Zero Phase

by Gerald Brennan

  But here we are. An H-mission. 32 hours on the surface, with Ken orbiting above. Two EVAs and one sleep period. A 2-day, 1-night trip, the travel agent would tell you. Or a .095-day, 0-night trip, if you’re speaking in lunar terms. Getting ready to walk on the moon in the not-so-very merry month of May, 1970.

  •••

  “And the ICS is PTT…” Freddo says after the T + 2 STAY. PTT is Push-to-talk—a chance for us to at least work without describing everything to Houston. No time to relax. Always more to do. Checklist after checklist. Everyone wants to walk on the moon. Hardly anyone can keep up with the workload. We’re a team of overachievers and we even grumble about it sometimes. I‘ve been so busy I had to eat and shit at the same time.

  “Cabin pressure’s looking good. Pressure regulators A and B on cabin. Cabin gas return is AUTO.” Freddo drawls. “HAL still hasn’t tried to kill us today.”

  2001. A favorite of mine. One of those movies everyone talks about, even if they hate it. “Isn’t HAL back up on the main ship?” (Discovery One in the movie. Odyssey for us.) “Suit gas diverter is pushed. Cabin repress is AUTO.”

  We’ve been suited up for the whole descent. Getting oxygen from hoses plugged in to the ECS. But since we’ll be here for a while, we are closing valves and flipping switches so we can take our helmets and gloves off. Not to relax, just to work a little more comfortably.

  “They were all HAL.” Freddo points out. He checks the cabin pressure. Then he unlocks his wrists and removes his gloves. (Always the same procedure. Gloves are last on and first off, so you can use your hands for everything else. Probably the same as you’d do if you were bundling up in a snowsuit, only in our case, it’s all written down. Documented and signed off on by managers, on official procedure documents with revision dates. Which makes sense, because if we did it wrong, we’d kill ourselves.) “He had eyes everywhere. He killed that one guy with the EVA pod.”

  “Yeah, I guess he did.” My gloves come off and I unlock my goldfish bowl. It’s fun doing the simple things in 1/6th g. A sudden strangeness to familiar motions. Buoyant and easy without the impracticality of 0 g. I carefully stow my helmet behind us on the ascent engine cover. (Never take a chance on compromising your suit’s integrity.) “I wouldn’t mind if ours were that smart. We’re more likely to kill ourselves doing something dumb than to be killed by something they did.”

  “11’s AGC almost flew them into a boulder field,” Freddo says.

  “The AGC can’t even monitor most things. We could open the wrong valve and it couldn’t stop us.”

  “We’d get bored if it was too smart,” Freddo points out as he removes his helmet. “This keeps us on our toes.”

  “It does keep us busy,” I acknowledge.

  Now we’re unhooking the harness and pulley system that lets us fly standing up. A brilliant engineering decision they made back in ’62 or so. Low gravity meant we didn’t need things aeronautical engineers took for granted on earth, like seats. No seats meant a lighter LM. And standing put us closer to the windows, which allowed for the same field of view with a smaller window, which meant a lighter LM, still.

  We’re just about done when there’s a crackle. “Aquarius, Houston. We’re going to need your 047 and 053 values soon.”

  Freddo keys his mic. “Roger that, Houston. We are back on VOX.”

  The checklist. There’s an undeniable satisfaction to getting it all done. Still, it’s relentless.

  Freddo keys commands into the DSKY and writes a series of numbers on page 1-1. “047 is plus 37768, 053 is plus 00542.”

  We’ve moved on to page 1-2 in the checklist. I call up Program 57 on the DSKY. Lunar surface align.

  First we determine the direction and strength of the local gravity vector. If the lander were level and the field of gravity were uniform, its direction would be the same as the LM’s negative x axis, and its strength would be the same everywhere on the surface. But the moon’s not homogenous. Unmixed inside. Say a given area of the surface was stony, but a large nickel meteor struck it eons ago. You’d have a mass concentration. Mascon. These alter the gravitational vector. Plus, the lander’s not perfectly level. So what feels like down ends up being something other than straight down from our frame of reference. We need to measure this local direction of gravity more accurately to make liftoff and rendezvous easier. So more work on the DSKY. Calling up angles, displaying angles, measuring the differences between angles, writing down angles. For people like us, it’s interesting.

  Next up, star alignments using the AOT. (A telescope on top of the LM.) We look through a fixed eyepiece that hangs down like a submarine periscope. It doesn’t move, but the telescope up top can rotate into six fixed positions. (Detents, we call them.) You always hear the phrase “pie in the sky.” Well, we’ve sliced the sky into six pieces of pie. So we look at a couple slices of sky and take measurements on our navigation stars. First, we sight Antares. I rotate the telescope eyepiece around its longitudinal axis until Antares touches a straight baseline on the viewer. Then I write down that angle. Then I rotate the eyepiece again until Antares touches an Archimedean spiral inscribed along with the baseline. Take these sightings on a couple stars, and add in your gravity vector, and you have three vectors that converge on a single point. So you enter the cursor and spiral angles into the DSKY. Noun 79 and Verb 32. And the AGC can do all the rest. This is how you make sure you’re oriented properly when you’re on the moon.

  I’m pretty focused. (No pun intended. Or wait, maybe pun intended.) At least, I’m as engaged as a human being can be when he’s slightly tired and his life’s no longer in imminent danger. (There was a line in 2001 where HAL says: “I’m putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all, I think, that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”) Still, I can’t help but think back to the Academy. Summers at sea sighting stars with sextants. Other ways to do it down there now, but you still have to learn the basics in case the new ways fail you. And up here, this is the only way to do what we’re doing. No networks of radio towers or lighthouses to help us plot it out. We’re sailors on a strange shore.

  •••

  I am not a superstitious man.

  In the Navy, there are a lot of arcane rituals. Line crossing ceremonies in the court of King Neptune when you first traverse the Equator, and things of that sort. And superstitions: don’t rename a ship, for instance.

  Someone around the office—it might have been Buzz, who’s obviously not a Navy man, but every bit as anxious as anyone in the Navy or the astronaut corps—asked if I had any qualms about naming my Command Module Odyssey. I asked why, and he said “2001: A Space Odyssey?” I reminded him that the ship in the movie was called Discovery One. He still seemed to think it was a bad omen, but I told him I had no more qualms about it than I had about accepting a mission numbered 13. (And that’s about the same level of trepidation I have when a black cat crosses my path. Which is to say, none at all.)

  There were a couple odd things about the preparation for this mission. Besides the four-week hold, there was an issue during one of the CDDTs where one of the O2 tanks didn’t drain properly. I think we had to turn on a heater and boil off the oxygen inside. And there were a couple oddball simulations while they were trying to keep things interesting for us in the extra month of training, including one aforementioned landing sim where we attempted an abort too late and crashed.

  As usual, though, they backed off on the tough sims as our launch date drew near, so we could get some easy wins under our belt and go to the pad confident. So everything seemed pretty stable at the end. Far more so than in the world outside.

  I remember checking the weather forecast a couple days before launch. They were predicting hotter temperatures than usual for early May. Florida gets a type of weather called orographic precipitation in May and June and July. It’s different than the rain you get in most of the rest of the U.S., which usually comes in on a weather front. In Florida, it’s so hot and wet during those month
s that the moisture evaporates from the ground, from the lakes and swamps and marshes, and by the midafternoon the air’s so saturated that it rains like crazy for a good half hour. It happens almost every day, and you can almost set your watch by it.

  So we’d been getting some afternoon showers already, on account of the temperatures. I was mildly concerned, but I figured we were launching early enough in the afternoon that we’d be OK. And of course I knew the muggy temperatures wouldn’t be a problem on launch day. At least, not for the three of us. When they drive the crews out to the pad, we’re always suited up already, with our fishbowls on so we can pre-breathe pure oxygen. I remember seeing beads of sweat on the people waiting to wave goodbye as they walked us outside to the transfer van. Something I hadn’t seen on 8, which launched in December. And I saw sweat forming on one technician’s brow on the short walk down the metal gantry from the launch pad elevator to the white room where they loaded us into the spacecraft. Meanwhile the three of us were cool and calm in our little cocoons. Pleasantly disconnected from the Florida climate.

  Soon enough, Guenter and the pad crew loaded us in to the spacecraft, and we went through all of our pre-launch routines and checklists. And the countdown progressed, and they sealed us up and left, and we worked through still more checks.

  Then came launch.

  Dramatic, of course, but no major events, nothing at all serious. A pogo vibration on one of the engines during the boost phase, which is where it oscillates along the longitudinal access at a very high frequency due to pressure fluctuations in the combustion chamber. That engine shut down early, but the others burned longer to make up for it. And that was it. Just another trip to the moon.

  •••

  “Aquarius, Houston. Stay! Staaay. Stay! Over.” Another decision point after the alignment—STAY/NO STAY for the CSM’s first pass since landing. And everything’s still routine, so the Capcom—McCandless, now—is being funny.

  Freddo and I have a little chuckle. “Houston, Aquarius,” I respond at last. “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say ‘Roger’ or bark like a dog. Over.”

  “Arf! Arf!” Freddo chimes in.

  Nothing. The normal communications delay. The slow speed of light is hell on everyone’s comedic timing. “Good LM,” McCandless says after a couple seconds.

  No one responds. On with the checklist. We’re on page 1-7 now. Houston gives us an acquisition time for the CSM to come over the horizon, and we put the computer in P00 mode so they can upload a new state vector. Then on pages 1-8 and 1-9, we have circuit breakers to pull to power down the LM. We switch back to PTT to work.

  “I wouldn’t mind automating this,” I say. The Partial Power-Down checklist shows the proper position for every breaker on Panel 11 and Panel 16. Black dots and white dots. Breakers pushed in, and breakers pulled. Everything already decided, and we just have to do it. “Or the DSKY work. 10,000 keystrokes in the average mission. From a probability standpoint, it’s a virtual certainty you’re gonna mess up at some point.”

  “You’ll automate us out of a job,” Freddo says over his shoulder as he pulls out breakers on Panel 16. He’s a great pilot, an ex-Marine from Mississippi, the first in his astronaut class to get up here. But by now everyone knows Apollo won’t last forever. A lot of great pilots won’t fly again. “I know you’re retiring after this, but the rest of us still need to work.”

  We finish with the breakers and move on to 1-10 and 1-11 to confirm switch settings on the front panels.

  “They’re still gonna send people up here.” I tell him as I work. “No one cares if a robot sees the whole earth. No one cares if a computer’s taking a chance on not coming home. People only care if something can happen to them.”

  “The average Joe is starting to know this can’t happen to them,” Freddo says as we finish up, with a nod that says he means the mission, the moon, everything. “All right, Houston, Partial Power-Down complete, and we’re back on VOX.”

  I can’t argue with Freddo. Someday, maybe, but no time soon. For me, the most compelling thing about 2001 was the notion that someone could someday just buy a Pan Am ticket and fly to the moon. Would people still want to go, if it were that easy? There’s not much here. It might end up one of those places everyone could go to, but nobody does. Like Greenland or Antarctica.

  “All right, Aquarius, we have an estimated P22 time of 110 plus 48 plus 00.”

  “Roger that, Houston.”

  “And we’ve completed our data upload, so the computer’s yours.”

  “OK, Houston. We are ready to go with our terrain description.” The next item on the checklist. We have to describe in detail everything we see through the LM windows. Given the fact that we’ll be walking around out there soon enough, it might not seem like a productive way to spend our time on the surface. But a job’s a job. And it’ll help refine our plans for the EVAs.

  “Aquarius, Houston, go ahead with your description.”

  “Terrain is relatively uneven. More so than we expected. Maybe 5- to 10-meter rises. There’s one about 30 meters to our north and another to our south further away. It’s almost like a series of sand dunes, although obviously these were formed differently. Not as many rocks as expected, though. We can only see about a dozen boulders that are larger than a foot in diameter.”

  Freddo has taken out the 70mm Hasselblad and is shooting pictures out the right window.

  “We saw the Doublet coming in, and we should be able to set up the ALSEP nearby.” (The main task for today’s moonwalk—an experiment package. I’m more excited about tomorrow’s EVA. We’re walking a mile east to Cone Crater. 1,000 feet wide, 750 feet deep. It should be quite a sight. And a great site for some geology fieldwork. A crater in the lunar bedrock. Some real knowledge to be gained there. Still, today should be fun. A walk on the moon is a walk on the moon.) “The color varies depending on how close you are to zero phase. It’s more brownish when you’re looking off to the side. Down-sun, things get pretty washed-out.”

  We continue with the descriptions. Obviously we’ll be able to see more once we’re out and about. But this is on the checklist, so it’s a point of pride to do as good a job as possible. And we’ve been practicing, too. Field trips with Lee Silver from Caltech in the Orocopia Mountains. Going around a bend, then calling back on a walkie-talkie. Fast, accurate descriptions. No more words than necessary.

  After a while, Houston interrupts to give us an update on consumables. RCS fuel, oxygen, water, electricity. And they send liftoff times for Revs 16, 17 and 18. (We need to copy these down in case of a communications break. Like everything else, our communications are incredibly complex. As the earth turns above us, various stations around the globe fall out of line-of-sight, and others come over the horizon. California, Australia, Spain. These retransmit our voices to the MOCR in Houston. If something happens and we can’t re-establish communications within a set time, we’ll need the liftoff times handy to rendezvous with the CSM. Another part of the routine. You might think they’d transmit them up directly to the computer, but it’s all pen and notepad.)

  It’s only now that I realize how hungry I am. One of those sudden hungers that hides until it’s too big to miss. But we’re not far enough on the checklist. An erasable memory dump, and a check on our actual landing location vs. the plan, and some more circuit breaker configuration changes.

  “And our status report is as follows: We’ve taken no medication,” I report at last. “We’re both in excellent shape. Commander’s PRD is at 15953, and for the LMP is 09392.” (Dosimeters. We’ll get the equivalent of several chest x-rays worth of radiation on this trip.)

  “Roger that, Aquarius. 19953 Commander, 09392 LMP.” McCandless reads back. “You in the mood for some food yet?”

  “We are getting pretty hungry, Houston. I was thinking of ordering Chinese.”

  A pause. A chuckle. “Uhh, we’ll try to get the delivery guy in the simulator as soon as possible. I don’t think we can have him up there today,
though.”

  “All right, I guess we’ll eat what we’ve got in the meantime. And we are going to PTT.” To Freddo, I ask: “What’s on the menu, anyway?” Back at Annapolis, my fellow plebes and I had to memorize the menus and recite them to any upperclassman who asked during the course of the school day. And of course, as upperclassmen, we got to ask the plebes. Obviously Freddo and I are on a fairly equal footing here. Still I can’t help thinking about that.

  “Beef sandwiches, carrots, strawberry cubes.” Freddo distributes out the packs.

  “Mmmm. Strawberry cubes.” And the sandwiches all freeze-dried and wrapped up in plastic and covered in gelatin so we don’t get crumbs everywhere. I’m remembering the scene in 2001 where they’re riding the lunar shuttle. Pulling out lunch, oblivious to the alien scenery. Making mild jokes about bland prepackaged sandwiches. Still I’m eager to eat. Hunger is the best sauce.

  “Just like mom used to make,” Freddo says as he digs in.

  “I’ll tell you, it’s still a step up from Gemini.”

  “I bet. Probably a lot less cramped, too,” Freddo says between chews.

  “This thing feels like the Waldorf compared to Gemini.” I look around. There’s always been an unfinished feel to the LM interior. Like a ship’s engine room. Gray bulkheads and exposed wiring. But far roomier than Gemini. We even have hammocks for our sleep period. “Tom Stafford said Gemini was like eating, sleeping, working and shitting while stuffed into the front seat of a sports car wearing an overcoat.”

  “And you had two weeks of that with Frank Borman sitting next to you,” Freddo says.