Operation Moonglow

by Teasel Muir-Harmony

  As the agency was the first to recognize, “Obviously, the world would have learned about the moon landing without the USIA.” The international press would have covered the story, run large headlines and photographs on their front pages, and kept their readers informed. But it was the USIA’s efforts, over years and years, that enhanced the impact of Apollo 11. They broadened and deepened the reach while cultivating worldwide attention ahead of the flight.61

  9

  ONE GIANT LEAP,

  JULY 16–JULY 24, 1969

  For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one.

  —RICHARD NIXON, JULY 20, 1969

  Nearly one million people descended on Florida’s Space Coast in sweltering July heat and humidity for the launch of Apollo 11. Small towns dotting the coast swelled past capacity. By July 14, gas stations’ and liquor stores’ stocks had been drained. “Through the whole of Florida,” the Times of India detailed for readers, “it is now impossible to obtain a car on hire; hotel reservations are about as scarce as moon dust.” Many hotels purchased cots and even deck chairs to accommodate people who could not find housing, while others camped along the beaches and beside the road in tents and trailers. Cocoa Beach bars created two special drinks in honor of the flight: “the Liftoff Martini and the Moon lander, which consisted of vodka, crème de menthe, crème de cacao, soda and lime.” Hundreds of European tourists arrived as part of a “moon shot tour” organized by Trans World Airlines.1

  NASA hosted thousands of special guests; the agency’s invitation to “the entire diplomatic corps” was accepted by almost every ambassador but Soviet ambassador Dobrynin. Former president Lyndon Johnson arrived at the Cape along with Texas congressman Olin Teague and former NASA Administrator James Webb. Representatives, senators, governors, and members of Richard Nixon’s Cabinet were also in attendance. Pulitzer prize–winning novelist Norman Mailer covered the launch for Life magazine, while actor John Wayne, comedian Jack Benny, television host Johnny Carson, and aviator Charles Lindbergh were among those spotted at the Cape.2

  Protesters arrived too. Organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group of five hundred marched with mule-drawn wagons to demonstrate the discontinuity between NASA’s high technology and the basic needs of American society. The protest received both national and international coverage, including an article in the Soviet newspaper Izvestiya.3

  On July 16, the day of the launch, the Apollo crew woke at 4:15 a.m. After final physical exams they ate the customary prelaunch breakfast: steak, eggs, toast, coffee, and orange juice. Artist Paul Calle, who was part of the NASA art program, sketched them while they ate. Next it was time for suiting up before boarding a white transfer van for a seven-mile ride to launchpad 39A and the 320-foot elevator to the “white room.” Slightly before 7:00 a.m. they climbed into the Columbia command module. With 210 cubic feet of habitable space, the cabin was roughly the size of three telephone booths. Armstrong sat on the far left, Collins was on the far right, and Aldrin took the middle seat. More than 500 switches, 24 instruments, 40 event indicators, and 71 lights were mounted in the cockpit control panel.

  Columbia sat on top of a Saturn V. The giant rocket measured 363 feet tall, and 92 percent of its nearly 3,000-ton weight was fuel. During the next two and a half hours closed-circuit cameras monitored the spacecraft, and more than 450 engineers sat at their consoles in the firing room performing preflight checks.4

  While a million people converged on the Space Coast to watch the launch in person, hundreds of millions more experienced it through television coverage. Walter Cronkite and the CBS Man on the Moon special mediated the way that much of America and the world viewed the first lunar landing. Nearly 94 percent of American households with television sets tuned in. More people watched CBS coverage than the two other national networks combined. The international audience also tuned in to CBS. From the BBC in the United Kingdom to the Panamanian television network to South Vietnamese television, all supplemented their own programming with CBS’s coverage. A major feature of the program featured CBS correspondents stationed around the world conveying foreign reactions to Apollo 11.5

  USIS Radio Prague at Cape Kennedy, July 1969. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

  Known affectionately as “the most trusted man in America,” Walter Cronkite, with his avuncular voice and calm delivery, became a national fixture in the 1960s and for all the launches since the early days of Project Mercury. From the CBS News Studio at Cape Kennedy, Cronkite told viewers that “some 4,000 members of the press registered here—press, radio, television, magazines… more I believe than for any other event in history.… Some one-fourth of those at least are from the foreign press representing over 50 nations.” The largest representation by far came from Japan, with 120 journalists. USIA staff provided local support and translators, and also recruited members of the local foreign-language clubs to volunteer as escorts and interpreters.6 Cronkite continued, “David Schoumacher is over at the press site with a report on that foreign press.”

  Schoumacher, a correspondent who regularly covered the space program, introduced two journalists “who had been covering space shots about as long as Walter Cronkite has.” Ruggero Orlando from RAI, Italy’s state broadcasting system, was the best-known television personality in Italy. Louis Deroche of Agence France Presse specialized in spaceflight, knew the astronauts personally, and was the first French person to set foot on the South Pole when he traveled to Antarctica to cover the International Geophysical Year.7

  When asked if it was the biggest story in France as it was in the United States, Deroche replied, “Certainly, I think it is a big magnificent story all over the world.”

  Schoumacher followed up with Orlando: “Is this considered truly a feat of mankind, or do you resent the fact that it is an American accomplishment?”

  “No, no, no,” assured Orlando, “in Italy it is absolutely connected with the idea of universality.”

  “I think it truly is an international feat,” Deroche chimed in.

  Did the planting of an American flag bother them, Schoumacher asked.

  “No, inasmuch as there is the other rather universally inspired declaration side by side [on the plaque], which remains linked to the descent stage of the lunar module.… In Italy, they are really anxious following every moment.”8

  The message for both international and domestic audiences was clear: Apollo was a global event. Television, radio, and newspaper coverage did not just focus on the astronauts’ voyage to the moon; it also featured stories about people on each continent following the flight with rapt attention. When a family watched the television broadcast of Apollo 11, part of what they saw on their screens was the faces of other people watching the flight in far-off countries. In this way, media coverage further amplified the sense that the moon landing was a globally shared experience.

  Launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969. (NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION)

  At 9:32 a.m. more than 7.6 million pounds of thrust lifted the massive Saturn V rocket off the launchpad. The first two stages of the Saturn V produced enough energy in a few short minutes to power the whole of New York City for over an hour. When the roar of the engines reached the viewing stands, “The earth began to shake and would not stop.” Norman Mailer described it as a “nightmare of sound,” so powerful that it could be heard a hundred miles away.9 The craft reached a height of over forty miles in under a minute.

  Once the propellant in the first stage of the Saturn V—the S-IC—was expended, the stage fell away and splashed in the Atlantic Ocean. Next, the S-II—the second stage—fired for six minutes, pushing Apollo 11 into nearly orbital velocity, before falling away itself. It was then that the third stage—the S-IVB—burned its engine briefly, putting the Apollo 11 spacecraft in orbit, 118 miles above the Earth.10

  As the astronauts orbited overhead, former president Lyndon Johnson left the NASA bleachers and joined Cronkite in the CB
S studio. With sweat still collected on his forehead from the Florida heat, Johnson expressed the thrill of seeing a launch live for the first time, the sense of unity and possibility brought about by Apollo, and recalled lines from the 1958 Space Act that the intention of the American space program would be for bringing peace to all humankind: As the interview ended, Johnson stressed the importance of the openness of the program, of the decision to work with the media and put everything in front of the camera. This openness, in Johnson’s view, reflected the strength of the US political system.11

  I don’t believe there is a single thing our country does, our government does, our people do that has greater potential for peace than the space effort. As I walked out from the blastoff I saw that special section of Ambassadors there from all the nations of the world, all taking such great pride in America’s effort, all entertaining such great hope for the success of this mission. And I recall that after Apollo 8 I sent to the leaders of the world a picture of the earth taken from that mission and the response was universally favorable, and hopeful, and they all expressed great admiration for our people.

  Spiro Agnew and Lyndon Johnson watch the Apollo 11 liftoff on July 16, 1969. (NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION)

  The Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcast the launch live in fourteen languages, including Burmese, Georgian, Urdu, and Estonian. VOA correspondents around the world helped provide a constant flow of news to their audiences and communicated foreign reaction reports back to Washington.12 Whenever notable mission events occurred during scheduled broadcasts, the VOA would interrupt planned programming to update the audiences on the astronauts’ latest movements. The VOA instructed broadcasters “to avoid boasting and the excessive use of adjectives.” Apollo 11 “was big enough to carry itself without being self-congratulatory in a way that foreign listeners might find distasteful.” This approach was warmly received, with USIA Director Frank Shakespeare noting that “foreign listeners have applauded the tone as well as the quality of VOA Apollo coverage.”13

  As the astronauts made their three-day journey to the moon, television and radio stations around the world asked USIS officials to be guest experts on Apollo-themed broadcasts. Two USIS officers appeared nightly on each of the Colombia television channels. On one unfortunate evening, a USIS officer showed up to the studio in a space suit and almost suffocated on camera when the helmet stuck to the suit. In the Philippines a USIS Apollo specialist spent forty-six hours on Manila television. An Arabic-speaking diplomat in Algiers became a space commentator for that country’s television network. In Chile a USIA officer along with a NASA tracking station director, both fluent in Spanish, appeared on television for hours during the flight to comment on the mission and to answer call-in questions. Another USIA officer became an anchorman for the thirteen-hour television broadcast in Hong Kong. In Ethiopia a USIA staff member discussed the landing in Amharic, and in Taiwan the US ambassador spoke to the public on the radio.14

  During CBS’s continuous thirty-two-hour moon landing coverage, Cronkite received reports from correspondents in London, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Manila, Tokyo, Saigon, Belgrade, Bucharest, Mexico City, Montreal, Lima, Buenos Aires, and the International Arrivals Building at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. Requiring the largest foreign and domestic remote coordination effort in CBS history, the network had to set up a separate control room in New York to handle the increased number of television feeds from abroad.15 Reporting from London, correspondent Mike Wallace explained to the record-breaking audience tuning into CBS that “the traditionally stolid British seem to be as captivated by the fact and implications of the flight of Apollo 11 as we Americans.” The correspondent in France noted that Parisians had a mood of “relaxed anticipation” but that, “as everywhere else, the French press is dominated by Apollo 11, and what if Armstrong should encounter living beings.” Daniel Schorr, a CBS correspondent in Amsterdam, noted that the national television network audience was estimated at 80 percent of the Netherlands’ total population of twelve million. Schorr reported to audiences other evidence of Dutch enthusiasm for the flight: “Gas stations in Holland are distributing Moon maps, instead of road maps.”16

  CBS correspondents stationed around the world reinforced a vision of international enthusiasm for Apollo, a sense of shared experience and unity, and foreign admiration of the US space feat.17 Audiences in Bucharest, one CBS correspondent explained, “have become ‘space bugs’ overnight.… The average Romanian thinks of Apollo 11 a little bit as his own personal adventure.… Apollo 11, they keep telling the visitor, is for everyone, for all mankind.” He suspected that President Nixon’s upcoming trip to Romania heightened the response to the flight and affected the government’s tolerance of Apollo 11 coverage in the country. Immediately following the Apollo 11 splashdown, Nixon would fly there on his Operation Moonglow diplomatic tour. It would be the first visit of an American president to an Eastern European country since World War II. This diplomatic trip might have also inspired the correspondent’s decision to describe Romania as a “maverick East European country.” Apollo 11 gave the average Romanian “another reason for his feeling good about his increasing independence in the East.” This was a comforting picture to paint for American audiences concerned about the grip of Communism on much of the world. The cold war contest for hearts, minds, and political alignment played out on television sets as Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins approached the moon.

  On July 19, the fourth day of the mission, Apollo 11 was less than ten thousand miles from the moon. Not long after the astronauts woke, the spacecraft entered the moon’s shadow. With the sun’s bright rays blocked, the sky no longer appeared black and nearly barren, but instead filled with stars. For the first time on the mission, the astronauts could recognize constellations. The moon became three-dimensional. “This cool, magnificent sphere hangs there ominously,” wrote Michael Collins, “a formidable presence without sound or motion, issuing us no invitation to invade its domain.” Armstrong called the view “worth the price of the trip.”18

  Mission Control reviewed the daily news from Earth for the crew: “First off, looks like it’s going to be impossible to get away from the fact that you guys are dominating all the news back here on Earth. Even Pravda in Russia is headlining the mission and calls Neil ‘The Czar of the Ship.’” Mission Control added that West Germany had already announced Monday would be “Apollo Day,” schools in Bavaria were canceled, and TV sets were installed in public places around Frankfurt. In London, BBC considered measures for a special radio alarm system in case the timing of the moonwalk changed. Mission Control also updated the astronauts on their families, politics, and the latest baseball scores. Later, when Mission Control asked Armstrong to make an adjustment in the spacecraft, Collins joked, “The Czar is brushing his teeth, so I’m filling in for him.”19

  The time for lightheartedness would be brief. One of the riskiest maneuvers—lunar orbit insertion—was the next phase of the mission. A mistake or computer error could potentially ruin the mission, crashing the spacecraft into the moon or sending it on a trajectory toward the sun. Apollo 11 performed two engine burns perfectly. The first burn put the astronauts in orbit, and the other refined their trajectory, making their path tighter and more circular.

  On July 20, after a restless night, Armstrong and Aldrin put on their extra-vehicular-activity (EVA) space suits. Bulky and pressurized, these suits acted like spacecraft, micro-habitats that would keep the astronauts safe during their moonwalk. Once dressed, they took their places inside the lunar module and sealed the hatch. The Eagle lunar module was utilitarian in every way. It needed to be as light as possible, so engineers dispensed with items that added unnecessary weight like covers over circuit breakers or even seats. Armstrong and Aldrin stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of two triangular windows that flanked the control panels. Collins pushed a button, and the spring action in the docking mechanism pushed Eagle away from Columbia and on its way to the moon.

&
nbsp; At 50,000 feet above the lunar surface, Aldrin and Armstrong began the powered descent. At this point, they were just over twelve minutes away from landing. Eagle flew horizontally over the lunar surface, legs first. At about 35,000 feet an alarm flashed. With subtle urgency in his voice, Armstrong told Mission Control: “Program Alarm.” Later he confirmed it was the 1202 alarm, indicating that data was overloading the guidance computer. Mission Control assured the astronauts that they should go ahead with the landing, but almost immediately the alarm appeared again. With another reassurance, Armstrong and Aldrin continued. At about 7,500 feet the guidance computer pitched Eagle upright, allowing the descent engine to slow both the forward and downward trajectory of the spacecraft. Now Aldrin and Armstrong were just four minutes from touchdown. Aldrin called out, “Program alarm. 1201.” It was the same issue, so Mission Control gave them a go-ahead again.