Apollo 11 Moon Landing. Two potential disasters that could have changed history.
If you were around in 1959, and told your friends that 10 years from now, we will be sending men to the moon, and bringing them back safely to earth, you would have been laughed at, ridiculed, and probably told to see a psychiatrist. This was considered a fantasy at that time – not too different than saying in 2019 we will visit proxima centauri in 10 years – the nearest star to the sun.
Yet, on July 20, 1969 – that’s what happened. Neil Armstrong took man’s first step on the moon on that date.
A thousand years from now, when historians look back on the history of mankind, Neil Armstrong’s name will likely still be remembered. The moon landing is perhaps man’s greatest technological accomplishment ever in the history of human civilization.
The 50 year anniversary of this momentous event is in 2019. And we should celebrate. This is not just a celebration for the United States, the flag of which the three astronauts represented, but the entire world, because that landing represents the zenith of human technology and ingenuity.
Yet, this event should never have occurred. The odds for success were very low. Computer technology was measured in Kilobytes and kilohertz at the time, not gigabytes and gigahertz of today – a million times less powerful.
The astronauts had to be shielded from deadly cosmic rays. The number of stages involved in rocket launch to earth orbit, to lunar orbit, to descent on the moon, to ascent, to landing back on earth all had to be choreographed and practiced to perfection with little to no room for error. Safety margins were razor thin. The smallest anomaly could cause disaster.
Everything had to work flawlessly. Is it any wonder that millions of people believe that we never landed there? Yet, it happened – not just once, but six times over 3 and ½ years between 1969 and 1972.
The very first mission had two life threatening events that could have easily ended in disaster. These potential disasters are now mostly forgotten, but it’s time to remember them on this anniversary. They remind us how individual creativity and determination can avert disaster.
The remarkable moon landing and take-off disasters averted by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong …is coming up right now.
4 minutes into the lunar landing mission, their computer was showing a 1202 alarm. An error code. Houston engineers couldn’t immediately figure out what it was. So here was a small, fragile machine, showing an error code that had never shown up on numerous simulations. The computer was overloaded with too many tasks. That computer was programmed to stop and reload when this happens. Houston couldn’t immediately figure it out either. Neil Armstrong took manual control of the spacecraft.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were in the Eagle lunar module on their final descent. They were falling rapidly towards the surface of the moon at 20 feet per second. But when they looked out the window, they did not recognize anything they saw.
They had not seen this terrain in any of their numerous simulations, nor seen it in dozens of photographs they had studied from the previous Apollo missions. It turns out that a navigational error and faster than anticipated speed caused them to overshoot the planned landing zone by four miles.
So now the terrain was not smooth, as it would have been had they landed at their designated landing site. Instead, there was a huge crater field, and car sized boulders – dangerous areas to land.
But they had to land, and land soon, because they were running low on fuel. 400 feet or 122 meters before they hit the surface, Armstrong decided to level the craft and cruise horizontally until he could find a smoother surface to land on. This, of course, would use up more fuel.
If they did not land before running out of fuel, they would drop to the ground like a rock, at best they would almost certainly damage the craft beyond repair, or they would have to abort the mission, which was equally risky because it was not known whether there was enough time to ignite the ascent engine before it hit the ground.
And there was not going to be a rescue mission. They were flying to save their lives. There was 60 seconds of fuel left. They had not found a suitable landing spot, and they were 400 feet or the height of a 40 story building off the ground.
In Houston – they heard the 60 second low fuel alarm warning. In normal simulations, the craft was expected to land with 2 minutes of fuel left. But at the 60 second mark they were still 100 feet or 10 stories above the moon’s surface. Armstrong began to descend further. 30 seconds left, they they were still 10 feet or 3 meters off the ground.
At this point the thrust from the engine was kicking up so much moon dust that they could not tell exactly how far off the surface they were. All they could see were a haze of powder, and a few boulders.
The CONTACT light finally came on, and they were on the surface. Only about 20 seconds of fuel was left. They shut off the engine. Armstrong radioed: “Houston, Tranquilly Base here…the Eagle has landed.” And disaster had been averted. Houston controllers breathed a sigh of relief, and celebrated mildly knowing that the mission was long from over.
There was supposed to be a 4 hour period of rest before Armstrong and Aldrin were to explore the surface of the moon. But within 3 hours they were eager and ready to go. After exploring the surface of the moon for about 2 and ½ hours, when they came back into the module, as they took their backpacks off, unbeknownst to them at the time, one of the backpacks had snapped off something on the control panel.
As the Astronauts were getting ready for some long overdue sleep, Aldrin noticed a small black object lying on the floor, and realized it was a circuit breaker switch. Scanning the control panel, he noticed that the switch was missing from a one that was labelled “Engine arm”. This circuit breaker switch happens to be required in order to ignite the engine.
If the engine did not ignite, they could not return home. And there would be no rescue mission.
So this tiny black switch could potentially determine whether they lived or died. He told Houston, and they didn’t immediately know what to do. They said, “we’ll work this out down here, so you guys go ahead and go to sleep.” – Of course these guys could not sleep with this looming catastrophe hanging over their heads.
Contrary to the popular narrative, it was not a metal ball point space pen that Aldrin inserted into the circuit, but a spare felt tip pen that he had brought with him that saved the day.
The Apollo 11 mission ended with a splash down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24 near Wake Island. As Gene Kranz, flight director for Apollo 11 put it, “What America will dare, America will do” – we should modify that to say, “What humans can dream, humans can do!”
Potential additions:
Now I want to add a couple of thoughts about the fact that there are millions of people in the world who don’t believe that man has ever walked on the moon.
Some stats are pretty surprising. In 1969, less than 5% of people doubted the authenticity of the video images they were seeing on their TV screens. But today a full 6% of Americans doubt the moon landing.
And over 50% of Russians refuse to believe that Americans set foot there. This may not be all that surprising given widespread government control of media, and propaganda dissemination by the Russian regime.
But the most surprising stat is that 25% of British people and 9% of French, our allies, do not believe we landed on the moon.
What would be the irrefutable proof that could convince people that we did land there? How about photos of the surface of the moon that shows the moon rover tracks, or foot prints, or photos of the abandoned lunar modules from the Apollo missions on the surface of the moon.
In 2009 we sent the lunar reconnaissance orbiter partly for this purpose, and those photos are what you are seeing here.
