Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight (30 page)

Russian officialdom called their monster N-1. Famed Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Korolyov, the father of the world’s first artificial satellite Sputnik, worked in secret to prepare it for its job to boost history’s first spacewalker, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, to the moon—get him there and back before the astronauts landed.

But for Russia there was a setback.

America’s Project Gemini was flying its final missions when Korolyov suddenly died in 1966. Unfortunately for the Soviets he left N-1’s development without a firm hand on the tiller. Soon Russia’s program to reach the moon was shredding itself. Without Korolyov, rockets were rushed to flight before they were ready. They exploded on the ground and in the air, and the Zond program to simply fly around the moon? It was abandoned in the wake of
Apollo 8
.

Korolev’s brilliance had caused many to predict Russia would beat America to the lunar surface. They hadn’t counted on the equal brilliance of Dr. Wernher von Braun and succeeding explorers in the White House. America’s Saturn V had sent
Apollo 8
in orbit around the moon, and now, it appeared the only chance Russia had left was a successful N-1 flight.

The Russians took their one shot. The familiar launch ritual came to life. Expected countdown delays at Baikonur came and went, and on February 21, 1969, they secretly lit the monster. Engineers, technicians, launch controllers, and cosmonaut Leonov held their collective breaths.

The thirty rocket engines clustered together for N-1’s first stage sent a river of rolling fire sweeping down the curving flame trenches, and Russia’s biggest rocket ever blasted free. It heaved itself from Earth as the select assemblage chosen to watch cheered.

Alexei Leonov gripped the railing in front of him and shouted at the top of his voice. If N-1’s launch were successful he had been selected to fly Russia’s LK one-man moon “bug” to a lunar touchdown. Alexei Leonov would be the first human to step onto a place other than Earth.

But success wasn’t to be.

What Leonov could not see was that as soon as N-1 was airborne its engines number 12 and 14 went “dark”—their fuel had been shut off by an internal computer that sensed something was wrong. Still with 28 engines running N-1 continued to accelerate, pushing its 34-story-tall structure into the area of maximum aerodynamic pressure. Right on schedule the remaining engines throttled back to reduce the shock waves of Max-Q. Then the monster was through the “shock barrier.” At 60 seconds from liftoff the engines throttled back up to full power.

They shouldn’t have. Instead of a smooth transition to its maximum energy, N-1’s cluster of 28 remaining engines kicked to full bore trying to compensate for the loss of engines 12 and 14. The result was a tremendous vibration from trying to keep each individual rocket in sync. N-1’s design was simply doomed. There was no way with 1969 computer technology to succeed in getting so many clustered rocket engines to work in sync and the effort shook N-1 violently. A liquid oxygen line came apart.

Fed by a shower of the best oxidizer known fires grew rapidly. Rockets overheated. Computers failed.

The flames spread faster and faster. Turbo-pumps tore themselves into blazing wreckage. Alexei Leonov was suddenly mute. He instantly knew he would not be going to the moon, knew he was witnessing the death knell of his country’s lunar landing program.

Helpless, Leonov could only watch as high above, the growing flames grew at explosive speed as the escape tower attached to the LK unmanned spacecraft snatched it from the devouring fireball. “At least there was one thing good in this nightmare,” Alexei quickly told himself as he witnessed a terrible conflagration of red flames replacing N-1 in the heavens, expanding instantly into a flowering rose filling the sky, burning all within its reach.

The blazing wreckage showered a waiting Earth. The white-hot debris left a footprint reaching 30 miles in all directions while in the stratosphere where N-1 had plowed into Max-Q pressures, flames billowed and grew, lofting upward in a mushroom cloud with a killer stem.

For Alexei Leonov it was obvious. It would now take a miracle for cosmonauts to reach the moon. He was overwhelmingly disappointed of course. But he was a devoted member of the family who dared to fly beyond the sky and he put his overwhelming disappointment in its appropriate box. From his heart he offered good wishes and good luck to his brother. “We ride with you, Neil Armstrong. Have a safe flight.”

And Alexei would have been pleased to know when Neil was briefed on N-1’s colossal failure, he, too, was saddened.

*   *   *

Ten days following N-1’s collapse,
Apollo 9
’s veteran astronauts Jim McDivitt and Dave Scott along with rookie Rusty Schweickart rode their Saturn V rocket into Earth orbit. They would not be going to the moon. They would only circle Earth fully checking out the only major piece of Apollo hardware not yet tested in space.

But when Jim McDivitt first saw the lunar module he was astonished. “Holy Moses, are we really going to fly that thing?” he asked, staring at the LM’s aluminum foil outer skin. “If we’re not careful, we could put a foot through it.”

Five days after entering orbit and thoroughly testing and retesting the LM’s parts and systems, McDivitt and Schweickart were feeling better about the ungainly spacecraft. The two astronauts opened hatches in the docking tunnel that linked their Apollo to the moon taxi and drifted weightlessly into the lunar module. They then sealed themselves off from Dave Scott who babysat the command ship while they orbit tested the LM’s flying abilities.

For the next six hours they lowered their orbit, changed their plane, climbed back to their original orbit, and then flew a smooth return and docked with their Apollo command ship. There hadn’t been the first hint of a showstopper.

The astronauts of
Apollo 9
fell madly in love with the ungainly flying machine that had been so carefully built for them by the Grumman team. It obviously had been put together with care and
Apollo 9
’s crew was happy to announce another mile marker to the moon had been crossed.

For the crew of
Apollo 11
, the training continued.

Neil stood clad in his bulky white spacesuit equipped with its backpack. Before him was a lunar module mockup and he was most pleased with
Apollo 9
’s success. That left only
Apollo 10
and Neil was acutely aware an accident like N-1’s could still ground America if
Apollo 10
’s mission failed.

But he smiled. It was hidden within his helmet. He had aces going for his crew. If anyone could knock down that last remaining wall so he and Mike and Buzz could attempt a landing on the moon it was the
Apollo 10
crew.

Tom Stafford was simply the best. It was rumored he’d flown a cardboard box without wings. He had taught pilots to be test pilots and secretly had test-flown two versions of Russia’s MIG fighters at the Air Force’s secret base in Nevada known as Area 51. The U.S. had gotten the MIGs from Israel, and Neil wasn’t about to forget that even though Stafford was destined to be a three-star Air Force general, he was a graduate with honors from the Naval Academy; and Cernan? What the hell! Gene was not only Navy and a graduate of Purdue, he’d been right there with him flying those demanding LLTVs. And John Young? Forget about it! He was the first of the Gemini Nine group to fly and John, too, was Navy. So what was left to be said?

Neil shook his arms and torso to better fit his suit and gear around his body as technicians made final adjustments to his 200 pounds of gear. He then walked stiffly and with effort across the space vehicle mockup facility to the lunar module trainer. There he stopped and caught his breath at one of the lander’s bowl-shaped footpads. He then placed a gloved hand on the ladder leading up to the LM’s crew cabin.

Every day
Apollo 11
’s astronauts were training to reach the moon, and this day he and Buzz Aldrin were training to leave the LM for their walks on the lunar landscape.

“Okay, you read me?” he asked.

“Read you five-square, Neil,” answered the technician playing CapCom.

Neil then began moving through the EVA rehearsal with the technicians and training specialists while an already-suited Buzz waited to join him at the appointed time.

Neil struggled not only against the weight of his gear (it would weigh only one-sixth of Earth weight on the moon), but also against his suit’s stiffness. Pressurized, he was working in a rigid exoskeleton making movement an effort. His gloves? Hell, they were like wearing pressurized baseball mitts. When it came to the camera it was almost impossible to keep it in his hands. That’s why attaching it as part of his gear was a good move. He reached into a pocket on his suit’s thigh and pulled out a collapsible long-handled scoop.

“Beginning the contingency sample,” Neil said as Buzz waited and watched. The contingency sample would be his first duty during the EVA. He was to scoop up a sample of the moon right away so if he had to return quickly to the LM they’d at least have some lunar soil.

But the contingency sample was just in case. The plan was for him and Buzz to collect pounds of rocks and moon dust and set up experiments. All of it had to be rehearsed until their EVA duties were second nature. Now, following months of studies and restudies, planners had decided their outside activities would last about 2 hours and 40 minutes.

However long, it would be the highlight of their eight-day mission.

*   *   *

Two months later, following a successful launch and outbound flight,
Apollo 10
astronauts Tom Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan had their two ships—command module Charlie Brown and their lunar module Snoopy—docked and linked together approaching lunar orbit.

They were flying in the shadow of the moon—upside down in total darkness knowing they were curving around the lunar surface. They felt the moon but couldn’t see it. In fact they hadn’t been able to see it all the way out, and then, finally, Gene Cernan caught a glimpse of the moon out his window. He watched as light bathed the lunar landscape and he called, “There it is! There it is!” and they were all suddenly startled.

Buzz Aldrin joins Neil to practice their assignments on the moon. (NASA)

They were finally seeing the moon they’d spent nearly three days climbing uphill from Earth to see—the moon John Young got into an argument with Mission Control about when he yelled, “We’re not on the right damn course. There ain’t no moon.”

“Oh, you’ll see it, John, just wait,” CapCom assured him. They had all been feeling it, and hoping they wouldn’t run into it, but just couldn’t see it. Now there it was and they had their faces plastered to Charlie Brown’s windows—gawking, in awe. Before them were the lifeless jagged mountains, the wide deep craters, the smooth plains showered with boulders—cliffs soaring so tall and so close it appeared they could reach down and touch them. And in their awe they recognized they were seeing a world without life, a desolate dead place they had all been so eager to see. They feasted on this ghost world until suddenly Commander Tom Stafford reminded his crew it was time to fire Charlie Brown’s big SPS rocket and enter lunar orbit.

Apollo 10
’s crew flies out of the darkness for its first look at the moon. (NASA)

Each returned to his station, and their linked spaceships eased into orbit around the moon’s surface not only to further test the lunar module, but also to perfect navigating around the moon and to confirm a future landing site. The Sea of Tranquility, so named by ancient astronomers who thought it was a smooth sea of water, was
Apollo 10
’s main target. If one particularly level plain on that sea proved acceptable, then
Apollo 11
would be aiming for it. But for now it was up to Charlie Brown and Snoopy’s astronauts to test-fly and scout.

*   *   *

When all was set Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan floated through the docking tunnel to enter and fire up Snoopy, while John Young stayed at his post as pilot of Charlie Brown.