Mission Operation Control Room 2 (MOCR2) consists of a stuffy auditorium filled with rows of black and white monitoring screens for flight controllers. In front, the amphi-theatre is dominated by large, overhanging mission map-screens. Facing them are four narrowly spaced rows of seats in front of grey panels housing the controllers’ computer consoles. The computers will track everything on the mission from the flight path and the cabin conditions to the crew’s heart rates. In the back row, sits the Director of Flight Operations, forty-five year-old aeronautical engineer Chris Kraft, nicknamed “Flight”.
It was Kraft who’d helped to oversee the setting up of a worldwide network of radar-based tracking stations as part of his concept of Mission Control. They can receive and transmit signals and data from orbiting space vehicles, enabling continuous comms. It’s called the Manned Space Flight Network.
Furthermore, these tracking stations and antennas are plugged into the NASA Communications Network. This is a two-million mile interlinked system of landlines, undersea cables, radio circuits and communication satellites. They all lead to the computers, consoles and mission maps of Mission Control.
The Manned Space Flight Network is supported by four Apollo ships and eight Apollo Range Instrumentation aircraft.
Near Kraft in the fourth row is the Chief Astronaut, Deke Slayton. He’s one of the original Mercury seven astronauts, a gruff, rugged and genuine-hearted former test pilot with charm and wit hidden under his outer layer of reserve.
Next to the Mission Control auditorium is a glass-walled viewing room.
Failure is not an option for NASA, but success for Apollo 11 can only come about through a total systems approach, each system working in perfect synch.
Kraft has put four flight control teams in charge of the mission. They’ll be run by Flight Controllers, Cliff Charlesworth, Glynn Lunney, Gene Kranz, sporting his customary crew cut and one of his iconic homemade waistcoats, and Gerry Griffin, a specialist in guidance and navigation systems.
But it isn’t the flight controllers, NASA directors, engineers or scientists who are boarding the Apollo Command Module embedded high on top of Saturn 5.
It’s Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins.
With its large, specially insulated tanks filled with millions of liters of refined liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen and kerosene, it’s like three midgets sitting on top of an atom bomb.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IT DOESN’T BEAR THINKING about what might happen in the next few minutes. No wonder there’s no astronaut’s insurance in the open market… The Apollo 11 mission is going to be one uninsurable, gut-wrenching, roller-coaster space adventure.
“T minus 45 minutes, 52 seconds and counting,” Jack King proclaims from Apollo Saturn Launch Control. “All elements still Go in the countdown at this time. Just at lift-off, we will have a vehicle weighing close to six and a half million pounds on the launch pad. There’s more than a million gallons of propellants aboard the three stages of the Saturn V.”
The pulses of the astronauts are pumping with adrenalin.
Life has prepared each of them well for such a momentous time. They’ve evolved into ultra-skilled space pilots. Their training has been rigorous, involving hundreds of hours of simulation practice employing computer graphics to create realistic scenarios for each stage of their coming expedition.
The Apollo Commander is a seasoned pilot who was born to fly, receiving his student pilot’s license when he was only sixteen. The young pilot gradually grew used to danger, eventually flying no fewer than 78 combat missions in his early twenties during the Korean War between 1950 and 1952. After the war, as an X-15 test-pilot at the Edwards Air Force Base, he’d flown aircraft to over 200,000 feet travelling at around 4,000 miles per hour.
Armstrong is a smart, serious, proud man from a humble, God-fearing family in a small farming town on the Ohio prairies. He’s an aviator of almost monastic calmness, with a strong sense of honor.
His fellow lunar pilot, Buzz Aldrin, is an action-orientated Air Force lieutenant-colonel recruited from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after completing a doctoral thesis on space rendezvous. A war veteran, too, Buzz served as a fighter pilot in Germany, flying F-100s. During the Korean War, he was a jet fighter pilot flying 66 combat missions in F-86 Sabres. In 1966, he established a new record for extravehicular activity (EVA) with just over five-and-a-half hours outside in space.
While a man of action and adventure, Aldrin is also a thoughtful and spiritual person, an elder in the church. In all respects, he’s ready for what lies ahead.
To his right, Air Force lieutenant-colonel Mike Collins is softly humming a tune inside his bubble helmet. A warm-hearted, insightful and spontaneous man, he’s been an outstanding test pilot at Edwards Air Force Flight Center. When NASA unveiled its Mercury 7 astronauts, space flight had seemed to him to be the next wave of the future. And he’d been thrilled by the Mercury Atlas 6 flight of John Glenn. Collins joined the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston in 1964 as part of its third batch of astronauts. He knew immediately that he was in the right place at the right time. As a co-pilot on the 3-day Gemini 10 space mission in 1966, Collins had completed successful rendezvous and docking exercises as well as two periods of extravehicular activity.
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins have been fashioned into a team of formidable space explorers.
Beyond the Launch Pad, far from the tensions of Mission Control and the space capsule, a million-strong throng of spectators has gathered. Their attention is riveted to the tall lonely rocket in the distance, still strapped to the launch tower. Sunglasses shield their eyes from the now blinding Florida sunshine falling over the scrubland, sands, shoreline, roads and causeways of the peninsula. And the astronauts’ wives and children are caught up in the nation’s nervous excitement as countdown approaches its climax.
The launch of Apollo 11 was always going to be a major broadcasting event, beaming out to over twenty-five million Americans as well as to thirty-three other countries. The global audience will be about a billion.
Suddenly, the flat, sandy shoreline of Cape Kennedy has become a gateway to the future of humanity.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“TWO MINUTES, 10 SECONDS AND COUNTING,” King announces. “The target for the Apollo 11 astronauts, the Moon, at lift-off, will be at a distance of 218,096 miles away.”
The astronauts are listening to the countdown in their headsets. On the instrument panels in front of them, an array of lights flash continuously.
Seconds tick by on the clock of history.
Five seconds before lift-off, the giant Saturn 5 rocket begins to think for itself as its Instrument Unit, or computer brain, activates.
“…5, 4… 3…”
Gantry hatches of the launch tower snap back, the rocket now ready to fly.
A massive acceleration of engine-thrust kicks in from five F-1 rocket engines. Gases burst out of their enormous nozzles as the combined rocket thrust shoots up to seven and a half million pounds.
“…2, 1, zero, all engines running, LIFT-OFF! We have a lift-off, 32 minutes past the hour. Lift-off on Apollo 11!”
On the east coast of America, the nation’s greatest adventure is underway.
The ground shakes and a deep rumbling thunders around the astronauts as the space rocket roars in its incandescent thrust. Flames explode as it begins its ascent. Saturn 5 is hoisted heavenwards in a lift-off fire-blast lasting two-and-a-half minutes, burning up 203 000 gallons of high-energy kerosene-type fuel as well as 331 000 gallons of liquid oxygen.