Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight (42 page)

While Neil took the pictures, Buzz set up
Apollo 11
’s experiments. (NASA)

A baby crater, Neil thought, “Muffie’s Crater.” He smiled, quietly remembering his and Janet’s two-year-old who they’d lost to a brain tumor, and he permitted himself a moment. He stood there, remembering how Muffie would have loved sliding down into the pit. He had an overwhelming urge to do it for her. He’d love to have a sample of lunar bedrock anyway for the geologists. But then better judgment grabbed him. What if he couldn’t get back up without the help of Buzz?

He settled for taking pictures and describing what he saw before heading back where Mission Control had put Buzz to work hammering a metal core tube sample into the hard subsurface. They then told Neil to gather rocks that would best represent their location—the Sea of Tranquility.

Once done, Buzz was pleased. He was leaving a scientific station on the moon. (NASA)

Muffie’s Crater. (NASA)

With time running out they moved back to Eagle’s ladder and Buzz was told to head back in. But before he did he took the camera from Neil and photographed the
Apollo 11
commander loading lunar material boxes on Eagle.

After completing all his duties Neil handed Buzz the camera. He had only a couple of minutes but he managed this one photograph of Neil busy loading moon rocks to bring back to Earth. (NASA)

Buzz handed the camera back to Neil and said, “Okay, adios, amigo.”

Neil waved and watched him go up the ladder.

The two had packed their precious booty in sealed containers, and would now use their conveyor line to haul the boxes up to the ascent stage. Working with untried equipment in a vacuum, they struggled to get the samples aboard Eagle.

After a few starts and stops they managed to get it all on board and went through their long checklist, and then it was time to shut down history’s first moonwalk on a place where a day lasts a month and time seems to crawl.

Neil sensed that if he came back to this same location on the moon a hundred, a thousand, a million years from now he would find the scene as he had left it. In his visit, he had little time to get to know this small corner of the solar system. Yet the knowledge and the samples from the moon he and Buzz were bringing back were priceless.

He joined his moonwalking partner inside Eagle to welcome the loud noise of oxygen filling their lander’s cabin—the livable atmosphere they would need to take their helmets off. When they did they were met with a pungent odor—wet ashes and gunpowder. They were bringing the smell of the moon with them.

Overhead, Mike Collins and Columbia were streaking by and CapCom told him “The crew of Tranquility Base is back inside Eagle, repressurized. Everything went beautifully, over.”

“Hallelujah,” Mike yelled, and Mission Control reminded Neil and Buzz they needed to sleep for five hours before starting their countdown to rejoin Mike in lunar orbit.

The sleeping business was easier said than done. They were cold in Eagle. Whatever had been set up to keep them warm on this airless world wasn’t doing the job, not forgetting they were wound up tighter than an alarm clock with accomplishment and excitement.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had landed on the moon Sunday, July 20, 1969, at 4:17:42
P.M.
EDT.

Six hours and thirty-eight-minutes later Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface at 10:56
P.M.
EDT. Aldrin followed him 18 minutes later to become the second. Apollo’s lunar landings would end after 12 Americans walked and rode in lunar cars across the moon’s landscape. The last Apollo returned from the lunar surface December 17, 1972.

No human has visited the moon since.

Buzz says farewell to the moon and flag. (NASA)

TWENTY-ONE

THE RETURN

He was absolutely still, his weight next to nothing—almost floating, and he resisted awakening from such comfort, but he was cold—too cold to sleep. He thought about it—resting there in that wonderful consciousness of half-sleep and half-awake. He refused to open his eyes. He would just shiver and listen to the sounds that were trickling, whispering, humming along soft but persistent—an endless mechanical and electronic brook.

But ignoring it did not answer the question. Where in the hell was he?

Neil slowly opened his eyes and could gradually see his surroundings. He focused on the sounds of the bubbling brook—glowing circles, numbers, letters, buttons—and he saw Buzz standing at his window looking out at … at what?

The moon
, Armstrong scolded himself.
You’re on the moon. You were walking on it just hours ago and
 …

“How was it sleeping on the moon, Neil?” Mission Control interrupted his waking thoughts.

“Cold.” He spoke quietly, nodding for Buzz to answer for them.

“Cold,” Buzz told CapCom.

They had not anticipated when they put the window shades in place and turned many of Eagle’s systems off to sleep that they were turning off their source of heat. But despite the shivering, Neil had managed a couple of hours. Buzz told Mission Control, “Neil rigged himself a really good hammock with a waste tether and made him a bed on the ascent engine cover. He’s just waking up.”

“Great,” Mission Control responded. “Tell ’im to grab a little breakfast, he has some flying to do,” quickly adding, “We’re pleased he got some sleep.”

“Roger that,” Neil heard Buzz answer as he stood up and stretched lightly in the low gravity.

The farm boy smiled—time to milk the cows, he told himself, coming fully awake. Until now they had been focused on reaching the moon, landing, taking a walk on its surface, setting up experiments, exploring, and gathering evidence. Now that they had done that and their “lunar booty” was on board, job one was to fly back to Earth and land near the aircraft carrier
Hornet
in the Pacific. Then, they’d meet the president.

But first they had to launch from this dead world and rejoin Columbia in lunar orbit. Mission Control had it all running smoothly with one exception. When climbing back into Eagle one of their backpacks brushed against the LM’s ascent stage’s arming switch and broke it. Buzz told Mission Control and the ground came up with a solution.

Neil and Buzz had dispensed with practically all tools in the interest of less weight, ensuring they’d have enough boost to reach Columbia. But they still had their space pens. They were told to retract the point of one of them and use the hollow end to flick the switch. It worked, and preparations were back under way.

*   *   *

In the command ship Mike had sweated every detail, every procedure in Eagle’s prelaunch countdown. He recognized he was by being in lunar orbit in a safer place; not perched on another world depending on a single rocket to start him homeward. But the truth was he would have traded places with Neil or Buzz any time.

Columbia waits for Eagle to launch from the moon and join it again in lunar orbit. (NASA)

Now Eagle’s ascent engine had to work. It had to burn long enough to reach some lunar orbit of meaningful height. If his crewmates could make it up to say 50,000 feet he could drop Columbia down and get them, but not much lower. There were mountains on the moon rising to 30,000 feet, and he didn’t want to think about that knowing he would, if he had too, split a mountain to pick up his crewmates.

Mike did not know the thought of them being stranded on the moon forever had really never been considered by Neil. He knew if there was a problem they had been trained and retrained in several redundant ways to fire their ascent engine, and Neil believed the likelihood of that was zilch. Everything had been put in place to ensure their survival, but Neil’s biggest concern was still the unexpected—had they failed to anticipate a showstopper?

*   *   *

One by one they moved through the countdown and when they had only ten minutes to go, Neil and Buzz stood side by side before Eagle’s controls. They were set for the first launch from another place in the solar system.

Mike called from Columbia, “Neil, I’m reading you on VHF. You sound good.”