"Live From Cape Canaveral": Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today (18 page)

Command Module pilot Jim Lovell counted down the final seconds—“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, ignition,”—and the three astronauts felt the kick of the big rocket’s instant life, etching the vacuum with flame sixty miles above the moon.

Lovell watched the timer like a hawk. He needed that rocket to burn for 304 seconds. That was the Delta V needed—engineer’s talk for the exact thrust required to get from one point to another—to get from the moon to Earth. The timer clicked and the seconds dragged and those in Mission Control bit their nails, lips, pencils, or most anything within reach. They, along with the worldwide television audience, could only wait.

Finally,
Apollo 8
came around the moon and there was the voice of Jim Lovell: “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus. The burn was good.”

Fifty-eight hours after leaving lunar orbit, and with Earth’s gravity dragging
Apollo 8
home, the world’s first travelers to the moon splashed down on the Pacific in sight of—you guessed it—Christmas Island.

Three citizens of Earth had just completed what the
New York Times
called a “fantastic odyssey.”

The road to the moon had been opened.

F
og.

Fog and mist.

They are living elements of the craggy mountainous cliffs where a Thor/Agena rocket appeared to rise silently, climbing from its launch pad at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.

At first, no one except those launching the rocket knew it was there. It was ghostlike rising through the mist, its growing roar awakening all living creatures within its voice.

Off shore, a spy ship disguised as a Russian trawler had locked its tracking equipment onto the climbing rocket.

Martin Caidin and I were working on a secret space book as the Thor/Agena raced away, burning a fiery path across the brilliantly lit sky. Two minutes and forty-five seconds later, the big rocket loaded with its spy cameras was high over the Pacific, heading toward the South Pole as the Thor stage burned out and dropped away.

Agena would fire twice to boost its photo-reconnaissance satellite into orbit—an all-seeing two-camera system arranged so that it produced stereo pictures of Russian and Chinese secrets. The 3-D prints could tell CIA analysts what they were looking at, its height and depth, as well as many other details.

The spy’s name was Discoverer, and it settled into a one-hundred-mile-high orbit above Earth’s north and south poles where our planet below would, every twenty-four hours, rotate its entire surface beneath the seeing lenses of Discoverer’s cameras.

America’s adversary’s borders were closed, but its sky was open and Discoverer was there to steal the secrets it labored to protect. Film-drive motors switched on, and the American spy opened its eyes. Below was Russia’s Baikonur rocket base with its launch pads and supporting structures. Discoverer blinked and blinked, and twenty-one minutes later the spy satellite had completed its first trip across the Soviet Union.

Next time around, the spy’s stereo cameras gathered shots of airfields. Missile installations. Military facilities. Soviet harbors. It was a solid sweep, and ground controllers started the procedures needed to bring Discoverer’s secrets back to Earth.

They monitored a countdown display as it fell toward zero.

“Ten seconds,” reported the recovery director of the classified flight. “I’ll call it out,” he told the technician to his right. “I want manual safety override for the retros.” Nothing really new. The flight controllers had done this hundreds of times before. The retro-rockets would ripple-fire and slow down the assembly by six hundred feet per second. Soon after, Discoverer’s film capsule would begin atmospheric penetration. Descending into thicker air, it would slow to a crawl beneath a ribbon parachute. Then, a C–130 retrieval plane would bore in, snatch the chute with the va
lued film, and winch it inside its cargo bay.

The recovery was a piece of cake. The fruit of the spy’s labor was on its way to the eyes of the Central Intelligence Agency.

L
ook at this sonofabitch,” the CIA analyst shouted. “It’s bigger than a
Saturn V
, and the damned thing’s gotta have more punch.” He turned to a colleague. “You have those data reports on the N–1 ready?”

“Right here.”

The CIA analyst quickly scanned the first two pages before slapping
the papers against the table. The pictures showed a monster of a rocket, standing almost as tall as the Washington Monument.

The Russians simply called it N–1, and it had one assignment: get cosmonauts to the moon’s surface, but more important, get them there and back before American astronauts. It was February 1969. The Russian space program was unraveling. Rockets rushed to their launch pads had proven unreliable. They exploded on their launch stands or, if not there, shortly after liftoff. The Zond project had been dropped after
Apollo 8
. No need for a circumlunar flight now. Landing on the moon was the only prize left.

“You know what this means?” the CIA analyst asked his colleague, then quickly answered his own question. “If this monster works, cosmonauts could still beat us to the lunar surface.”

A
nother countdown came to life at Baikonur. It was the first launch of N–1, and years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we would learn missing details.

It was eighteen minutes past midnight Moscow time on February 21, 1969. Russia’s cosmonauts watched in awe and hope as thirty rocket engines lit as one. The monster blasted from its launch pad with a roiling sea of flame larger than Times Square. It sent fire whipping across land and steel and concrete as it rose on ten million pounds of thrust, nearly twice the power of
Saturn V
, but as it cleared its huge support tower, engines number 12 and 14 “went dark.”

Still the monster kept climbing, right on course with twenty-eight remaining engines, and when the largest rocket ever reached Max Q, the maximum external forces on N–1’s structure, all engines throttled back to take it easy through the “shock barrier.”

That worked. And now, sixty-six second into the flight, it was time to throttle back up to full power. But instead of an expected smooth throttle back up to maximum thrust, the increased power began tearing things apart. N–1 shuddered and rattled so violently it ripped open its fuel tanks. Instantly, fire began eating the giant. Computers began shutting everything down as fire spread faster and faster, and then, the
mother of all rockets tore itself into millions of burning pieces in the most gigantic explosion of any vehicle ever built.

The sky above Kazakhstan burned. The night gave way to a shimmering orange daylight over the steppes before it began raining fiery debris with blazing chunks of burning rocket tumbling earthward.

The Russian managers watching felt no need to speak of the obvious. It would now take a miracle to keep Russia in the race.

N
ASA’s senior managers were made aware of the N–1’s demise, and time was now surely on their side. Deke Slayton got on with the job of picking the astronauts for the first landing attempt. The normal rotation of crews was playing right in his hands. The way it was working out, Neil Armstrong would command
Apollo 11
and Pete Conrad would be at the helm of
Apollo 12
. Deke had long ago made the decision to have either Neil or Pete land the first lunar module on the moon.

Neil was learned, experienced, and had the moxie to get out of a harrowing situation. As NASA’s own test pilot, he had survived potential tragedies time and again.
Apollo 11
would get the first shot, but the odds were very high something would go wrong and
11
would have to abort. Deke realized there was no other feasible plan, and he called Neil Armstrong and crew into a private room.

“I’ll get right to the point,” he said. “Because of
Apollo 8
’s success, we’re now on an ambitious schedule. There will be two more test flights, and then a landing will be attempted with you guys—with
Apollo 11
.”

Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins grinned like Tennessee mules eating briars. The stoic Armstrong, a devotee of Zeno who was unmoved by joy or grief, stood without expression. Armstrong’s lack of reaction to the news was what Deke expected, but he also knew Neil was pleased.

“You’re it, guys,” Deke told them again. “That is, of course,
if
we pull off successful missions with nine and ten.”

If
was the operative word.

The first
if
on the runway was to fly that buglike creature called the lunar module, or LM. Its job was to take two members of the three-astronaut crew down to the lunar surface, serve as the moonwalkers’
home base, and then bring them back to the command ship in lunar orbit. It would be
Apollo 9
’s job to take the LM into Earth orbit and see if it could fly.

And
if Apollo 9
did its job, there was
Apollo 10
. It had to pull off a full dress rehearsal. It had to fly the Apollo command ship, the service module, and the LM linked together into moon orbit, then undock the LM from the command ship and fly it to within nine miles of the lunar landscape. From there they would return to dock again with the
Apollo 10
command module for their flight home.

Deke really didn’t see any way of avoiding all the potential pitfalls. But, if the job were to get done, it would be like eating an elephant, one bite at a time.

I
t appeared to be from another world. Certainly not a vehicle a sane person would ride in. It was covered in gold aluminum foil, and with its bristling antennas and four spidery legs, it looked like something out of a Japanese monster movie.

In fact, it was the first true spacecraft. It was Apollo’s lunar module, and it could operate only in space. Returning through Earth’s atmosphere, it would burn to a cinder.

Five days after
Apollo 9
slipped into Earth orbit, commander Jim McDivitt and crew members Dave Scott and Rusty Schweickart opened hatches in the docking tunnel that linked the Apollo to the LM. McDivitt and Schweickart drifted through the tunnel and sealed themselves off from Dave Scott in the command module. Scott’s job was to keep
Apollo 9
’s systems purring and wait for the LM flyers to return.

McDivitt and Schweickart ran down the lunar module’s checklists, made sure every system was ready, and then undocked the ugly vessel, becoming the first to fly a craft designed to fly only in the vacuum of space. The astronauts had to fly the LM back to the Apollo command ship if they wanted a ride home.

Now, with two individual craft in space, NASA had to chuck one of
its useless rules—naming spaceships. Flight controllers needed names for transmission clarity. The
Apollo 9
crew decided to call the LM what it looked like,
Spider
, and the cone-shaped command module
Gumdrop.
The kids liked that one.

First on
Spider
’s flight plan was the testing of its rocket thrusters, and they fired and spat out the amount of thrust asked for, and McDivitt and Schweickart knew they had a winner. They then set
Spider
’s maneuvering rockets for a distance burn. The thrusters burned for the time needed to take them to a point 113 miles away from Scott and the command ship.

There, they were truly alone, ready for the highlight of the lunar module’s test—the “break apart” of
Spider
’s two stages. The bottom part of the lunar module was the descent stage. It would be used to lower astronauts onto the moon’s surface. Then, when the astronauts were ready to leave, the top part, the ascent stage, would be ignited to return its crew to a rendezvous with the command ship in lunar orbit.

McDivitt and Schweickart triggered the ascent engine, leaving the descent stage with
Spider
’s landing legs behind, and they executed the series of maneuvers needed to make the trip from the lunar surface to the orbiting Apollo command ship.
Spider
proved to be a good little ship. It flew with precision and nudged itself up to astronaut Dave Scott and his command ship. “You’re the biggest, friendliest, funniest-looking spider I’ve ever seen,” he told the two astronauts docking for their ride home.

M
arch turned into April, and April turned into May, and
Charlie Brown
and
Snoopy
, the lunar ships of
Apollo 10
, eased into the unfiltered sunlight piercing the moon’s black sky. They were circling the lunar surface to perfect navigating to and from future landing sites. The Sea of Tranquility, so named by ancient astronomers who thought it to be a smooth body of water, was the main target.

John Young was the pilot of the big command module
Charlie Brown
. And when commander Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan drifted away in the lunar module
Snoopy
for its vital test, Young was all too aware that
his ship was the only ticket home his two friends had. Make a mistake, and he’d be returning home alone.

Young triggered a burst from
Charlie Brown
’s maneuvering rockets and pulled away. Inside
Snoopy
, Stafford and Cernan saw the command ship leaving, and they held tight for a moment, watching it shrink into the distance.

“Have a good time while we’re gone, babe,” Cernan radioed a good-bye to Young.

Stafford keyed his mike. “Don’t get lonesome out there, John.”

Cernan added, “Don’t accept any TEI updates.”

TEI stood for Trans Earth Insertion, the computer commands Young would need to blast out of lunar orbit and head home.

The command module pilot laughed. “Don’t you worry,
Charlie Brown
wouldn’t think of leaving without you.”

The banter was fighter-pilot stuff.

The two ships kept drifting apart over the craters and lunar mountains, and then, an hour later, on the backside of the moon, it was time to fire the descent engine that would send
Snoopy
on its rocket-control approach to the lunar landscape. The moon was blocking radio contact and Mission Control was going through another bout of nail-biting as the astronauts were moving through critical moves out of touch. But not for long. Suddenly, we heard the excited voice of John Young from
Charlie Brown
. “They are down there,” he told flight controllers. “They are among the rocks, ramblin
g through the boulders.”

My co-anchor, Russ Ward, and I were on the air, live from the NBC Broadcast Studio atop the Nassau Bay Hotel across the street from Mission Control. We were feeding every word from lunar orbit to our anxious listeners. We had flown to Houston minutes after
Apollo 10
blasted onto its Trans Lunar Insertion flight course to the moon, and when the astronauts spoke we would shut up.
Snoopy
came around the moon and an excited Tom Stafford said, “There are enough boulders around here to fill up Galveston Bay. It’s a fascinating sight. Okay, we’re coming up over the landing site. There
are plenty of holes there. The surface is actually very smooth, like a very wet clay—with the exception of the big craters.”

Gene Cernan hopped in with unrestrained excitement. “We’re right
there! We’re right over it!” he shouted as
Snoopy
raced moonward to within its planned nine miles above the Sea of Tranquility. “I’m telling you, we are low, we are close, babe!”

Stafford’s voice followed, equally excited. “All you have to do is put your tail wheel down and we’re there!”

This was exciting stuff. Jim Holton, our senior producer, held up a sign he had written: “Stay with this! No sign offs!” And we did—filling in live the details of the astronauts racing through lunar orbit, flying upside down and backward. Then it was time for the critical dismembering of
Snoopy
—separating the lunar module so the legless upper portion would return them to
Charlie Brown.
The procedure would begin with casting off
Snoopy
’s descent stage by firing a set of pyrotechnic bolts. We held our collective breaths, and astronaut Cernan issued a warning. “That mother may give us a kic
k. You ready?” he asked Stafford as he fired the bolts, only to see everything before him instantly spinning wildly. “Sonofabitch!” he cursed on our worldwide broadcast. “What the hell happened?”

Cernan’s curse sent instant alarm through Mission Control, and Stafford punched the button to get rid of the descent stage. Eight long seconds later Stafford regained control, and
Snoopy
was still.

Stafford and Cernan took a few deep breaths, and ten minutes later, in darkness, the two astronauts triggered the ascent engine and began their journey back to John Young. They rose in a closing maneuver to dock with
Charlie Brown
, and Stafford reported, “
Snoopy
and
Charlie Brown
are hugging each other.”

B
ack on Earth, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin were in final training. The success of
Apollo 10
meant all but one of the
if
s had been blown away. Only landing remained. Millions began gathering on the beaches and roadways around America’s newly built moonport. A site with a clear view of the Apollo launch pad was a premium location. There wasn’t a room to be had in central Florida. It had come down to private families renting sofas, cots, and spare rooms to the hucksters, well-wishers, and complainers.

The NBC phones kept ringing and callers kept complaining. One was certain the launch would bring about the end of the world, while another was convinced his chickens would stop laying eggs and his cows would stop giving milk and wanted to know who would pay, and a third offered his sixteen-year-old virgin daughter to me if I could get him a seat on the rocket to the moon.

My good wife Jo took a breath and then took care of the situation. She snatched the phones out of the walls, and when I went to work, she went along. Her job was to deal with the cranks. She would be nice and syrupy and most of all understanding.

My friend Jack King wasn’t faring any better.

A President Kennedy look-alike, from Boston no less, Jack was the Associated Press reporter here at the Cape in the early days. But, within months, he proved to be a traitor. He jumped fence and went to work for the enemy. He was the first public-affairs officer at the Cape for the newly created NASA, and eleven years later, when
Apollo 11
was on the pad, he was NASA’s news chief.

And to say he was in demand was the classic understatement. Every reporter wanted a piece of Jack.

And home offered no shelter. Jack’s young son Chip had plans for his dad, too. He wanted to make a couple of fast bucks. Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear his dad, the voice of Launch Control, do a countdown. Jack would try to catch a fast nap on the living-room sofa only to be awakened surrounded by nine-year-olds waiting for him to say, “We have a liftoff.”

On the morning of July 16, 1969, for Jack King, it was all about going to the moon. As the voice of Launch Control, he was putting out the word:

NASA’s voice of Launch Control Jack King, seated on the end left forefront, is busy telling the world the latest news on
Apollo 11’
s countdown. King is in Apollo Launch Control with some three hundred members of the launch team on July 16, 1969.
(NASA).

The countdown was running on time as a million-plus people were pressing the gates and fences of the Kennedy Space Center, trying to see anything and everything.

Three hundred technicians and controllers were running the countdown in Launch Control. Hundreds more worked through the count at Mission Control in Houston. Thousands of other men and women were on duty at tracking stations around the world, aboard tracking ships at sea, and in tracking aircraft in the sky.

In our NBC house-trailer complex at Press Site 39 on the Cape, I had already been voicing reports for two solid days, sleeping on a cot in the studios that had long ago gotten too crowded with Hollywood stars, sports figures, and NBC bigwigs.

I was seated at my microphone with a perfect view through a wall-wide window.
Apollo 11
, atop its
Saturn V
, was only three miles away, being bathed by an early-morning sun. The countdown kept ticking along, and my colleague Russ Ward was moving to his m
icrophone to
give me a break when I felt a finger tap me on the shoulder. A hesitant, stuttering voice asked, “Is it, ahh…is it okay if we watch from here?”

I turned. Jimmy Stewart and his wife, Gloria, were standing behind me, smiling pleasantly.

I came to my feet with instant respect. “Mr. Stewart,” I said, “you and your dear wife may stand anywhere you wish.”

He thanked me, they both smiled, and I had to turn my attention back to the business at hand. I often wondered what it would have been like to visit with the Stewarts for a moment, but the countdown was entering the serious stage and we were on the air nonstop.

“This is Apollo/Saturn Launch Control. We are now less than sixteen minutes away from the planned liftoff for the
Apollo 11
space vehicle. All still going well…”

The count sailed smoothly down through arming the escape system. Range safety went to “green all the way.” Launch Control tested the systems for power transfer to the
Saturn V
. The lunar module named
Eagle
was now alive on its own internal power.

“This is Apollo/Saturn Launch Control. We’ve passed the eleven-minute mark. All is still GO.”

Ten minutes. Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin’s command ship,
Columbia,
was now on its own power systems, and the massive crowd of a million-plus tensed as one.

“This is Apollo/Saturn Launch Control
.” Jack King’s voice was now musical.
“We’ve passed the six-minute mark in our countdown for
Apollo 11.
Now five minutes
,
fifty-two seconds and counting. We’re on time at the present for our planned liftoff at thirty-two minutes past the hour.”