The Eagle Has Landed: The Story of Apollo 11 (9 page)

Before the first
Gemini
launch, the Soviet Union’s space program continued to make headlines, which caused many Americans to mistakenly believe their country was falling further behind in the Space Race. On June 16, 1963, Cosmonaut, Valentina V. Tereshkova, became the first female to fly in space. Two days earlier, another cosmonaut, Valeri Bykovsky, had been launched into space, awaiting Tereshkova’s flight. Once both Soviet spacecraft were in orbit together, the cosmonauts maneuvered to within 11 miles of one another—an important step toward the ultimate goal of rendezvous and docking.

In October of 1964, three Soviet cosmonauts were launched in orbit aboard a
Voskhad 1
spacecraft. To accommodate the first three-man space crew, the Soviets were forced to strip out all but the essential electrical equipment inside a
Vostok
capsule. Even then, inside the confined quarters of the spacecraft, the cosmonauts could not wear their bulky pressurized space suits, and remained in orbit for only 24 hours.

While brief and make-shift, the three-man Soviet mission marked another first in space flight. Even with
Gemini
on the immediate horizon, the United States still appeared to be playing catch-up with the Soviet Union.

The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 left NASA officials in a state of mourning; the man who dreamed of landing on the Moon had been suddenly and violently taken away. Wernher von Braun’s secretary remembered JFK’s assassination as the only time she ever saw her boss shed tears.

Mobilizing its grief, NASA redoubled its efforts to achieve a lunar landing before the end of the decade—a living memorial to the martyred President. On Thanksgiving Day, just six days after as his predecessor’s death, Lyndon Johnson announced that the Defense Department’s Atlantic Missile Range and NASA’s Florida Launch Operations Center would be renamed the
John F. Kennedy Space Center.

Twenty-two months elapsed between the last
Mercury
flight and the first
Gemini
mission. After two successful unmanned flights,
Gemini II,
christened
Molly Brown,
manned by astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young, was launched on March 23, 1965. Grissom jokingly proposed naming the spacecraft
Titanic,
but NASA officials squelched this idea—the sinking of
Liberty Bell 7
during
Project Mercury
remained too embarrassing of a memory.

The
Gemini
spacecraft performed well, and the astronauts orbited the Earth 3 times, spending 4 hours and 53 minutes in space. While circling Earth, the crew of
Gemini II
chartered new waters, and also managed to court controversy. Utilizing the manual navigation system, they were able to maneuver the spacecraft into higher and lower orbits—a critical requirement for rendezvous and docking with another spacecraft. NASA engineers and flight technicians, however, found it less than amusing when they learned Young had smuggled a corn beef sandwich into the capsule. When Young offered the sandwich to Grissom while in orbit, pieces of meat floated about the cabin and stuck to various instruments, which earned the pair sharp reprimands from NASA leadership.

Just five days before the inaugural
Gemini
mission, the Soviet Union achieved another space exploration milestone, when Alexi Leonov became the first man to walk in space. Tragedy was narrowly averted when Leonov experienced difficulty re-entering the
Voskad 2
spacecraft due to the pressure differential between space and the capsule hatch’s air lock mechanism, causing his space suit to inflate (akin to the
Michelin Man).
In a risky move, Leonov released pressure from his suit, and then barely managed to crawl back in the spacecraft, before he was overcome by exhaustion.

Further trouble plagued the Soviet crew, when the spacecraft’s automatic guidance system failed during re-entry, causing the capsule to land 2,000 miles beyond the recovery area. While parachute-landing in a snow-covered forest, the spacecraft’s radio antenna and beacon were sheared off by tree limbs, making it all the more difficult for rescuers to locate the cosmonauts. Leonov and his crewmate were forced to spend the night inside the frigid capsule, surrounded by hungry timber wolves, until they were rescued the next day.

In early June of 1965, during his
Gemini IV
space flight, Edward H. White became the first American to walk in space. Tethered to the space capsule by life support umbilical lines, White used a nitrogen-powered
zip gun
to move about in zero gravity, while orbiting the Earth at 18,000 miles per hour. When it came time to end the space walk and re-enter the capsule, White expressed disappointment: “It was the saddest day of my life.” White and his crewmate, James McDivitt, attempted to rendezvous with a
Titan
second-stage rocket, but were unable to dock with their tumbling orbital companion.

Aboard
Gemini V,
in August of 1965, Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad spent nearly 8 days in space, orbiting Earth 120 times, setting a new record for the world’s longest continuous space flight. While the astronauts conducted further testing of the spacecraft’s guidance and navigation system, they were forced to contend with a malfunction of the fuel cells, which had replaced batteries as the capsule’s electrical power source.

In December of 1965,
Gemini VI,
with crewmembers Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford, and
Gemini VII,
manned by Frank Borman and James Lovell, orbited Earth at the same time (another first) and maneuvered within a few feet of one another. The two crews were close enough to see each other through their cockpit windows, proving that spacecraft could be properly aligned for docking. The
Gemini VII
crew orbited the Earth 206 times and spent an unprecedented 13 days in space.

In March of 1966, aboard
Gemini VIII,
Neil Armstrong and David Scott completed the first successful orbital docking with another spacecraft; an unmanned Air Force
Agena
upper stage rocket, 180 miles above the Earth’s surface. The actual docking procedure went smoothly until the combined spacecraft began to uncontrollably spin and roll. Armstrong alertly jettisoned the
Agena
rocket, but the
Gemini
capsule continued to gyrate, escalating to a rate of one revolution per second.

“We have a serious problem here,” Armstrong radioed Mission Control.

Dizzy and disoriented by the spinning spacecraft, the astronauts were on the verge of losing consciousness, when Armstrong elected to fire the re-entry engine system.

“We both knew that if this didn’t work, we were dead,” Scott recalled.

The last second maneuver worked, and the spacecraft recovered from its death spiral. It was later determined that the neartragedy was caused by one of the spacecraft’s thrusters that was stuck in the
on
position.

Gemini IX
was supposed to have been flown by Elliot See and Charles Bassett, but both men were killed in a plane crash en route to the
McDonnell Aircraft
plant in St. Louis on February 28, 1966— the first astronauts to die in the line of duty. Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford ultimately piloted the mission, which launched on June 23
^rd
of that same year. The spacecraft was unable to rendezvous with an
Agena
rocket, after its docking mechanism failed to fully deploy. The space flight was partially salvaged, when Cernan took a lengthy spacewalk.

Michael Collins became the first astronaut to execute a successful docking maneuver with an
Agena
rocket during the
Gemini X
mission. The rendezvous and docking procedures were replicated during the
Gemini XI and XII
flights.

While overshadowed by its
Mercury
predecessors and
Apollo
successors, the 10 manned
Gemini
flights, conducted over a 20-month period, were an essential bridge in American space exploration. Mission Control Flight Director Gene Kranz summed up the legacy of the intermediate program: “
Gemini
developed the tools and technologies we needed to go to the Moon, but even more,
Gemini
was an essential step for the crews and (flight) controllers.” Neil Armstrong, who piloted
Gemini VIII,
echoed Kranz’s observations: “I believe that
Gemini was
timely and synergistic. It provided millions of hours of real experience in the preparation of space vehicles.”

When
Project Gemini
concluded, there were only four full years remaining in the decade. If the United States planned to reach the Moon before 1970, it was sink or swim time for
Project Apollo.

.

CHAPTER 5

Luck has no business in space flight

D
uring the
Mercury
and
Gemini
years, the United States and the Soviet Union launched unmanned lunar probes to learn more about the Moon’s orbit and topography. Between 1961 and 1965, NASA’s
Project Ranger
launched nine such probes—after a series of malfunctions, the final three made it to the Moon, and ultimately transmitted an estimated 17,000 detailed photographs of the lunar surface back to Earth. Utilizing these images, NASA was able to identify prospective manned lunar landing sites.

Project Surveyor
followed
Ranger,
with five of its seven probes reaching the Moon, between May of 1966 and July of 1968. On June 2, 1966, the three-legged
Surveyor 1
spacecraft landed on the Moon, transmitting 80,000 photographs, which provided NASA scientists and engineers with crucial data concerning the process of lunar descent. After
Surveyor 2
unexpectedly crashed on the Moon,
Surveyor 3
successfully landed on April 19, 1967, and successfully transmitted 6,300 photographs, as well as temperature and seismological data, back to Earth. The probe’s robotic arm also trenched the lunar surface to gauge the composition of the soil.

In 1966, the Soviet Union launched two unmanned probes
(Luna 9
and
Luna 10). Luna 9
was the first spacecraft to execute a “soft landing” on the lunar surface, while
Luna 10
became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon.

Throughout the 1960s, the Cold War remained a virtual stalemate. The threat of mutual nuclear annihilation restricted the United States and Soviet Union to aggressive posturing, while preventing eruption of World War III.

At the height of the Space Race, the two super powers managed to achieve a measure of détente. The 1967
Treaty on Exploration and Use of Outer Space
waived any country’s claim to the Moon, which would be treated like international waters, as the “property of all humankind.”

Heading into
Project Apollo,
the Soviet Union was already on the verge of losing the Space Race, a fact largely unbeknownst to the American public. When Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev was deposed in 1965, his successors did not share the space exploration fervor of the
Sputnik
years. In 1966, the sudden death of Sergei Korolev, the Soviet Union’s lead rocket engineer and spacecraft designer, during a routine but botched surgical procedure, was a major blow to the country’s lunar exploration program.

The
N-1
rocket, the Soviets’ designated lunar launch vehicle, proved temperamental. Requiring a volatile mixture of liquid oxygen and kerosene to fuel each stage, the
N-1
was subject to over-heating. On four separate occasions,
N-1
test rockets exploded either on the launch pad or shortly after lift-off. In contrast, the American
Apollo Saturn V
performed flawlessly.

Bureaucratic infighting between Soviet scientists and their military supervisors led to frequent project delays. The political philosophy of Communism demanded conformity and did not adequately reward innovation. Failure was often followed by punishment, including imprisonment, physical abuse, and/or execution, while accomplishments were rewarded with propaganda-laden commendations or token medals. In such a dysfunctional system, paranoia was epidemic and corruption was rampant, while the temptation to undermine colleagues to save face (and perhaps one’s own life), further undermined progress.

Unlike NASA, which was a non-military agency, the Soviets placed civilian scientists and engineers under military supervision. Many Russian military leaders were far more interested in weaponry than space exploration, and viewed the prospect of a lunar landing as a waste of time and money.

America’s manned lunar landing program was named by NASA engineer and project manager, Abe Silverstein: “I thought the image of the god
Apollo
riding his chariot across the Sun gave the best representation of the grand scale of the proposed program.” NASA Director James Webb articulated the far-reaching goals of the project: “The
Apollo
requirement was to take off from a point on the surface of the Earth that was traveling at 1,000 miles per hour as the Earth rotated, to go into orbit at 18,000 miles per hour, to travel to a body in space some 240,000 miles distant, which itself traveling 2,000 miles per hour relative to Earth, to go into orbit around the body, and to drop a specialized landing vehicle to its surface. The men were to make observations and measurements, collect specimens…and then repeat much of the outward-bound process to get back home…One such expedition would not do the job. NASA had to develop a reliable system capable of doing this time after time.” As straightforward as the objective appeared, the planning and execution of a lunar mission was painstaking and exact, with little margin for error.

The
Apollo
mission to the Moon involved sequential steps— launch, orbiting Earth, docking the space capsule with the lunar exploration vehicle,
trans-lunar injection
(escaping Earth’s orbit and traveling to the Moon), lunar orbit, lunar descent, Moon walk, lunar ascent, another docking of the lunar module and space capsule,
trans-Earth injection
(escaping the Moon’s orbit and returning to Earth), re-entry in Earth’s atmosphere, and splashdown/recovery in the Pacific Ocean. Mechanical failure or pilot error in any of these critical phases could easily result in the death of all three astronauts.