Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure

379 Pages·2009·5.67 MB·English

by  Dan Parry

Table of Contents
Title
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1: THE BRIGHT STUFF
Chapter 2: CARRYING THE FIRE
Chapter 3: MOVING TARGETS
Chapter 4: FINDING A WAY HOME
Chapter 5: NOWHERE TO HIDE
Picture Section 1
Chapter 6: GROUNDED IN SAFETY
Chapter 7: RISKS AND RISKY REMEDIES
Chapter 8: A TISSUE-PAPER SPACECRAFT
Chapter 9: INTO THE DARKNESS
Chapter 10: PUSHED TO THE LIMIT
Picture Section 2
Chapter 11: A PLACE IN HISTORY
Chapter 12: THE EAGLE HAS WINGS
Chapter 13: SNEAKING UP ON THE PAST
Chapter 14: A WALK ON THE MOON
Chapter 15: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Epilogue
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
MOON
SHOT
For my Dad, Steve Parry
1943-2008
MOON
SHOT
THE INSIDE STORY OF MANKIND'S
GREATEST ADVENTURE
DAN PARRY
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ISBN 9781407027494
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Published in 2009 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
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Copyright © Dan Parry 2009
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All photographs featured in this book are courtesy of NASA
Acknowledgements
Many people kindly gave this book and the TV show it accompanies much
generous support and assistance. The factual drama Moonshot is one of a
number of TV shows produced by Dangerous Films focusing on the history
of NASA generally and Apollo 11 particularly. Some were completed
before the Moonshot project was conceived, but during their production I
was enormously privileged to discuss NASA's work with Buzz Aldrin, Neil
Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Charlie Duke, Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz, Glynn
Lunney, George Mueller and others. Humanity possesses the knowledge
and experience to leave our planet at will thanks to the pioneering actions
of men such as these, and I remain in awe of their achievements. To those
who so patiently helped me with some of the more technical aspects of
these achievements, I am grateful. I am particularly indebted to the team
behind the exemplary website the Lunar Surface Journal, among them
David Harland, Frank O'Brien, David Woods and especially Ken
MacTaggart.
Staff at the Johnson Space Center, the Marshall Space Flight Center and
other NASA sites have been enormously generous in their assistance to all
of us at Dangerous, as have experts at the Smithsonian Institution,
particularly Dr Roger Launius. Chris Riley's illuminating suggestions were
as entertaining as they were valuable, and I am also grateful to the
enthusiastic assistance of Doug Millard at the Science Museum. Thanks too
to Ken Barlow and Jake Lingwood at Ebury, and especially to Richard Dale
and Mike Kemp at Dangerous, whose kind support is greatly appreciated.
Above all, I'd like to give heartfelt thanks to my gracious and loving wife
Saira, who I'm sure on occasion felt she'd been whisked off to the Moon
and stranded in lunar orbit. And to Yasmin, I'd like to say that 'Ubba's boop'
is finally finished.
PROLOGUE
What would the Moon be like?
While this question fascinated those back on Earth, for Neil Armstrong
the Moon was playing no more than a supporting role. Here was a chance
for man to achieve something beyond comparison. If it were successful, the
Apollo 11 mission would demonstrate that humans, as a species, were
capable of escaping from their planet and visiting somewhere a world away
from home. It didn't matter much whether the Moon was made of brown
rocks, grey dust or even green cheese. To Armstrong, all that really counted
was landing safely and then coming home again, without letting anyone
down in the attempt to do either.
Standing in the lunar module, the most fragile manned spacecraft ever
built, Armstrong was flying at more than 3,000mph, five times faster than a
passenger jet. There were no landing pads on the Moon, no ground crew to
guide him down; 50,000 feet below him lay nothing more than an uncharted
area that was pockmarked by rocks and craters and which was believed to
be a little less dangerous than other uncharted areas. If he were to reach his
designated target site, Neil would have to gradually reduce his speed to
walking pace and then find a relatively benign area to touch down before
his fuel ran out. There was little margin for error. Landing too fast on a
landscape strewn with boulders could damage the spacecraft and potentially
end any hope of returning home.
One way or the other, in the next 12 minutes it would be over and all the
hand-wringing, the months of agonising expectation and the endless press
questions could finally be laid to rest. The newspapers were fascinated by
lunar landscapes. But while rocks and craters captured the media's attention,
for a pilot they were to be avoided. As far as Neil was concerned, Apollo 11
wasn't about boxes of stones. Exploring the surface was secondary to the
mission's prime objective. None of the early aviation pioneers, who had so
inspired Neil as a boy, had regarded their greatest triumph to be a stroll
beside their aircraft. Armstrong, like the Wrights, Earhart and Lindbergh
before him, knew that nothing was more significant about a test-flight than
safely completing it.
Standing beside Neil was Buzz Aldrin, and together the two men would
have considered themselves to be flying horizontally face down had they
not been in weightlessness. They were also travelling backwards, feet first,
using the engine as a brake to reduce their speed. The gleaming white
surfaces of their cramped cabin were bathed in sunlight, yet somehow the
aura of a brandnew spaceship was personalised by the grubby ways of
people. Handwritten notes were stuck on the dull grey instrument panels
and here and there other personal items were secured by Velcro or held
down by netting. Having taught himself to go to the Moon, man was
bringing with him urine bags, food trays and doodles in margins.
While Buzz monitored the instruments, Neil looked through the
triangular window in front of him. In timing their journey over the alien
terrain below, he discovered with dismay that the crater known as
Maskelyne-W had arrived early. They were three seconds ahead of
themselves, and three seconds equated to three miles, which would take
them beyond the edge of the landing zone. They would be coming down in
an area Neil knew to be strewn with boulders, and in a spacecraft with walls
so thin you could poke a pencil through them. He knew they would be
lucky to avoid any damage. Luck wasn't enough. He had the facility to
override the computer and fly the spacecraft manually but this could only
be done in the closing stages of the descent. For the moment he must follow
the flight-plan.
At 40,000 feet, Armstrong rotated the lunar module by 180 degrees so
that he was no longer looking down at the Moon but staring up into space.
By repositioning the spacecraft, which was operating under the call-sign
Eagle, Neil enabled the landing radar to get a clearer view of the surface.
Now that they were due to land long he needed as much reliable
information as he could get.
Then the yellow master alarm started to flash, a tone sounded in Neil's
headset and the computer's yellow PROG light lit up. The computer would
help diagnose the problem, allowing Armstrong and Aldrin to decide what
action to take based on lessons learned during training. 'It's a 1202,' Neil
told Houston after glancing at the computer display. It was a code neither he