With the third hurdle behind us, we still had a couple of more tasks to perform before our day was over. One was very pleasant: crawling out of our pressure suits and stowing them away in bags. It made the inside of Columbia seem much larger. We felt safe enough in Columbia as long as we weren’t going to pop loose from Eagle (which would have let all our air out), and I had checked the tunnel connections to Eagle several times. Once out of my suit, I did some practice navigating, finding several stars and measuring the angle between them and the earth’s horizon. Then it was time to start worrying about temperatures inside Columbia and Eagle. We were between the earth and the moon, in constant sunlight. If we held the spacecraft in any one position, the side facing the sun would become too hot and the side in the shadows would become too cold. Too hot meant propellant-tank pressures rising dangerously high; too cold meant radiators freezing. To prevent either, we had to position the spacecraft broadside to the sun, and then begin to turn slowly, like a chicken on a barbecue spit.
Once we had this motion established, we could relax and watch the earth and the moon slowly parade past our windows. The moon didn’t seem to be getting much bigger, but the earth was definitely shrinking. By the end of our first day in space, the earth barely filled one small window. It was really bright, with the blue of the ocean and the white of the clouds being what you noticed most. The green of the jungle areas was not distinct at all, and though the rust-colored sandy deserts were quite visible, the main impression was one of clouds and sea. We usually think of the moon as being quite bright, especially when it is full, but the moon is a dullard compared to the earth. In technical terms, the albedo of the moon is .07, which means that it bounces back only 7 percent of the light striking it, absorbing the other 93 percent. The earth’s albedo is four times that of the moon, which means it shines four times as brightly. The sunshine really bounces off it, especially off the surface of the ocean, and if your eyes and the sun are in just the right position, the ocean will sparkle and flash like a fine diamond held up to a bright light. As I got ready for bed, I tried to decide what you called where we were. It is usually described as “cislunar space,” but that really wasn’t a good name for this strange region. We were in constant sunlight, which meant it was “daytime,” but if you looked away from the sun, the sky was black as pitch. No stars were visible, even though they were there, just as they always had been. The reason they could not be seen was that sunlight was flooding the inside of Columbia, which meant that the pupils of our eyes automatically narrowed until only very bright objects could be seen. The only way to see the stars was to block out the sunshine and allow the pupils to expand for several minutes. Then the stars would gradually reappear, but were gone in a flash if the eye was exposed to sunshine, either directly or bouncing off some part of the spacecraft.
Our second day in space was a very quiet one—the first such day I had ever known. It was pleasant to see the earth getting smaller and smaller in our windows. There was absolutely no sensation of speed. We seemed to be just hanging there, as we went about our chores. Neil and Buzz spent most of their time studying Eagle checklists and procedures, while I attended to all the machinery inside Columbia. We ignited Columbia’s rocket engine once, for just three seconds, to adjust our course slightly. The moon was pulling us, the earth was pulling us, and the sun was pulling us. The result of this tug of war was a curved path through the skies, and a constantly changing speed. We had been slowing down ever since we left the earth and would continue to do so until we got much closer to the moon, at which time its gravitational field would take over and we would start speeding up again. The three-second correction put us back on the center line of our imaginary highway.
With plenty of time to prowl around inside Columbia, I found that weightlessness made it seem like a completely different place than it had been on the ground. On earth the tunnel, for example, was simply waste space overhead, but here it turned into a pleasant little nook where you could sit, or crouch, or whatever you wanted to call just being there, out of everyone else’s way. I found that corners and tunnels were good places; you could wedge yourself in and did not need a lap belt or anything to hold you in place. In weightlessness, you have to be wedged in, or tied down, or your body will float aimlessly, banging into other people or equipment as it goes. At first, just floating around is great fun, but then after a while it becomes annoying, and you want to stay in one place. Day number 2 was so quiet I even had time to do some exercise. I found a spot near the navigator’s panel that was just wide enough to allow my body to stretch out, with my arms over my head touching one wall and my feet another. In this position, I could “run” in place. With my medical sensors still attached to my chest, I could find out from the people in Houston what my heart rate was. I exercised until it doubled, from fifty to one hundred beats per minute, and then I stopped, because I didn’t want to get too hot or sweaty, with no bath or shower on board. We also had a TV show on day number 2, using our TV camera to show the people back home what their puny little planet looked like from 130,000 miles away. By pointing the camera out the window at the earth, and then turning it over in my hands, I could make the earth appear to tumble, not something you get to do every day. I told Houston: “O.K., world, hang on to your hat. I’m going to turn you upside down.”
By the time we got the TV equipment packed up and put away, it was bedtime. All three of us were relaxed by now and ready for a long snooze. It was my turn to sleep under the left couch, zipped loosely inside a floating hammock, and I was comfortable indeed, much more so than the previous night or during any of my three Gemini nights. It was a strange sensation to float in the total darkness, suspended by a cobweb’s light touch, with no pressure anywhere on my body. Instinctively, I felt that I was lying on my back, not my stomach, but I really was doing neither—most normal yardsticks disappear in space, and I was no more lying than standing or falling. The only thing I could say, really, was that I was stretched out, with my body in a straight line from head to toe. The reason I thought of myself as lying on my back was that the main instrument panel was in front of me, and I had long accustomed myself to think of that direction as “up.” The next thing I knew, Buzz was talking on the radio, and I realized that it was “morning”—or, at least, eight hours had passed. In the constant sunshine between earth and moon, it was difficult to decide whether it was “morning” or “noon” or “evening.” All I knew was that the sun was still in the sky, just as it had been when I saw it last, and the earth was smaller yet, appearing to be about the size of my wristwatch.
Day number 3 was even quieter than day number 2 but day number 4 had an entirely different feeling to it. We knew we were going to be plenty busy and were going to see some strange sights. We stopped our barbecue motion and got our first look at the moon in nearly a day. The change in its appearance was spectacular! The moon I had known all my life, that small flat yellow disk in the sky, had gone somewhere, to be replaced by the most awesome sphere I had ever seen. It was huge, completely filling Columbia’s largest window. It was also three-dimensional, by which I mean that we could see its belly bulging out toward us, while its surface obviously receded toward the edges. I felt that I could almost reach out and touch it. It was between us and the sun, putting us in its shadow. The sun created a halo around it, making the moon’s surface dark and mysterious in comparison with its shining rim. Its surface was lighted by earthshine, which was sunshine that had bounced off the surface of the earth onto the surface of the moon. It cast a bluish eerie glow by which we could see large craters and the darker flat areas known as maria, or seas. It didn’t look like a very friendly place, but Neil summed it up: “It’s worth the price of the trip.” To me, it also looked a little bit scary.
In order to get into orbit around the moon, we had to slow down, or else we would have shot right on by it. We fired Columbia’s rocket engine shortly after we swung around behind the moon’s left edge, out of touch with the earth for the first time in t
hree days. However, we didn’t need the earth, because our own computer told us which way to point and how long to fire the engine. After slightly over six minutes of engine firing, our computer told us we had arrived, and we had! We were skimming along approximately sixty miles above the moon’s pockmarked surface. The back side of the moon, which we never see from earth, is even more battered and tortured-looking than the front side. On the back, there are no smooth maria, but only highlands which have been scarred by the impact of meteorites over billions of years. There is no atmosphere surrounding the moon to produce clouds or smog, so our view was impaired only by darkness. We discovered that the appearance of the surface changed greatly as the position of the sun changed. With the sun directly overhead, the moon appeared a cheery place, with soft rounded craters bathed in a rose-colored light. As the sun shifted toward the lunar horizon, the craters began to cast long shadows, the rose color changed to dark gray, and the surface appeared not smooth at all but a series of jagged edges. When the sun was below the horizon, the surface was either barely visible if it was in earthshine, or totally invisible in a black void if there was no earthshine. We were really eager to get a look at our landing site. We didn’t have any trouble finding it, because we had been studying maps for months and had memorized a series of craters and other checkpoints leading up to the landing site. But, boy, when we got there, it sure looked rough to me. It didn’t look smooth enough to park a baby buggy, much less our landing craft Eagle. I didn’t say anything to Neil or Buzz. I just hoped it was the angle of the sun which was causing the rough appearance. We would find out tomorrow.
In the meantime, I had one more task to perform before bedtime. With my sextant I took several measurements on a crater in the Foaming Sea (Mare Spumans, in Latin) east of our landing site in the Sea of Tranquility. The idea was that my measurements could increase the accuracy of our knowledge of the height of the terrain Neil and Buzz would be flying over in their descent to a landing. I had named the crater KAMP, using the first letters of the names of my children and wife (Kate, Ann, Michael, and Patricia). I liked the idea of my wife and kids being involved with helping the lunar landing.
The next day, number 5, lunar-landing day, began with the usual wake-up call from Houston, and proceeded swiftly from there. It was while we were eating breakfast that Houston told us the story of the Chinese rabbit that I mentioned at the beginning of this book. As soon as breakfast was over, we had to scramble into our pressure suits. Neil and Buzz began by putting on special underwear, into which thin plastic tubes had been woven. Water would be pumped from their backpacks into their suits and through these tubes, cooling their bodies while they were out on the hot lunar surface. Since I would not be joining them there, I wore plain old regular underwear, or “long johns” as they are called. When we unpacked the three pressure suits from their bags, they seemed almost to fill the entire command module, as if there were three extra people in there with us. After quite a struggle and a tug of war with a balky zipper, we finally got the suits on, and our helmets and gloves locked in place. Then Neil and Buzz entered the lunar module, and I locked the hatch after them. I threw a switch on my instrument panel, and our two spacecraft were separated.
Neil backed off fifty feet or so and made a slow 360° turn in front of me. The idea was to allow me to inspect all sides of the lunar module for possible damage, and to make sure all four landing gear were extended properly. I couldn’t find anything wrong with Eagle, but it sure looked strange, unlike any kind of flying machine I had ever seen. It looked like a huge gold, black, and gray bug hanging awkwardly in the black sky. But Buzz was pleased with it. “The Eagle has wings!” he shouted. To me, it didn’t look like an eagle, and I couldn’t find any wings, only lumps and bumps and odd shapes on its surface. Since a lunar module flies only in space, high above the earth’s atmosphere, the designers didn’t have to make it streamlined, which is the reason it looked so awkward.
As Neil and Buzz descended to the lunar surface, I kept my eyes on them as long as I could. If they had to come back in a hurry for any reason, I wanted to know where they were. Looking at them through my sextant, I watched Eagle grow smaller and smaller until finally, when it was about one hundred miles away (below me and in front of me), I lost sight of it amid the craters. My main job now was to keep Columbia running properly, and to keep quiet, because Eagle and Houston would have plenty to talk about during the landing attempt. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before I could hear Neil telling Houston his computer was acting strangely, and Houston promptly replied that he should continue toward a landing. Buzz was calling off numbers to Neil, so that Neil could devote all his attention to looking out the window. The most important numbers were altitude (in feet above the surface) and descent rate (in feet per second). “Six hundred feet, down at nineteen … Four hundred feet, down at nine … Three hundred feet … Watch our shadow out there,” called Buzz, repeating new numbers every few seconds. He also reported they had only 5 percent of their fuel remaining, which wasn’t much. I started getting nervous. “Forty feet, down two and a half, kicking up some dust.” Well, at least the dust didn’t seem to be a big problem, that was good. “Thirty seconds!” said Houston, meaning that they had only thirty seconds’ worth of fuel remaining. Better get it on the ground, Neil! Suddenly Buzz shouted: “Contact light!” and I knew they were down. The lunar module had a wire dangling below one landing gear. When it touched the moon, it caused a light on the instrument panel to light, so that Neil would know he was just about to touch down. As soon as he did, he called: “Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.” Whew! I breathed a big sigh of relief. Neil then explained why he had nearly run out of gas. The computer-controlled descent was taking Eagle into an area covered with huge boulders, and Neil had to keep flying until he found a smoother spot to land. As good as that computer was, it took the eyes of the pilot to pick the best landing spot.
For the next couple of orbits, I tried very hard to spot Eagle through my sextant, but I was unable to find it. The problem was that no one knew exactly where Neil had landed, and I didn’t know which way to look for them. Oh, I knew approximately where they were, but the sextant had a narrow field of view, like looking down a rifle barrel, and I needed to know exactly which way to point it.
Other than not being able to find Neil and Buzz, everything was going very well with me. I had turned up the lights inside Columbia, and it seemed like a happy place. Also big, for a change, with only me inside it. I didn’t feel lonely or left out, because I knew my job was very important, and that Neil and Buzz could never get home without me. I was proud of the way Columbia and I were circling above them, waiting for their return. I felt like the basecamp operator on a mountain-climbing expedition. I suppose one reason I didn’t feel lonely was that I had been flying airplanes by myself for nearly twenty years. This time, however, I had to admit that it was a bit different, especially on the far side of the moon. There, cut off from all communication, I was truly alone, the only person in the solar system who could not even see the planet of his birth. Far from causing fear, this situation gave me a good feeling—one of confidence and satisfaction. Outside my window I could see stars, and nothing else. I knew where the moon was, but in the total darkness, its surface was not visible: it was simply that part of my window which had no stars in it. The feeling was less like flying than like being alone in a boat on the ocean at night. Stars above, pure black below. At dawn, light filled my windows so quickly that my eyes hurt. Almost immediately, the stars disappeared and the moon reappeared. I knew from my clock that the earth was about to reappear, and right on schedule it popped into view, rising like a blue and white jewel over the desolate lunar horizon.
As soon as the earth reappeared, I could once more talk on my radio, and I found out from Houston that all was going well with Neil and Buzz. They had decided to skip a scheduled four-hour nap and instead began exploring right away. Neil, first down the ladder and therefore the first human to step on
another planet, found he had no difficulty at all in walking on the moon. The surface was level and solid and firm, and he easily kept his balance in the strange gravitational field where everything weighed only one sixth its earth weight. I could hear what they were saying because Houston relayed their calls to me. It was a bit unusual, though, because even traveling at the speed of light, it took two and a half seconds for the radio signals to go from Eagle to the earth and then back to Columbia. If they said something to me, they had to wait at least five seconds for an answer. When I was overhead of their position, I could talk to them directly, but the rest of the time that I was on the front side of the moon, the relay procedure was necessary. When I was on the back side, I couldn’t talk to anyone.
They hadn’t been out on the surface very long when the three of us got a big surprise. The President of the United States began talking on the radio! Mr. Nixon told them: “Neil and Buzz, I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Office at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made … Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth.” Neil replied that he was honored and privileged to be on the moon, representing the United States and men of peace from all nations. I felt proud to be representing my country, and I was glad that Neil and Buzz had planted an American flag on the moon. Now I just wanted them to collect their rocks and get back on up here to Columbia. They really sounded good on the surface, not tired at all, but I was still relieved when they got back inside Eagle and got the door locked. That was another big hurdle behind us, and none of us, we hoped, would need our pressure suits again. In the meantime, we were scheduled to sleep for a few hours, so that we would be fresh for the complicated rendezvous.
Flying to the Moon Page 11
