This morning at 9:27 EDT, Buzz Aldrin crawled into the Lunar Module Eagle and began the lengthy process of powering things up for the short mission life of the module. An hour later, Neil Armstrong joined Buzz in the LM.
A little over three hours after that, 1:47 PM, they released the latches and
separated from the Command Module. At 2:12, Michael Collins fired thrusters on
the CM moving it two miles away from the LM. Except for that small altitude
difference, both vehicles remained in their initial orbit from yesterday's
lunar orbit insertion until 3:08 PM when Armstrong fired the descent engine to
lower the Eagle's orbit.
What follows is a 20 minute video depicting the landing which is easily the
best modern reconstruction of the landing that I've seen. It combines video
from the window as Armstrong would have seen it with the audio traffic from
Mission Control. The first three minutes gives a modern simulation and
animation of how it all worked; after that, it goes to the view recorded on
the LM with spacecraft communication on the left speaker and mission control
intercom on the right. Yes, I think it's worth the time.
The LM touches down at 4:18PM EDT.
At 6:00 PM, Armstrong radios down to mission control that he recommends they
start the EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) sooner than planned; at 9 PM.
Although they don't make the 9PM goal, the 10:39 beginning of the EVA is still
five hours earlier than the mission plans.
As I've mentioned before, this was the last vacation I would ever take with my parents. July of 1969 was the summer between my 9th and 10th grade years of school, and I was 15 years old. My older brother, 18, had graduated high school in June and couldn't vacation with us. Like millions of people around the world, I hung by the front of the black and white TV; this one in my uncle's house in New York City (The Bronx, for those who know). We watched intently but I don't recall exactly how much we saw or if we watched until 1:11 tomorrow morning when the EVA officially concluded. It's a sobering thought how many of the family members there on that historic day and night have passed away. Both of my parents, my uncle and aunt, and I'm simply not sure how many else. Of the people I've mentioned, only my older brother survives to this anniversary.
My grandmother was born on an Iowa farm and grew up with no electricity, a hand drawn well, no modern medicine, and a horse for transportation. She lived to see man walk on the moon...and then abandon the greatest human achievement up to that time. Literally from sod-busting to the stars in one average human lifetime. And then we quit.
ReplyDeleteAnd then we quit...
DeleteWhile watching it on TV as it happened my husband's grandfather said it was all fake. He never did believe it.
DeleteStill a crowning achievement!
ReplyDeleteI was in summer school. A TV was wheeled into the room. The class watched on rapt attention the entire mission from launch to splashdown. We had a bottomless punch bowl and sandwiches so we could have lunch right there in class. Imagine waiting for a lull in activity so you can go to the restroom. It was a cliffhanger. Apollo 11 was doing things no one else had never done before. And we were watching it.
ReplyDeleteWhen school closed for the day, I and several others wanted to continue watching. I couldn't pedal home fast enough to go park in front of the TV.
We would go to a neighbor's house to watch all the launches because they were broadcast in color and we had a B&W teevee. Moon landings were watched at home because the broadcasts were in B&W. Dad was rarely home for any manned launch because he was big in the Air Force's range tracking world.
ReplyDeleteMy dad drove us up from Miami to watch the launch (we had seen the Apollo 8 liftoff in December). It was glorious, as a going-into 11th grader, this was serious stuff. I was blessed to watch launches of some sort or other from 1959 (nighttime launch we saw , some military flight we watched from the Pompano pier) until one of the last Shuttle launches. I had lived through the hype my whole childhood, and I saw it happen! Stayed awake all night with Dad's Sony 105 reel audio and recorded Cronkite and the CBS night crew talk to Heinlein (and I think Clarke). I could not believe Nixon and/or the CongressCritters (as Jerry Pournelle called them) cancelled the Apollos out to launch 20, and the Mars plan as well.
ReplyDeleteWhat was happening? We were quitting? I later found out Heinlein had predicted the "false dawn" of the moon landing if it had been successful.
So glad I did get to se what I/we saw. Those of us of that certain age are so blessed to have live through it. Now, in our own sunset, we are seeing private industry take the reins and do what the alphabet bureaucracies can no longer do ("intel needs" or not).
Thanks SIG for reminding us of the High Tide of the West that we got to witness.