Magnificent Desolation (3 page)

“Somebody’s upside down,” Neil quipped in return.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, now it was our turn to focus on our lengthy checklist as we began flying the LM backwards, continuing in our own orbit around the moon. We flew around the moon once and started around a second time while Mission Control monitored all aspects of our progress. Then, with the friendly twinge of a Texas drawl, the voice of astronaut Charlie Duke, who was now serving as Capcom, parted the static.
“Eagle
, Houston. You are go for DOI.”

Charlie was telling us that it was showtime. Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI), would take us on an initial coasting descent to within eight miles of the lunar surface, just slightly higher than most commercial aircraft fly over Earth. The DOI burn lasted less than thirty seconds.
I looked out the triangular window closest to me and could see the surface of the moon rolling by. The craters were becoming larger and more distinct, their beige color taking on a chalky gray appearance. We continued flying above the terrain until we again heard Charlie Duke.
“Eagle
, Houston,” Charlie sounded controlled but excited. “If you read, you’re go for powered descent. Over.”

Because of the static in our headsets, Charlie’s words were garbled, but fifty miles above us, Mike Collins heard them clearly and relayed the message:
“Eagle
, this is
Columbia”
he said calmly. “They just gave you a go for powered descent.” With no video monitor onboard, Mike could not see the LM or watch the proceedings, but he could listen in on the radio communications. It was a good thing he was paying attention.

Neil nodded as we acknowledged the implications of Charlie’s message. Inside my helmet, I was grinning like we had just won the biggest race of all time. In eleven minutes we were going to set the
Eagle
down for a landing unlike any other.

N
EIL THREW THE
switch to ignite the powered descent burn. Oddly, we could barely hear it or feel any sensation when a hot orange plume poured out of the engine into the black space below us. Had we not seen the change on the instrument panel in front of us, we might not have even known that the engine had ignited and was whisking us downward. But downward we were going, and rapidly, too. Through the window on my right, I could see the moonscape seemingly rising toward us.

I turned on the 16-millimeter movie camera that was located in my window to film our descent to the lunar surface. I also switched on my microphone to voice activated mode (VOX). Neil didn’t really care whether or not we were on an open mike as we descended, but I did, so I turned the setting to VOX. There were simply too many things going on to have to worry about a “push to talk” microphone system as we came down. Looking back, I’m glad that I left the mike on. Millions of people on Earth listened in to the static-filled radio transmissions between
Mission Control in Houston and us as we descended. Some of our transmissions were barely distinguishable. That was one problem we had not anticipated in our hundreds of hours of working in the simulator back on Earth—it hadn’t really occurred to us that we wouldn’t be able to hear instructions from Mission Control, but we were catching enough to stay focused and keep going.

Five minutes into our powered descent, everything was looking good as we passed through about 35,000 feet on our altitude readout. Suddenly an alarm flashed on the screen in front of me.

Neil saw it as well. “Program alarm!” he said instantly to Houston.

Even with our transmissions traveling at the speed of light, it took one and a half seconds each way between the moon and the Earth, causing a three-second delay in all our communications. This meant that Charlie couldn’t respond immediately, so his response was based on our prior communication. Indeed, he was still quite positive.

“It’s looking good to us. Over.”

“It’s a twelve-oh-two.” Neil’s voice included a hint of urgency. “What is it?” Neil said to me. We had never seen a 1202 alarm in our simulations, and in the middle of our crucial eleven-minute landing maneuver, we weren’t about to take out the thick guidance and navigation dictionary we had brought along. Then to Houston, Neil said, “Give us a reading on the twelve-oh-two Program Alarm.”

“Twelve-oh-two,” I called out, the seriousness of the alarm evident in my voice as the data screen in front of me went blank. We were now at 33,000 feet above the moon, not a time or place to have an alarm go off, and certainly not a time to have our landing data disappear. Neil and I exchanged tense looks. Something was affecting our guidance computer and causing it to have difficulty in handling the gigantic array of information coming into it from the landing radar.

Nevertheless, we weren’t thinking about aborting; we didn’t want to get this close to landing on the moon and have to turn back; we were intent on fulfilling our mission. On the other hand, the alarm was ominous. If the 1202 alarm meant an overflow of data in the computer, we might not be able to rely on the very computer we needed to land on
the moon. Either the computer’s programs were incapable of managing all the landing data coming in to it at once, or perhaps there was a hardware problem caused by all the jostling around since wed left Earth four days ago. Maybe something inside the computer had broken, just as might happen to a home computer. In any case, we had no time to fix it. The potential for disaster was twofold: first, maybe the computer could not give us the accurate information we needed to land; or, second, if in fact we succeeded in landing, the computer’s malfunction could prevent us from blasting off the moon and making our rendezvous with Mike the next day. The demands on the computer then would be even greater.

While we grappled silently with these possibilities, we continued descending toward the moon pushing through 27,000 feet. The large red
ABORT STAGE
button on the panel loomed large in front of us. If either Neil or I hit the button, the
Eagle
would instantly blast back up toward
Columbia
, and America’s attempt to land on the moon would be dubbed a failure.

“Roger,” Charlie’s voice broke through the static into our headsets. “We’ve got you … we’re go on that alarm.” Even from 250,000 miles away, I could hear the stress in Charlie’s voice. Yet for some reason the experts at Mission Control judged the computer problem an “acceptable risk,” whatever that meant. There was no time to discuss the situation, or to remedy it; we could only trust that Mission Control had our best interests at heart and would guide us in the right decisions. Of the hundreds and hundreds of people who had helped get us here, nobody wanted to abort the mission. Yet at the same time we knew that Mission Control would not jeopardize our lives unnecessarily. Two nights before we launched, NASA’s top administrator, Tom Paine, had eaten dinner with Neil, Mike, and me in the crew quarters. “If you have to abort,” he said, “I’ll see that you fly the next moon landing flight. Just don’t get killed.”

Just as I was getting over my concern about the first alarm, another 1202 alarm appeared on the display, another computer overload problem. Nearly seven minutes in, we had descended to 20,000 feet. I felt a
shot of adrenaline surge through my system. I’d been a fighter pilot during the Korean War and had shot down two Russian-built MiGs that had been gunning for me. I knew instinctively the sense of danger a pilot experiences when he is in serious trouble and knows he needs to head back to his home base. Neil and I were in serious trouble, and we were a long, long way from home.

At Mission Control in Houston, twenty-six-year-old Steve Bales— about the average age of most of the guys in the Mission Operations Control Room—was the expert in the LM guidance systems. When the alarms started flashing in the
Eagle
, they showed up on Steve’s computer as well. He immediately realized the problem, but determined that it would not jeopardize our landing. He based his decision on the fact that the computer was receiving an overflow of radar information; it had been programmed to recognize the radar data as being of secondary importance and would ignore it while it did the more important computations necessary for landing—he hoped.

Forty years later, I can now tell you why that computer overloaded, although at the time it never occurred to us. The reason the computer could not handle the data was that Neil and I had purposely left the rendezvous radar in the on position.

At some point after the
Eagle
had separated from the
Columbia
, I should have turned off the rendezvous radar, but I’d chosen not to do so. I hadn’t wanted to eliminate an opportunity to check the rendezvous radar before we actually needed it, so I’d simply left it on. I wanted a safety precaution in case we had to make a quick ascent, hightailing it away from the moon’s surface and back into space to catch up with Mike Collins and the
Columbia
, our ride back home. As it was, we had no idea that the computers couldn’t handle information from the rendezvous radar and the landing radar at the same time, or process the data quickly enough.

About two weeks prior to our launch, the
Apollo 12
astronauts had also been training at the same time as the
Apollo 11
crew, since the missions were quite similar. They had experienced the computer alarms in simulation, so they’d aborted the mission. The simulation trainers in
Houston and Florida said, “You should not have aborted. It was not that serious.”

Flight Director Gene Kranz was irate. “Go back and study this matter,” he told the
Apollo 12
crew. “We don’t want any of these kinds of mistakes in the future.”

Unfortunately, the incident was never reported to Neil, Mike, or me. Whatever had been learned about this alarm, and whether it meant a go or no-go, never made it into our mission preparation. Being the systems guy in the LM, I was very much in the dark when this alarm came up during the tense moments of our powered descent. The lack of communication could have proved deadly.

At Mission Control, as the
Eagle
zoomed lower at a velocity of 250 feet per second, Gene Kranz called out to Steve Bales, “GUIDO?” (This was the acronym for Steve’s position as Guidance Officer.) “Are you happy?”

Steve Bales knew the computer was still overloaded, but it didn’t appear that the problem was hardware-related. Although he couldn’t be certain to what extent the software glitch might affect the computer twenty-four hours later, when it came time for us to get off the moon’s surface, he had to make a decision now: either go or no-go for landing.

With his eyes glued to his computer screen, Steve called back to Kranz, “Go!”

Charlie Duke passed the word on to us.
“Eagle
, you’re go for landing.”

We throttled down and continued our descent, closing in rapidly making adjustments to pitch over as we checked our position relative to the surface. Seven and a half minutes in, we were at 16,000 feet. Eight minutes in, 7,000 feet. Nine minutes in, 3,000 feet.

Twenty seconds later, at an altitude of only 2,000 feet, another alarm lit up on the computer display in the LM. Neil and I looked up simultaneously. “Twelve alarm,” he said to Houston. “Twelve-oh-one.”

“Roger,” Charlie acknowledged our concern. “Twelve-oh-one alarm.”

At the Mission Control consoles, the ever calm, crewcut Kranz winced. “GUIDO?”

Steve Bales had only a fraction of a second to make up his mind. “Go,” he said tersely.

“We’re go,” Charlie relayed the decision to us. “Hang tight. We’re go.”

At about 1,000 feet above the surface, Neil began a visual search, looking for a good spot to land. “That’s not a bad looking area … Okay. One thousand at thirty is good.”

Charlie Duke replied,
“Eagle
, looking great. You’re go.” He must have seen the same thing we did, another alarm, because there was a pause in Charlie’s strained voice. Then, “Roger. Twelve-oh-two. We copy it.”

While Neil was looking out the window, my gaze was glued to the instrument readings in front of me. With the dropouts in communication, and the dropouts in radar information owing to the computer glitches, it was even more vital that Neil receive accurate altimeter readings. Moreover, our fuel level was becoming a concern. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the read-outs for more than a fraction of a second.

Neil was still scanning the surface as we headed to our designated landing site, and he was not happy with what he saw.

“Seven-fifty coming down at twenty-three,” I called from where I was standing beside him, letting Neil know that we were a mere 750 feet above the surface and descending at twenty-three feet per second.

“Okay,” Neil said quietly. “Pretty rocky area …”

“Six hundred, down at nineteen.”

Neil had made up his mind. “I’m going to …” He didn’t have to finish his statement. I knew that Neil was taking over manual control of the
Eagle.
Good thing, too, since our computer was leading us into a landing field littered with large boulders surrounding a forty-foot-wide crater. Neil made a split-second decision to fly long, to go farther than we had planned to search for a safe landing area.