Even after the years of training, I never expected the moon to look this eerie and dramatic. After days of falling through empty space, I was vividly aware of how close we were to this immense landscape. It felt scary to be grazing over mountains and valleys which now filled our windows with an ever-changing drama. I’d never understood the word “unearthly” before, until I was somewhere that was literally not this Earth. This place was different.
We rounded the far side in 34 minutes and reestablished contact with Earth. We’d reacquire and lose them every time we circled the moon. “Hello, Houston, the Endeavour’s on station with cargo, and what a fantastic sight,” Dave reported. “Oh, this is really profound, I’ll tell you—fantastic!” Dave’s fascination with geology was kicking in, and he was overwhelmed by the vistas below us.
The moon looked ancient, battered, pockmarked—and dead. I didn’t feel a sense of foreboding, but of lifelessness. Compared to our beautiful Earth, I didn’t feel there was anything here that would support humankind.
Our Saturn V third stage had trailed us all the way to the moon. Now, out of our view, it slammed into the lunar surface and gouged out a fresh crater. The shock from the impact sent an earthquake-like ripple across the moon, picked up by seismometers left by the Apollo 12 and 14 crews. Our first surface experiment was complete, and we’d literally changed the face of the moon.
Compared with prior missions that circled comfortably near the lunar equator, we were in a strange, complicated orbit. It took us much farther north into unseen territories, and Dave continued to report with both geological precision and wonder as we skimmed over regions no human eye had ever seen this close. He was in his element. Why choose between being a spacecraft pilot or an observational scientist? From our first moments in orbit, Dave showed that a good commander could do both.
With no atmosphere to soften the lunar features, they looked disturbingly close and sharp. It was the same moon I knew from photos in my training, but when it filled my window it looked strikingly different. Seeing a dark circle on a map is abstract, but skimming across that same five-hundred-mile-wide basin in person was real. The variety was fascinating: faults, swirls, wrinkles, powdery dustings, and features that looked weathered by Earth-like oceans and dust storms. Rivers of ancient lava rippled across the barren plains. I reported with excitement on subtle surface flows, patterns, and variations in colors and shades. “After the King’s training, it’s almost like I’ve been here before,” I remarked, using our nickname for Farouk.
The shadows lengthened again, until only mountain rims remained to catch the sunlight. We kept reporting until we sped into shadow once more. The ground radioed that Farouk had been listening in and was delighted with our descriptions so far. Then, once again, Earth slipped below the horizon and we were on our own.
We burned our engine once more, which dropped us into a lower orbit. “Man, it already looks like we’re lower,” Jim remarked, as lunar features zipped by. He was right—it felt as if we were diving toward the surface, and mountains ahead of us looked unnervingly higher than our flight path. The lowest point of our orbit was now less than eleven miles above the surface and coincided with passing over the planned landing site. Some of the mountains around that zone reached up fifteen thousand feet. I stayed very aware of our altitude as we slid around the moon, documenting the uncharted regions with photos and words. As we sailed toward the highest peaks, I almost felt like pulling my feet up.
Dave and Jim would land on the moon the next day. As we ate dinner, Jim was making plans. “I think the first thing I’m going to do when we get back,” he explained, “is a beautiful night in Tahiti.”
“Hey, you’re on, buddy, you’re on!” I replied. But I knew what he was really saying. Tomorrow would be a risky day for Jim. By planning ahead, he was telling me—and himself—that he would survive the mission. It was a good idea. But I momentarily thought of those old World War II movies, where the guy tells his colleagues how he is going to marry his sweetheart when he gets home. He always dies in the next reel.
Mission control woke us early the next day informing us that, while we slept, our orbit had dropped faster than predicted. Denser parts of the moon, called “mascons,” pulled harder on the spacecraft as we passed over them. Flying over unexplored regions, we found mascons the hard way. Taking the shades off the windows, I looked out with alarm as we passed an immense lunar mountain. It looked like the peak was above us. I could clearly see small boulders littering its side, although that might have been because my eyes were wide with alarm. How low were we? We were planning to land on the moon today—but not by hitting a mountain.
Mission control gave us the figures. We had dropped down under forty-six thousand feet. Phew, we were okay, still three times higher than the mountains around the landing site. I realized the spacecraft was tilted at an angle when I’d looked out the window, so the surface only appeared to be sloping above us. But boy, those boulders looked so close. I felt like I could reach out and touch one.
Another few hours, and that might have been true. Mission control calculated that we would drop even farther as the day went on, and their margin of error was getting too close to the top of those peaks. By the time we were over the landing site, we might be as low as twenty-four thousand feet and falling.
“You can see how, when you’re coming up at low altitude on these mountains, how striking they are in the distance,” I told mission control. “It’s really hard to miss them.”
“I hope you can miss them!” mission control joked in reply. But they had a serious point. We pulsed our thrusters and raised our orbit a little.
It was an extra task in a day that was already packed. Dave and Jim headed into Falcon as early as possible to prepare for their lunar landing and were soon busy ensuring there was no broken glass in their spacesuit hoses.
We were fast approaching a vital moment in the mission: our two spacecraft would undock. The ground informed us that Neil Armstrong was watching from the mission control viewing area, while lunar module hotshot Ed Mitchell took over as CapCom. Ed began reading and confirming precise data sequences to us. We floated back into our spacesuits, updated the lunar module’s guidance computer, tracked landmarks, and equalized spacecraft pressures. The computers in both spacecraft were too primitive to talk to each other, so we had to manually enter information so that they agreed on where we were and how fast we were orbiting. Dave raced ahead on the timeline, keen to get everything prepared. It took hours and drew on some of our toughest engineering training.
It was time to lock the hatches between the spacecraft. We were so engrossed in our work that there was never a moment to pause and say good-bye and good luck. I guess we didn’t need to. Dave and Jim relied on me to keep Endeavour, our only ride home, in lunar orbit for them. I had confidence they would survive their ambitious lunar surface explorations.
I hit the switch to separate the spacecraft. Nothing happened.
Our instruments suggested that an umbilical in the docking tunnel was not properly connected, halting the signal to operate the latches connecting the spacecraft. So I hurriedly floated back up into the docking tunnel and opened Endeavour’s hatch. If the spacecraft separated now, I was dead. I’d be shot out like a cork from a bottle as the oxygen in the crew cabin emptied into space.