The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

by Richard Russell Lawrence

  “That’s affirmative,” Mattingly called back, audibly relieved. “You are the best ones to know.”

  The spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific at 10:51 a.m. Houston time on December 27. It was before dawn in the prime recovery zone, about one thousand miles southwest of Hawaii, and the crew had to wait ninety minutes in the hot, bobbing craft before the sun rose and the rescue team could pick them up. The command module hit the water and then rotated upside down, into what NASA called the stable 2 position (stable 1 was right side up). Borman pressed a button inflating balloons at the top of the spacecraft cone, and the ship slowly righted itself. From the time the crew climbed out and stepped before the television cameras, it was clear that the national ovation that would greet them would surprise even publicity-savvy NASA. Borman, Lovell, and Anders became overnight heroes, receiving award after award at one testimonial dinner after another. They became Time magazine’s Men of the Year, addressed a joint session of Congress, rode in a New York City ticker-tape parade, met outgoing President Lyndon Johnson, met incoming President Richard Nixon.

  The honors were deserved, but in a surprisingly fleeting couple of weeks, they ended. When the crew of Apollo 8 returned, the nation had satisfied itself that it could get to the moon; the passion now was to get on the moon. In the wake of the mission’s triumph, the Agency decided that it would need just two more warm-up flights to prove the soundness of its equipment and its flight plan. Then sometime in July, Apollo 11 – the lucky Apollo 11 – would be sent out to make the descent into the ancient lunar dust.

  Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin would make the trip, and at the moment it looked like it would be Armstrong who would take the historic first step.

  Apollo 9: an “all-up” test

  Apollo 9 was an “all-up” test of the combined Command Service Module (CSM) and Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) flown by Jim McDivitt, Rusty Schweickart and Dave Scott. Aldrin:

  At exactly 11:00 am on March 3, Apollo 9 lifted off with Jim McDivitt commanding, Dave Scott as command module pilot, and Rusty Schweickart sitting in the center couch as lunar module pilot. This would be the first manned test of the lunar module. Once again the huge crowd assembled at the Cape was physically and emotionally overpowered by the thunder of the booster.

  For the crew however the first stage S-1C burn was very smooth – “an old lady’s ride,” McDivitt called it. But staging to the S-II was a real bumper-car jolt. Violent pogo oscillations developed seven minutes into the second-stage burn. The jolting continued through the third-stage ignition, but less than 12 minutes after liftoff the linked S-IVB and Apollo spacecraft became the heaviest object ever placed in orbit.

  McDivitt’s crew wanted to prevent spacesickness. Frank Borman’s crew had had it, so they tried to control their head movements and took Dramamine. These precautions helped, but they still felt dizzy and nauseous as they moved about the spacecraft.

  A couple of hours later they were feeling better and had separated the CSM from the S-IVB third stage. Scott then deployed his command module’s docking probe and thrust the spacecraft neatly around to line up with the conical drogue that was nestled at the top of the lunar module. The latches all snapped properly into place. Just over three hours into the mission, they were hard-docked with the LM. Dave Scott then backed the two docked spacecraft away from the third stage and thrust well clear of the slowly tumbling white booster.

  As they worked through their long flight plan, dizziness came in waves. But they had plenty of work to keep them occupied. They had to equalize the pressure between the CSM and LM cabins and prepare the connecting tunnel that would allow McDivitt and Schweickart to move from the CSM into the lander. At one point on the night side of their third orbit, Rusty glanced out and shouted, “Oh, my God, I just looked out the window and the LM wasn’t there.”

  Dave Scott began laughing and kidding his crewmate. Dave reminded Rusty that Jim McDivitt was already up in the tunnel and the missing LM was simply hidden by the absolute darkness of orbital night. When Scott fired the SPS engine to boost the combined spacecraft to a higher orbit, he commented, “The LM is still there, by God!”

  They were all surprised at how slowly the spacecraft accelerated, but that was understandable because it was carrying almost 16 more tons of mass – the fully fueled LM. Over the next several hours, they repeatedly fired the engine, moving the docked spacecraft through the complex orbital maneuvers that would be needed for the LOR.

  The crew was so confident in their spacecraft that they all slept during the same “night” period. On waking, however, Rusty Schweickart was hit by a sudden bout of nausea. He and Jim McDivitt were putting on their spacesuits for the transfer over to the LM. Luckily, Rusty found a nearby barf bag. Pulling on the bulky pressure suit was no fun in the weightless cabin, and Jim McDivitt also went through some dizzy spells as he tugged at all the tubes and Velcro tabs.

  Rusty then experienced brief vertigo as he floated up through the tunnel into the LM and ended up staring down at the lander’s flight deck. When he recovered he began flipping switches to power up the lander preparing it for free flight. Jim McDivitt joined him soon after. The LM was noisy with chattering fans and strange, gonglike rumbles. Unlike the command module, the lander was ultralightweight. Jim McDivitt later said it felt like tissue paper.

  With no warning, Rusty Schweickart vomited again. McDivitt became alarmed because Rusty was due for an EVA on the porch of the LM later that day. If he got spacesick while wearing a bubble helmet, he could choke on his own vomit. Jim did the right thing and called for a private medical consultation on a “discreet” radio channel to Houston. The hundreds of reporters at the center had a field day making up sensational rumors when they were cut out of the loop.

  Now that McDivitt and Schweickart were aboard the LM, the lander began to feel like a separate spacecraft, not just an impersonal hunk of hardware. They referred to it by the name they’d chosen for this mission, Spider; the command module became Gumdrop, an evocative description of its shape.

  The crew spent almost two days, while the two spacecraft were still linked, checking out the LM’s many redundant systems and making sure the thrusters were in working order. Then Rusty and Jim crossed over to the lander once more and connected both their portable life support system (PLSS-pronounced “pliss”) backpacks and the LM’s oxygen hoses to their suits, before depressurizing their spacecraft, Jim McDivitt opened up the waist-high forward door – which took a lot of muscle – and Rusty crawled out onto the porch on the edge of the descent stage. From that porch he could see almost a quarter of Earth’s blue-and-white surface – quite a view.

  The crew now had three radio call signs: Scott in Spider, Jim in Gumdrop, and Schweickart, the EVA man, now known as “Red Rover.” Rusty used the same golden slipper foot restraints I had used on Gemini XII. With these and the handrails on the outside of the LM, he had no trouble moving around.

  The next day the crew put the LM through its most crucial task: fully testing the LM’s two engines and the spacecraft’s rendezvous radar, guidance computers, and docking system. Despite the playroom names they bantered with during the mission, there were real hazards involved in free-flying Spider up to 90 miles away from Gumdrop. If any of the LM’s components failed, McDivitt and Schweickart could be marooned in the LM. Spider had no heat shield, so they could not reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

  In the CSM, Dave Scott flipped a switch to release the latches gripping the LM, but they hung up. It wasn’t a good start. He flipped the button back and forth – “recycling” in NASA-ese – and finally the LM broke free. Now came the test of the descent engine. Jirn McDivitt stood on the left side of the flight deck, and Rusty Schweickart occupied the similar place on the right. Ignition and the throttle-up to 10 percent were smooth. But suddenly there was a harsh chugging at 20 percent. After several loud thumps, Jim released the throttle hand grip and the noise stopped. When he opened the throttle again, the problem had gone away.
>
  Now they were completely on their own. The spacecraft’s four dangling legs, braced by shorter angular struts, actually did make the LM look like a spider.

  I was at Mission Control, standing behind the flight directors as they bent over their consoles, monitoring this critical maneuver as Gumdrop changed orbit to simulate its position during an actual lunar rendezvous. Many of these maneuvers were near repeats of the rendezvous exercises I’d helped develop during Gemini. Next, Jim and Rusty “staged,” breaking the Spider into two separate sections. Now the part of the spacecraft they were in was only the bulbous cabin of the LM ascent stage, perched atop its squat engine nozzle. When they ignited that engine, they felt the sudden sagging weight of their limbs as they left Zero G.

  Approaching Gumdrop in the darkness, McDivitt fired his thrusters to maneuver, “illuminating the LM cabin like the Fourth of July.” Dave Scott watched the fireworks, carefully matching what he saw with the radar data on his computer display. The final approach and docking went smoothly as Spider and Gumdrop were joined again, and the two men in the LM had completed their most critical maneuver. The lunar module, which had been the program’s bottleneck for years, had just performed flawlessly in space.

  Apollo 10: the full-scale rehearsal

  Apollo 10 was a full-scale rehearsal of the moon landing expedition, flown by Tom Stafford, Gene Cernan and John Young. They made two orbits of the moon and flew the LEM less than 50,000 feet above the surface.

  In January 1969, the Soviets still needed to test their re-entry module before they were ready for a circumlunar fly-by. On 14 January Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 made a rendezvous which included an EVA transfer.

  On 4 July the Soviets were preparing a fully manned flight test of their lunar landing system involving both their new G-1 booster and a Proton booster. The G-1 would carry a 50-ton unmanned composite lunar spacecraft into orbit, while the Proton would launch a Soyuz carrying three cosmonauts. Their mission would be to rendezvous and dock with the lunar payload. While the G-1 booster was being fuelled an American satellite was observing it when an electrical short ignited fuel in the third stage and almost 3,000 tons of propellant exploded. Naturally the mission was cancelled.

  Aldrin would take an Apollo I mission patch and Soviet medals honouring the deceased cosmonauts, Gagarin and Komarov, to leave behind on the moon:

  The commander of the LEM was next to the hatch so it was practical that he should be the first to walk on the moon.

  Apollo 11: the eagle has landed

  On 16 July 1969 Wernher von Braun prayed during the final moments of the countdown for Apollo 11. Aldrin:

  “T minus ten, nine . . .” The voice from the firing room sounded calm. I looked to my left at Neil and then turned right to grin at Mike. “Four, three, two, one, zero, all engines running.” Amber lights blinked on the instrument panel. There was a rumble, like a freight train, far away on a summer night. “Liftoff! We have a liftoff.”

  It was 9:32 am.

  Instead of the sudden G forces I remembered from the Titan that launched Gemini XII, there was an unexpected wobbly sway. The blue sky outside the hatch window seemed to move slightly as the huge booster began its preprogrammed turn after clearing the tower. The rumbling grew louder, but was still distant.

  All five F-1 engines were at full thrust, devouring tons of propellant each second. Twelve seconds into the flight, the Houston Capcom, astronaut Bruce McCandless, announced that Mission Control had taken over from the firing room at the Cape. We were approaching Max Q, one minute and 20 seconds after lift-off. It felt like we were at the top of a long swaying pole and the Saturn was searching the sky to find the right trajectory into orbit.

  “You are go for staging,” Bruce called.

  Neil nodded, gazing at the booster instruments on his panel. He had a tuft of hair sticking out from the front of his Snoopy cap that made him look like a little kid on a toboggan ride. “Staging and ignition,” he called. The gigantic S-IC burnt out and dropped away toward the ocean, 45 miles below us.

  Oddly enough the S-II’s five cryogenic engines made very little noise, and the Gs built gently. Three minutes into the flight, the escape tower automatically blasted free, dragging the boost protection cover with it.

  Now that the cover was gone, we could look out and see the curved Atlantic horizon recede. Six minutes later, we could clearly make out the division between the arched blue band of Earth’s atmosphere and the black sky of space. The S-II dropped away and the single J-2 engine of our S-IVB third stage burned for two and a half minutes before shutting down. A Velcro tab on the leg of my suit fluttered in the zero G. Apollo 11 was in orbit.

  Above Madagascar we crossed the terminator into night. While Neil and I continued our equipment checks, Mike removed his helmet and gloves and carefully floated down to the lower equipment bay to check our navigation system by taking star fixes with the sextant. We had to be sure our linked gyroscopes – the “inertial platform” – were working well before we left Earth orbit.

  Two hours and 45 minutes after lift-off we were into our second orbit, just past orbital dawn near Hawaii. We were strapped tightly to our couches, with our gloves and helmets back on. Restarting the third-stage cryogenic engine in space was risky. The temperature of liquid hydrogen was near absolute zero, but the engine’s plume was hot enough to melt steel. It was possible that the damn thing could explode and riddle our spacecraft with shrapnel.

  The TLI burn began silently. But as the acceleration load went from zero to 1.5 Gs, our cabin began to shake. The Pacific tilted beneath us. Six minutes later, the burn stopped as abruptly as it had started, and my limbs began to rise once more in weightlessness. McCandless said the TLI burn had been excellent. We were travelling at a speed of 35,570 feet per second and were passing through 177 nautical miles above Earth. “Looks like you are well on your way now,” he added.

  Next Mike had to carry out the “transposition and docking” maneuver he’d practiced hundreds of times in simulators. With the flick of a switch, Mike blew the explosive bolts and separated the CSM from the skirt holding us to the Saturn’s third stage, which contained the LM. At this point the CSM and LM were free of each other. Mike thrust ahead at slow speed and then used his hand controller to rotate us a complete 180 degrees. The big booster stage topped by the awkward-looking LM froze in place against the Pacific backdrop. Mike didn’t hesitate at all to gawk at the view. A few moments later, he moved our conical command module until the triangular probe at its apex was nestled firmly in the doughnut-ring drogue on the roof of the LM. We heard a reassuring clank and a whirring bump as the 12 capture latches snapped into place, forming an airtight tunnel between the two spacecraft.

  We were kind of bizarre looking now with the bulletlike CSM wedged into the cement-mixer LM. Also, the bulky white tube of the S-WB was still firmly attached to the LM, and we couldn’t separate until we’d completed a long checklist. Finally, I was able to call, “Houston, Apollo 11, all twelve latches are locked.”

  I looked out my window and could make out the cloud-covered mouth of the Amazon. Even at this speed, there was no way to actually sense Earth receding, but if I glanced away from the window then looked back, more of the planet was revealed. The next time I stared out, I was startled to see a complete bright disk. We were 19,000 miles above Earth, our speed slowly dropping as Earth’s gravity tugged at us and the distance grew.

  Flying steadily this way may have given us a nice view of Earth, but it also meant that one side of the spacecraft was constantly in sunshine, while the other was in darkness. You can’t do this for very long because in space the sun’s heat will literally broil delicate equipment and burst propellant tanks on the hot side, while on the shaded side the gear will freeze in the deep cold. We had to begin the “barbecue roll” slowly on our long axis so that we would distribute the sun’s heat evenly. Mike fired the thrusters and tilted the spacecraft, making us perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic, that invisible disk of Earth’s o
rbit about the sun. Most people probably thought Apollo 11 was shooting toward the moon like a bullet, with its pointed end toward the target. But actually we were moving more like a child’s top, spinning on the nozzle of our SPS engine.

  This movement meant that every two minutes Earth disappeared, then reappeared from left to right, moving from one window to another, followed by the hot searchlight of the sun. We could see the crescent moon out a couple of our windows, though the view was obscured by the LM’s many bulges. By this point we had entered the limbo of so-called cislunar space, the void between Earth and the moon. We didn’t have any sense of moving up or down, but in fact we were climbing out of the deep gravity well of Earth. And as we coasted upward, our speed dropped. In 20-some hours, we would be over half-way to the moon, but moving at only a fraction of our original 25,000-mile-per-hour escape velocity. A little later, when we would reach the crest of the hill and come under the moon’s gravitational influence, we’d speed up again.

  After five hours in space, we removed our bulky suits, and the cabin seemed more spacious. We could curl up in any corner we chose, and each of us soon picked a favorite spot. I settled in the lower equipment bay, and Neil seemed to like the couches. Mike moved back and forth between the two areas, spending as much time at the navigation station down below as with the hundreds of spacecraft system instruments grouped around the couches.

  Our first Apollo meal went better than we expected. None of us was spacesick – we’d been careful with head movements – so we were actually quite hungry for the gritty chicken salad and sweet apple sauce. The freeze-dried shrimp cocktail tasted almost as good as the kind you get on Earth. We rehydrated food with a hot-water gun, and it was nice to eat something with a spoon, instead of squirting it through tubes the way we’d done on Gemini.