Go for landing.”
John, as always, kept his eyes on the numbers and called out altitude as they went.
“3000 feet. Oh for- Program Alarm. 1201.”
It took every ounce of Gus Grissom’s willpower not to shout something very unprofessional at this. He relayed the alarm to Houston, and kept on flying.
Don’t you give up on me now.
Liberty’s RCS banged and rattled, the computer holding her steady through descent as the fuel in her tanks sloshed back and forth.
It was only maybe a second or two after he’d relayed the alarm that Charlie responded, rather urgently, “
We're Go. Same type. We're Go.”
“2000 feet, down 50.”
It was only at this point that Gus got to look, really look, out the window. He did not like what he was looking at one bit. Right smack dab in front of them was a massive crater about the size of a football field, with huge, blocky boulders strewn all around it. He needed to know where the computer wanted to land them, and
fast.
“John, what’s my LPD angle?”
“47 degrees.”
Glancing to the markings etched on his window, Gus could spot where the computer was aiming. It was precisely what he didn’t want to see - they were targeted for the slope just north of the crater, in the middle of a boulder field.
“We’re headed for a rough spot. I’m going to manual.”
With a flick of the hand controller, Gus was now fully in the driver’s seat. He pitched
Liberty forward, picking up horizontal velocity to avoid the blocky crater. John kept calling the numbers.
“400 feet, down at 10. 58 forward.”
“350 feet, down at 4.”
“300 feet, down at 4. 46 forward. Slow her up a little.”
On past the crater was a decently flat area, as flat as the pockmarked lunar landscape could reasonably be. Gus gently pitched the LM back towards vertical, slowing down to find a landing spot somewhere ahead. He spotted a nice flat plain ahead past a smaller crater, clear of any large rocks.
“I’ve found my spot.”
“250 feet, down at 3, 18 forward. Shadow out the window.”
“200 feet, down at 3. Ease it down.”
“160 feet, 5 and a half down. Quantity light, 5 percent fuel.”
Gus mentally kicked himself at this callout - it’d been in the checklist to ask.
‘Damn, I didn’t ask for the fuel earlier!’
“120 feet, 6 down, 9 forward.”
“100 feet, 3 and a half down, 9 forward.”
“Liberty
, Houston, 60 seconds of fuel.”
Gus now had one minute of gas left in the tank before he’d either have to find a spot to land, or cut his losses and abort.
There’s no way we’re getting this close and not going all the way.
Out the window, the static lunar landscape sprang to life; slowly at first but increasing by the second, a steady flow of dust began radiating out from under them as
Liberty’s engine exhaust blasted the surface.
“75 feet, down at 1, 7 forward.”
“40 feet, down at 2. Getting a little dust.”
‘Yeah, no shit.’ Gus thought to himself. By this point the dust had all but consumed the lunar landscape below, with only a few rocks poking through the steady flow enough to be seen.
“30 feet, 2 and a half-”
“Thirty seconds.”
“4 forward, watch your drift. 20 feet, down a half.”
Liberty wobbled slightly - she was picking up some drift from somewhere, and Gus tried to correct to even it out. Out the window, the lunar surface had disappeared, blanketed completely with an obscuring sheet of dust kicked up by the engine.
“Ten sec-”
“Contact light!”
On the console in front of them, a small blue light flicked on, indicating one of the probes had hit home. Reflexively, Gus’ hand moved immediately to shut off the engine.
“Shutdown!”
Liberty dropped to the surface with a muffled
thud. Out the window, the seemingly endless stream of dust abated rapidly, as though a faucet had been cut off; Gus marveled for a moment how the dust disappeared off to the close horizon, leaving no trace or cloud behind - and everything was still.
There was a brief second of silence, before John kept rolling with procedure. “Okay, Engine Stop. You’ve got your ACA out of Detent?”
Gus nodded. “ACA out of Detent, Auto.”
The pair went through the necessary steps of safing the descent engine and configuring the computer in case of an on-the-ground abort. It took about 10 seconds for a shocked-sounding Charlie Duke to call back,
“We copy you down, Liberty.
”
“- Okay, Engine Arm off.” Gus keyed his mic over to voice-activated comms, and finally gave the call back to Earth.
“Houston, Liberty Station here. Man is on the Moon.”
John cracked a smile next to him, and off the comm, remarked, “Make no mistake about it, fellas.”
The relief in Charlie’s voice was tangible as he responded,
“We copy you, statio- ah, Liberty
, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
Apollo 11 MET 102 hours, 57 minutes
Callsign:
Columbia
“Liberty
, Be advised there're lots of smiling faces in this room and all over the world. Over.”
“Well, there’s certainly a couple of ‘em up here on the Moon.”
“And don’t forget one in the command module.”
----
Of every person employed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, only one man would have absolutely no access to a television on which to watch Gus and John’s historic first walk on the Moon. He’d have to be content with listening in, hearing descriptions and seeing newspaper stills after the fact. That man, of course, was Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, in orbit around the Moon aboard the CSM
Columbia. And frankly, he was more than okay with that.
The job of a Command Module Pilot, to those not very familiar with spaceflight, might sound boring; you were the guy who sat up in the capsule while your two buddies got to go run around on the Moon picking up rocks and planting flags and all that fun stuff, right? Well, not precisely.
The job of a Command Module Pilot, as Michael Collins had come to appreciate it, was probably the most important one on an Apollo mission. The CMP had to keep the spacecraft up and running for over a week; this complex, delicate machine needed constant tending to ensure she’d be capable of returning the crew safely to Earth, moon rocks in tow. In case of an issue mid-flight, the CSM’s engine would be the primary abort option; without that engine, this spacecraft that he was tasked with upkeep and flying, none of the three crewmen of Apollo 11 would be able to get home in the first place.
And then, there’s the benefit they don’t tell you about on the job application: you get to have a whole spacecraft to yourself, for over an entire day. The Apollo Command Module was built to house 3 men relatively comfortably for a week-long trip to the Moon, so with two of those men not presently aboard,
Columbia felt like a luxury hotel suite. Mike was able to keep everything neat and tidy, use up as much space as he wanted, and hell, even change his socks or go to the bathroom without feeling like he was inconveniencing other people in a shared space.
Columbia orbited 60 nautical miles over the Moon, orbiting once every hour and 58 minutes. For 45 or so of those minutes, the spacecraft was over the far side, completely out of contact with Mission Control; 45 minutes of peace and quiet, catching up on tasks, having a snack and listening to some music, or even just staring out the window at the lunar surface as it passed below, from light into darkness.
Gus and John could keep their lunar surface, just fine. Michael Collins was more than happy right where he was, in orbit.
Apollo 11 MET 105 hours, 15 minutes
Callsign: Liberty Station
Gus and John were on the Moon to stay. Or, at least, they wouldn’t be leaving any earlier than planned. They’d gone through the motions of configuring
Liberty for her stay on the lunar surface, and they’d now removed their gloves and helmets and gotten, to an extent, a bit more comfortable in the cramped LM cabin.
At this point, the mission checklist called for a meal, and then 4 hours of sleep; It’d always been intended to potentially move this, and perform the EVA before, instead of after, sleeping, should everything go well; Gus and John had found themselves not too tired after landing and post-landing procedures, so they’d verified with Mission Control a change in schedule. They’d concurred, and the EVA had been advanced by 4 hours in the timeline.
The meal period still remained, though; having finished all their tasks for the time being, Gus went to grab the appropriate packages from where they’d been packed away. As he did so, John casually remarked, “What’s on the menu for today?” Gus shrugged as best he could in his suit. “Same stuff as always, I suppose.”
As Gus turned around, package of bacon squares in hand, John pulled something out of his spacesuit pocket and presented it to the Commander with a wide grin across his face. “Now,” he said, “How about something a little more special for the occasion?”
Sound does not travel on the surface of the Moon, due to it being in a vacuum. If it could, Gus Grissom’s laughter probably could’ve been heard for miles.
In John Young’s hand, neatly vacuum-sealed in plastic, was a delicacy that hadn’t been to space since 1965. Just like every other bit of food on an Apollo mission, it was labeled with black text on a white sticker:
CORNED BEEF SANDWICH
And it was as it was labeled - an honest-to-God deli sandwich, right here on the Moon.
When Gus finally stopped laughing, his first word to John was, “How-?”
“I made a couple of friends in the NASA kitchen staff.” He cut in. “This was a personal favor.”
“How’d you get it approved? I can’t imagine- oh.”
The look on John’s face said it all. Gus didn’t ask any more, but looked at the LM console briefly. “We’re on Push-to-Talk, right?”
“Yup, I checked it a few minutes ago. We’re clear.”
“John Young, you evil mastermind.” Gus laughed, working to open the gift John had handed him. Once he did, he took a bite.
It was relatively damp, as one might expect a deli sandwich vacuum-packed in plastic for some amount of time to be; but it wasn’t all that unpleasant. Gus had paid money for worse sandwiches in his life. This one, though, in this moment, was absolutely priceless.
July 21, 1969
Apollo 11 MET 109 hours, 22 minutes
“Okay Gus, we’ve got a good picture of you coming down the ladder now.”
Halfway down the ladder, and fully in
Liberty’s shadow, Gus Grissom gingerly moved his booted foot to the final rung. There was a good 2 feet between him and the footpad; the legs had been designed to crush as shock absorbers in case of a hard landing, but
Liberty had touched down relatively soft.
In between his arms and running back up the ladder into the hatch, the LEC tether was near-tight; John had been feeding it out as Gus progressed out the hatch and onto the porch. It was a bit of formality, an extra little bit of safety for the first mission - while everyone was pretty sure the ladder would be no trouble, just in case of a slip, the Lunar Module Pilot would be able to catch a Commander and prevent a nasty fall.
“Copy Houston- I’m gonna step down to the footpad here. Give me a little slack there.”
Carefully, Gus slid his boots out from the ladder rung and dropped, slowly, to the footpad below. He stood there for a moment, then, with hardly a push, jumped back up towards the ladder; sure enough, it was beyond easy to reach the bottom rung in the low lunar gravity. With one last little push down, Gus’ boots landed squarely on the footpad once more, silently.
“Okay, I can jump back up to the ladder pretty easily. It’s about a 2 foot gap, doesn’t look like the strut there collapsed much at all.”
From back in the Lunar Module, John retorted, “Doesn’t sound like too much trouble.”
Gus looked down to the ground around him. It looked solid enough; the texture seemed somewhere between wet beach sand, talcum powder, and charcoal.
Liberty was a fair bit heavier than he or John, and she certainly seemed to be doing just fine; the footpads were planted firmly on the ground, no more than maybe an inch into the dust.
“John, this is Houston. If you could set the sequence camera to F/2 and 1/160th…”
When John and Bruce finished this short technical exchange, Gus spoke up, glancing around the LM as he did.
“Okay, I’m down on the pad now. I’m in the shadow of the LM. Boy, does that sun look bright though.”
He paused, looking down to the ground below once more.
No more point in delaying this, I suppose.
“Gonna- go ahead and step onto the surface.”
Gus lifted his left foot from the footpad, and carefully, as if testing a rickety old staircase to see if it’d hold, placed his boot onto the lunar surface. The dust compressed around his boot like a thin, fresh-fallen layer of powder snow, but it held his weight firmly. Pulling some slack from the LEC tether, Gus shifted again, placing his right boot onto the surface now as well.
----
In the run-up to the mission, once it’d been chosen that the Commander would be the first one out of the LM hatch, and thus, the “first man on the Moon,” Gus had been asked dozens of times what his first words on the surface would be. He’d always smiled, laughed it off, said something about how “I’ll think of something appropriate to the moment,” and continued on. The last time someone had asked him had actually been just this morning, over breakfast aboard
Columbia, when Mike had brought it up.
“Frankly, Michael,” He’d told him, “I still don’t know. What are you supposed to say in a moment like that?”
"Suppose we'll see when it happens, huh?"
He hadn’t given it any more thought after that; far too much to do, focus to be dedicated elsewhere in a mission like this.
----
Standing here now, both feet planted firmly on the surface of another world, Commander Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom finally found the words - short, simple, and meaningful.
“Mankind’s adventure is only beginning.”
Apollo 11 MET 110 hours, 14 minutes
“… And there’s a tendency to want to lean forward as you move, to counterbalance the weight of the PLSS, but I’m able to sustain a steady pace without too much difficulty.”
The Moon was, to state the obvious, unlike anywhere else John Young had ever been. Grainy photos from the Surveyor landers and orbital photography from Apollos 8 and 10 didn’t quite do justice to how…
alien it all was. It just didn’t quite feel real.
The low gravity was, while completely new, also somewhat familiar - to an extent it could be simulated with wires on the ‘Peter Pan’ rig back on Earth, though the real thing felt much smoother.
From afar, the landscape could be just another plaster-of-Paris mockup; but if you really looked, you could spot the detail in every little rock and boulder, every mound of dust, absolutely crystal-clear, with no depth of field.
The Sun was harsh and unfiltered; stark and jarring against the pitch-black sky. In the shadow of the LM you might be able to spot a bright star or two, but out here in the daylight the sky was empty; devoid of all but the Sun, the blue half-circle of the Earth high above, and the bright dot of
Columbia orbiting overhead, which Gus thought he’d spotted earlier.
Everything else about this place - the desolate landscape, the gravity - had an edge of familiarity to it, to an extent. That sky, though… Something about being in full, bright sunlight while the whole sky was black and empty just got to him, made him feel like this was all some funny special effect, or a dream; like somehow he’d close his eyes and wake up back home in bed.
“Liberty
, this is Houston. Could we get both of you on the camera next to the flag for a minute?”
“Uh, roger, Houston.”
Gus walked around the LM into the camera’s field of view, joining John where he’d been demonstrating lunar mobility for the camera. He kicked up little fans of dust as he went; another reminder of how different the Moon was, as with no air to disperse it, the dust moved completely differently than dirt kicked up on Earth would.
CAPCOM Bruce McCandless’ next call, though, made John forget all about the gravity, the sky, the dust, and just about everything else.
“Gus and John, the President of the United States is in his office now and would like to say a few words to you. Over.”
Gus responded promptly, “Of course, that would be an honor.”
“All right. Go ahead, Mr. President. This is Houston. Out.”
Across the void of space between the Earth and the Moon, so far that it took light and radio transmissions over a second to traverse, the voice of Robert F. Kennedy rang out over the comm.
“Hello, Gus and John. I’m speaking to you by telephone from the White House, and this is surely one of the most historic moments in mankind’s history, as I am sure every American and people all over the world can agree. With your historic mission, we have accomplished the goal set out by my dear brother, when he spoke to the Congress only a few short years ago. With your landing on the Sea of Tranquility, you have proven that man can travel to other worlds in peace and tranquility, for the betterment of us all. All the people of planet Earth are together in this moment, joined in our pride for this great accomplishment, and in our prayers that you will return safely home.”
Standing next to the flag, John gave it a salute as Gus responded - but he wasn’t really listening to the Commander at this point. It’d only just really hit him, fully, the enormity of this moment.
Maybe it was the close horizon, or the bright sun in that dark, empty sky, or the leader of the free world calling to speak with them; it finally, really struck him that this was more than just another day at the office.
We did it. We really did it. We’re on the Moon.
[Lunar Module Pilot John Young on the lunar surface, pictured by Commander Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom. Image credit: NASA]
Apollo 11 MET 121 hours, 40 minutes
The Moon tends to be associated with the night sky, and thus with sleep. At this point, the only two men who’d actually tried sleep on it were starting to find that pretty ironic.
“Liberty Station, Liberty Station, Houston. Over.”
“Good morning Houston.”
It’d been just under 7 hours since they’d wished Houston “good night” after finishing out some final checklist items. The intervening time had been spent attempting, and largely failing, to sleep. Any number of issues were to blame - suit temperature, sound, excess light through the (poorly) shaded LM windows, residual excitement from the day’s events - but the end result was the same; Gus and John, sat on the ascent engine cover and curled on the floor respectively, had gotten maybe an hour of sporadic, fitful sleep.
----
The next couple hours passed in a blur - activating LM systems, verifying ascent angle and antenna position and a million other little things before finally, after just over 21 hours on the lunar surface since John had called Contact, it came time to depart.
“Okay, DSKY blank.”
Gus went down the line with the final checks, flipping switches to the correct positions to arm
Liberty’s engine and separate the ascent stage, for the first rocket launch from the surface of another world.
“Abort Stage, Engine Arm, Ascent. Twenty seconds. On your count.”
Watching the computer carefully, John started a countdown at the right moment.
“10. 9. 8. 7. 6.”
Gus’ hand hovered over the console, waiting.
“5. 4. 3. 2. 1.”
“Proceed.”
Gus flipped the switch, and with a noiseless jolt,
Liberty lifted off from the Moon. Out the window, shreds of gold and silver flew through the airless sky as
Liberty’s ascent engine blasted the descent stage. John thought he caught the flag moving in the blast, but couldn’t confirm whether it’d stayed standing before looking back to the console to keep the ascent on track.
“All that debris. Man, we’re moving. Got a LM shadow, 34 feet per second up.”
“Houston, Lady
Liberty is on her way.”
July 26, 1969
9:34 A.M., Central Daylight Time
Two days back on Earth, and John Young was glad to be on solid ground.
The latter half of Apollo 11’s mission had gone more or less perfectly - rendezvous, docking, trans-Earth injection, the coast from the Moon to the Earth, and re-entry passed by without note. He and Gus had slept like the dead once they’d got back up into orbit; zero-gravity, along with not having to wear a spacesuit, made for a surprisingly comfortable night’s sleep.
Splashdown was the only thing in Apollo 11’s latter half that’d had some trouble;
Columbia had tipped over in the ocean, and the three crewmen had spent a moment dangling from their straps before the landing bags had inflated, returning her to a slightly more comfortable position until the Navy frogmen arrived to fully right her.
Then had come, in John’s opinion, the silliest part of it all; the Navy cracked open the hatch and tossed in three Biological Isolation Garments, and the crew doffed their spacesuits and clambered into these three hazmat suits, complete with a full hood and gas mask. They wore this strange get-up for the entire helicopter ride back to the USS
Hornet, and only took them off when they’d been sealed up in a big silver airstream trailer, the ‘Mobile Quarantine Facility’, for the trip back to Houston. This was all in the name of health and safety, just in case of the extremely remote possibility that Apollo 11 brought back some sort of lunar plague, or something like that.
And here they now were; the three of them, a doctor, and a technician, all sealed up in a tin can that, to give it credit, was slightly more plush and roomy than
Liberty and
Columbia had been during the mission, with significantly better food.
The journey back to Houston came in three parts - first, the USS
Hornet sailed for Hawaii. It was during this part of the trip that the President had made good on a promise to visit the crew; they’d spoken to him through a window at the end of the trailer during their first few hours back on Earth.
This first leg of the journey also found a new experience for John - for the first time in his life, the Naval aviator found himself feeling slightly seasick. It wasn’t at all fun, and he assumed his week in mostly zero-gravity was to blame -
‘still adjusting back to Earth, or something,’ he’d thought to himself, though he’d neglected to mention it to the doctor aboard out of a natural astronaut’s distrust of medical professionals.
Once the
Hornet had made it to Hawaii, the Mobile Quarantine Facility, crew and all, was moved to Hickam Air Force Base, loaded into a cargo plane, and flown out to Texas. They were at Ellington now, John assumed; he didn’t recognize the hangar here offhand, glancing out the window.
One major benefit of the quarantine trailer over being in space was the sudden availability of news - there was a radio aboard the trailer, and they’d even gotten a couple newspapers in Hawaii. Another one had been delivered this morning, slotted inside the trailer via a small airlock-type thing in the wall. Mike was the one to grab it this time around, and casually tossed it onto the table next to John. “Mail call.” he muttered, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
John looked down to the paper, fully expecting an image of himself, or Gus, or the both of them from the EVA, to be on the front page - it’d been that way in Hawaii, full-page specials about “MAN WALKS ON MOON” that he hadn’t bothered to read just yet. His eyes fell to the page, and immediately spotted “MOON” in the title, and he went to turn to another section, but paused. There wasn’t an image of him or Gus, or the LM, or anything like that; instead, there was a black-and-white depiction of some sort of space probe, all rounded tanks and angular struts, emblazoned with the headline:
REDS RETURN MOON ROCKS
Soviet ‘Luna 15’ Probe Grabs Lunar Soil, Returns Day After Apollo 11
[A render of the Soviet Luna Ye-8-5 probe design. Image credit: astronautix.com]
