The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

“The view of the moon that we’ve been having recently is really spectacular,” Neil reported. “It’s a view worth the price of the trip.”

We strapped ourselves to the couches again the next day to get ready to swing around the left-hand edge of the moon. Hidden around the far side, we would experience loss of signal and would be out of touch with Houston for 48 minutes; that would be when Mike would punch the PROCEED button that would fire the SPS engine for lunar orbit insertion. I gazed to my right out the small window. All I saw was the corrugated, grayish-tan moonscape. The back side of the moon was much more rugged than the face we saw from Earth. This side had been bombarded by meteors since the beginning of the solar system millions of centuries ago. Mike read off the digits from his DSKY [Display and Keyboard] screen. The burn began exactly on time. My hand settled on my chest, and the calves of my legs flexed. This had to go right. For six minutes the SPS engine burned silently, slowing the spacecraft to just over 3,600 miles per hour, the speed necessary for us to be “captured” by lunar gravity. When the engine finally stopped, we rose again, weightless against our couch straps. Mike was beaming. We had slipped over the rim of the moon’s gravity well. Tomorrow, Neil and I would board the LM and slide all the way down to the surface.

Thirty minutes later we passed around the front of the moon and our earphones crackled with the static of Houston’s radio signal.

“Apollo 11, this is Houston. How do you read?” I could hear in Bruce McCandless’s voice the strain they’d endured waiting for us. For over 40 minutes no one had known if the LOI burn had gone safely.

“Read you loud and clear, Houston,” Mike answered.

“Could you repeat your burn status report?” In my mind I could see the rows of anxious faces at the consoles in Mission Control.

Mike was grinning his famous grin. “It was like… it was like perfect.”

Before the second burn, which would circularize our lunar orbit, we had to align our navigation platform’s gyroscopes using star sightings. Mike was down at the navigation station, his face against the eyepiece, his legs floating free. He used the code numbers of the stars from our charts, but we double-checked them with their proper names… Rigel, Altair; Fomafhaut. These exotic names had been given to the stars by the ancient Sumerians, the world’s first navigators. The names had been carried forward by the Greeks and Romans, through the Arab mariners to the Age of Exploration. When Columbus took a star sight, he too pronounced those names. Now Mike Collins, command module pilot of Apollo 11, was using them in our voyage to the moon.

The LM was equipped with a computer which was fitted with a display and keyboard (DSKY). Aldrin:

Neil and I had moved into the LM in preparation for undocking from Columbia. Mike told us to be patient while he worked through his preseparation checklist. Mike had to replace the drogue and probe carefully before sealing off the command module and separating from the LM. We were all conscious of the fragile docking mechanism. In 24 hours, we would be needing that tunnel again. When Mike finally finished we were on the far side of the moon again, in the middle of our thirteenth orbit.

Back on the moon’s near side, we contacted Houston, so that Mission Control could monitor the stream of data from the LM and CSM. The hatches were sealed; now the LM was truly the Eagle and the command module was Columbia. “How’s the czar over there?” Mike asked Neil.

Neil watched the numbers blinking on our DSKY, counting down for the separation maneuver. “Just hanging on and punching buttons,” Neil answered. We exchanged long blocks of data with Mike and with Houston. The numbers seemed endless.

Houston rewarded us with a terse, “You are go for separation, Columbia.”

Mike backed the command module away with a snapping thump. Then the moonscape seemed to rotate slowly past my window as the LM turned, until it hung above my head. “The Eagle has wings,” Neil called.

Neil and I stood almost shoulder to shoulder in our full pressure suits and bubble helmets, tethered to the deck of the LM by elastic cords. Now we were the ones who were engrossed with long checklists. But I felt a sharp urgency as I flipped each switch and tapped the data updates into the DSKY. When Mike thrust away from us in Columbia, he simply said, “Okay, Eagle, you guys take care.”

“See you later,” was all Neil replied. It sounded as if they were heading home after an easy afternoon in the simulator room.

Just before Neil and I looped around the back of the moon for the second time in the LM, Charlie Duke, who was now capcom, told us, “Eagle, Houston. You are go for DOI.”