Montshire Minute: Apollo 11

Originally aired during the week of May 26, 2003

Monday

For a few days in July 1969, millions of Americans were following an astounding event: The New York Mets were in pennant race for the first time ever! No wait . . . there was something else going on that summer. Of course! It was the Apollo 11 moon landing! On July 20, an estimated 600 million people, one-fifth of the world's population at the time, were glued to their TVs or radios as they awaited word on the success of the first moonwalk in history. It was back in 1961 when President Kennedy made his famous speech in which he challenged the country to land an astronaut on the moon and safely return him to Earth by the end of the decade. Through a sequence of manned and unmanned space programs, including Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, the US eventually succeeded with the Apollo 11 mission.

Tuesday

Where were you on July 20, 1969? People of a certain age can remember exactly where they were on that date. That's when Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to do the moonwalk. The moon landing itself was one stage in a complex series of events beginning on July 16 when the three Apollo astronauts were launched into space by the Saturn V rocket. For liftoff, a rocket's thrust must be greater than its weight. The weight is mostly made up of fuel, so it takes a great deal of propellant to launch even a very small payload. The weight ratio of fuel to the rest of Saturn V was fifty to one! For onlookers, the lift-off was ear shattering. For the astronauts, tucked tight in the cocoon of the command module, the background noise was akin to taking off in a commercial airplane.

Wednesday

"Here I am, a white male, age thirty-eight, height 5 feet 11 inches, weight 165 pounds, salary $17,000 per annum, resident of a Texas suburb, with black spot on my roses, state of mind unsettled, about to be shot off to the Moon." Those were some of the thoughts racing through the head of Michael Collins, one of three astronauts launched into space on July 16, 1969. The Apollo 11 spacecraft consisted of the Command and Service Module "Columbia" and the Lunar Module "Eagle." While Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the Moon in Eagle, Collins had the job of flying Columbia. He orbited around the moon for 28 hours, taking photos and serving as a communication link with his two fellow astronauts. It was a lonely job. When his orbit took him on the dark side of the moon, he was temporarily out of touch with mission control in Houston.

Thursday

The Apollo 11 moon landing was not without a few anxious moments. As Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended within 6,000 feet of the moon's surface, a yellow caution light came on in the Eagle landing vehicle. It was a 1202 alert. So what the heck is a 1202 alert? An on-the-ball engineer at the mission control center in Houston knew it simply meant one of the computers on board the Eagle had been asked to do too many things at once and had to postpone some of tasks. So the mission went ahead as scheduled. But Armstrong, who was flying the Eagle, also discovered that the landing site contained a crater thirty feet deep. In the last seconds before landing, Armstrong had to manually land the Eagle some 6 kilometers from the planned landing site with only about 45 seconds of fuel to spare.

Friday

Buzz Aldrin was backing out of the small doorway in the Eagle lunar lander when he heard Neal Armstrong utter the now legendary words "That's one small step for man . . . one giant leap for mankind." In a few minutes, Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface of the moon. In perhaps the most famous tourist picture of all time, Neal Armstrong snapped a photo of Aldrin. (Since it was Armstrong who brought the camera, most of the astronaut photos from the Apollo 11 mission were of Aldrin). Aldrin jogged off to test his maneuverability. He felt as though he was moving in slow motion. He noticed that his inertia seemed much greater. Earth-bound, he could stop running in a step or two. On the moon, he needed three of four steps wind down. His earth weight, with the big backpack and heavy suit, was 360 pounds. With the weaker gravitational force, he weighed only 60 pounds on the moon.