When America Went to the Moon
The cold war inspired it, big bucks backed it and Yankee ingenuity made it happen; 25 years later, the footprints in the lunar dust still inspire awe
America's historic Apollo voyages to the moon were born of genuine national desperation. Now that the former Soviet Union lies in ruins, it is difficult to recall how deeply our chief cold war rival's tiny, beeping Sputnik had stunned this nation in 1957. Not only had the backward Russians sent up the first Earth satellite but the powerful rockets that launched it meant that U.S. soil was, for the first time since the British burned the White House in 1814, vulnerable to direct foreign attack. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's transcendent orbit of the Earth aboard spaceship Vostok I in April 1961, four months into the new Kennedy administration, was equally shattering; it showed, many feared, the ability of the Soviet system not only to marshal critical high technology but to enlist it in the war to win the hearts of uncommitted Third World nations. "Failure to master space means being second best in every aspect, in the crucial arena of our cold-war world," cried Lyndon Johnson, then vice president. "In the eyes of the world, first in space means first, period; second in space is second in everything."
A shaken John Kennedy told a White House meeting that "there's nothing more important" than finding a way to catch up. Doing so quickly was out of the question, however. The Soviet lead in rocket boosters guaranteed that. The only U.S. space program underway was Project Mercury, which was never intended to go beyond orbital flights by single astronauts, and Alan Shepard had yet to make the first American spaceflight. Kennedy asked LBJ: "Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip to the moon and back with a man? Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win?"
Six weeks after Gagarin's orbit, Kennedy stood before Congress and dramatically upped the ante. "This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project will be more important to mankind or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." Even the space enthusiasts at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who dreamed of someday exploring the heavens were shocked by the magnitude of the challenge. "I could hardly believe my ears," says Robert Gilruth, who was to become director of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. "I was literally aghast at the size of the project."
Kennedy's promise to land men on the moon inspired the greatest peacetime mobilization of people and resources ever, a herculean, forced-draft, high-risk national effort, a supreme political act that was a surrogate for war. The Apollo project cost more than $25 billion. In 1966, spending on the space program reached its height at nearly $6 billion--over 4 percent of the entire federal budget and more than Washington spent that year on housing and community development combined. At its peak, more than 400,000 people in government and industry labored to push the project forward; many were so devoted to the mission that they worked long extra hours without overtime pay. Three astronauts--Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee--lost their lives in a tragic fire while testing the spacecraft on the ground in 1967.
The men who answered the call to become astronauts knew the dangers and relished them. Most were the best-of-the-best test pilots with egos to match, and the NASA public relations machine worked hard to make them heroes. Life magazine paid each astronaut $16,000 a year in exchange for exclusive rights to his story, nearly as much as Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's 1969 salary as an Air Force colonel.
The astronauts' effect on the public was electrifying. Recalling the day the Apollo 13 crew visited a TRW facility where he worked at the time, current NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin says: "The excitement was unbelievable. People just wanted to touch them. When I touched one of the astronauts, I felt I had touched a god."
By the time the Apollo program was ready to deliver on Kennedy's promise in 1969, however, the world had been starkly transformed. Kennedy was long since dead, and Johnson had not stood for re-election. America was mired in a divisive war in Vietnam, riots had shaken major cities, campuses across the land were in turmoil and young baby boomers were preparing to converge on a farm near Woodstock, N.Y. By then, astronauts had made 10 orbital flights in two-man Gemini spacecraft. Two Apollo missions had circled the Earth, and two had circumnavigated the moon. A moon landing was to be attempted on the fifth Apollo flight. In an otherwise awful year, it would be a singular event that brought Americans together, however briefly.
Nearly a million people gathered along the Florida coast on the morning of July 16 to watch the launch of the three-stage Saturn V rocket. The three Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, strapped into the command module atop the 363-foot-tall rocket, thundered skyward from Pad 39A at 9:32, propelled by five gigantic engines that generated 7.6 million pounds of thrust. Four days later, Armstrong and Aldrin, with barely 20 seconds' worth of fuel remaining in the fragile lunar excursion module with the call sign Eagle, touched down on the surface of the moon. "Houston, Tranquillity Base here," Armstrong radioed. "The Eagle has landed." By some estimates, a half billion people--perhaps 15 percent of the entire global population at the time--watched the events on live television. When the crew splashed down in the Pacific on July 24, fulfilling JFK's commitment with a safe return, the big screen in Mission Control flashed the classic understatement: "TASK ACCOMPLISHED, July 1969."
Five more Apollo flights landed on the moon through the end of 1972, but the spell of Apollo 11 was never to be matched. Three more missions that had been scheduled were canceled. And one mission didn't make it: Apollo 13, which aborted spectacularly when an oxygen tank exploded on the way to the moon (box, below).
Apollo's accomplishments were--and were supposed to be--political. But there was scientific gold as well. The 841 pounds of rocks that the astronauts brought back shed enormous light on the surface composition of our nearest neighbor, although the experiments never conclusively resolved the questions of where the moon came from or how it evolved. In more down-to-earth applications, medicine was the biggest beneficiary. Digital image-enhancing techniques pioneered at NASA in its quest for accurate satellite pictures of prospective lunar landing sites are now used in scanners to peer into the body without invasive surgery. Biomedical telemetry originally developed to keep Mission Control doctors apprised of the astronauts' condition is now used to beam patients' vital signs to nurses' stations. The rigors of space flight also triggered the development of strong, light materials such as Teflon-coated beta-fiber weave refined by Owens-Corning for spacesuits. A heavier version of the same fabric is now used to roof stadiums--and, most recently, the terminal building of the new Denver International Airport. Even the cordless drill used to recover lunar soil samples has grown into a wide range of cordless tools, including the Dustbuster.
But for space buffs, Apollo was never about politics or commercial windfalls. It was to be just the first step to the stars. In September 1969, a blue-ribbon committee chaired by Vice President Spiro Agnew recommended that the nation press on to Mars by the mid-1980s. But the Nixon administration, hamstrung by war and civil disobedience, had other priorities, and the proposal went nowhere. NASA lobbied mightily for a space station and a reusable shuttle to carry people back and forth, much like an airliner, but won funding only for the shuttle. Outside the Johnson Space Center in Houston, a giant Saturn V rocket lies on its side today, a rusting reminder of the glory days of space flight. A NASA employee, nodding at it, once remarked bitterly, "Someday people will ask, 'Whatrace of giants made such machines?'"
A quarter century after Neil Armstrong took "one small step for man" onto the lunar surface, the future of the human space program is in doubt. Congress came within a single vote of killing the International Space Station last summer, and its opponents are trying again this summer. Last week, the House of Representatives approved the station 278-155, but the Senate still must act. NASA's original justification for the space shuttle was that it was an all-purpose, largely reusable vehicle that could launch cargo from commercial satellites to space stations more cheaply than expendable boosters. But the shuttle turned out to be far more expensive than forecast. After the Challenger shuttle disaster, space policies were revised to require that nearly everything would again be launched on expendable rockets. That left the shuttle reserved for only those missions that require humans in space. "If we shut down the space station, we shut down human space flight," says Administrator Goldin, "because we won't have a destination for the shuttle."
As a measure of how much has changed, the Russians are now integral partners with the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan in the often redesigned space station. If it's built, the station will include a Russian laboratory module, Soyuz space capsules will serve as emergency lifeboats--and Russian spacecraft as well as the American shuttle will build and service it.
For astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, Apollo had a part to play in arranging the new world order that makes such cooperation possible. Aldrin recognizes that he flew his historic flight because of cold war exigencies. He recalls that the plaque on the lunar lander he and Armstrong left behind reads, "We came in peace for all mankind." And he asks, "Did we not promote peace by beating the Russians? Suppose they got there first?"
Apollo 11 First men on the moon On July 20, 1969, eight years after President Kennedy's promise, Neil Armstrong proclaimed his first, tentative step onto the moon a "giant leap for mankind." When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong lifted off from the moon's surface, they left an engraved plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."
Lift off from Earth
1. Liftoff (July 16, 9:32 a.m. EDT). Five large engines on the first stage, with a combined thrust of 7.6 million pounds, ignite to lift Saturn 5 to altitude of over 40 miles.
2. Second stage. Five smaller engines burn 6 1/2 minutes to propel the spacecraft more than 100 miles above the earth and over 1,000 miles downrange.
3. Third stage. Engine burn puts Apollo 11 in a "parking orbit" around the Earth.
Leaving Earth orbit
4. To the moon. After 1 1/2 Earth orbits, the third stage fires to send Apollo 11 toward the moon.
5. Docking. Apollo 11 crew separates command and service module from section housing the lunar module, turns around and docks with it. Third stage discarded.
Cruising toward the moon
6. Barbeque mode. For 73 hours, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins coast toward the moon, targeted so accurately that only one of four planned four course corrections is needed. The spacecraft rotates slowly in "barbeque mode" so the sun's rays heat it evenly.
7. Lunar orbit. Command module engine burns to slow craft so it swings into orbit around the moon.
Lunar landing
8. Separation. Armstrong and Aldrin in lunar module ("Eagle") separate from command module ("Columbia"), leaving Collins behind in lunar orbit.
9. Descent. Going behind the moon, Eagle fires descent engine, sending it toward the surface.
10. Landing. With 20 seconds' fuel remaining, "The Eagle has landed."
Homeward bound
11. Ascent. After 22 hours on the moon, Eagle lifts off to rejoin Columbia. . 12. Reunion. With all three crew members again aboard, command module lights its engine for the trip home. Eagle is left behind in lunar orbit
Back to Earth
13. Re-entry. Minutes from re-entry, service module ejects and command module turns so that its blunt heat shield faces Earth for reentry into atmosphere.
14. Splashdown (July 24, 12:51 p.m. EDT) Apollo 11 splashes down safely in South Pacific, and the USS Hornet picks up crew. To guard Earth against possible contamination, the astronauts spend next 17 days in quarantine.
Troubled landing As soon as Eagle began its descent to the moon's rocky surface--the most perilous part of the mission--alarms began flashing. The main computer was overloaded, raising fears that the landing would have to be aborted. Again and again the alarms went off, and Houston said go. Eagle had overshot the intended landing zone by 4 miles, and its computer was blindly leading Armstrong and Aldrin into a field of boulders. Armstrong took over the controls, searching for a clear place to land. Finally, with only 20 seconds of fuel remaining, Armstrong deftly set his machine on the moon.
MOON SUIT: Communications antenna; Portable life-support system; Helmet and visor; Integrated thermal micrometeoroid garment; Communication, oxygen, and cooling umbilical connectors; Remote backpack control unit; Lunar overshoe
Laser reflector With laser beamed from Earth, reflector allows scientists to measure accurately the distance to moon and continental drift on Earth.
LUNAR MODULE (LM): S-band and radar antenna; Forward entrance hatch; Descent stage; Descent engine; Surface sensing probe; Reaction control system thrusters; Ascent stage; Docking tunnel
U.S. manned space flight vehicles As the space program grew, bigger and more-sophisticated boosters were required. Later in this decade the space shuttle will be used to assemble the International Space Station.
[Height] [Thrust] [Human Space Missions]
Mercury-Redstone 83 feet 82,000 lbs of thrust 2 suborbital missions
Mercury-Atlas 95.5 feet 367,000 lbs of thrust 4 orbital missions
Gemini-Titan 109 feet 430,000 lbs of thrust 10 orbital missions
Saturn 5 363 feet 7,570,000 lbs of thrust 10 missions
Space Shuttle 184 feet 6,925,000 lbs of thrust 62 orbital missions
USN&WR--Basic data:NASA
SATURN 5 LAUNCH VEHICLE: First stage; Second stage; Third stage; Lunar module; Command module; Service module; Launch escape system
THE MEN WHO WERE NEARLY MAROONED IN SPACE Apollo 13 was to have made the third moon landing. Instead, it became NASA's most successful failure. James Lovell, Fred Haise and John Swigert intended to explore rugged lunar highlands. But on the way, "we heard a loud 'hurrump' and a bang," Lovell recalls. An oxygen tank in the service module had exploded, causing a second tank to rupture. No oxygen meant no electricity could be generated by fuel cells. No electricity meant the rocket motor on the service module couldn't fire. Many feared the men would not be able to return.
Yet they survived, rigging the lunar module as a lifeboat in a monument to ingenuity. Firing the descent engine, they put the craft in a path to swing around the moon and back toward home. Lithium-hydride canisters scavenged from the command module removed carbon dioxide from air in the lunar module so they wouldn't be poisoned by their own breath. At the end, they powered up the command module with backup batteries and made a pinpoint splashdown. Lovell has recounted their adventure in Lost Moon, to be published in October. Film director Ron Howard will dramatize the mission next year. Tom Hanks will play Lovell.
[Photo captions]: EARTHRISE. The Apollo 11 landing altered forever mankind's view of its place in the firmament.
WARRIOR. For President Kennedy, the early Soviet success with Sputnik made the race to reach the moon first a matter of vital cold-war national interest.
FIRST STEPS. Tranquility Base was 240,000 miles away from the Florida launch pad where the adventure began. "The Eagle has landed."
PAY DIRT. Among the samples brought home by the explorers were 841 pounds of moon rocks and soil.
FLAG-WAVING. In an era in which America was consumed by self-doubt, the lunar missions were something that could turn out ticker-tape parades.
BUZZ ALDRIN APOLLO 11, 1969 For 2 1/2 decades, they've been asked the same question over and over again. What was it really like to be on the moon? If he wanted to, Buzz Aldrin could probably just repeat some variation of his famous first words on the lunar surface: "Magnificent desolation." But he refuses to. "I don't remember crystal clear," he says. "You write over what was stored in your mind each time you tell it." If he could go again, he reflects, "I'd look out the window more rather than just stare at the instrument panels."
Aldrin is nothing if not honest-- "walking pathos" is how the wife of one astronaut puts it. In his 1973 book, "Return to Earth," he told of his post-mission bouts with depression and alcoholism. "The most difficult challenge I've faced in my life was not when we were about to run out of fuel on the moon," he says. "It was giving up drink." Such outspokenness sometimes backfires--and fellow astronauts often treat him like an outcast. Today, Aldrin, 64, supplements his pension with product endorsements. He is also co-writing a science-fiction book to popularize his notions about commercializing space. If America doesn't do it, others will, Aldrin warns: "The Chinese could celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic by putting a man on the moon. It's plausible."
ALAN BEAN APOLLO 12, 1969 When Alan Bean looks at Norman Rockwell's painting of Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon, something--he can't put his finger on it--seems off. To Bean, Rockwell's lack of firsthand experience shows. As the fourth man to walk on the moon, Apollo 12 lunar-module pilot Bean has no such shortcoming. "When I painted my first painting of space, I realized that I knew everything about it--like the way that a spacesuit wrinkle looks in the sun," says Bean, an accomplished painter of moonscapes. "I have a love for my subject that I wouldn't have if my subject were horses."
Mastery of a brush was certainly not part of the macho test pilot image immortalized by Tom Wolfe in "The Right Stuff." But Bean took painting classes while he trained to be a test pilot--and he secretly dreamed of someday becoming a great artist. Since retiring from NASA in 1981, Bean has devoted himself to painting, but it was not until about a year ago that he achieved the same confidence in himself as an artist that he once had as an astronaut. "You reach a point where you know what's really important in a painting," says the 62-year-old, whose works fetch as much as $60,000 today. "It took me seven years to become a skilled astronaut and 13 years to become a skilled artist."
ALAN SHEPARD JR. APOLLO 14, 1971 Every moonwalker wanted to be first at something. Apart from Neil Armstrong's very first step on lunar soil, none of Project Apollo's other historic firsts may be as memorable as Alan Shepard's one-handed golf shot with a makeshift six-iron. The commander of Apollo 14 says he got the idea watching a nervous Bob Hope try to steady himself with a golf club in a zero-gravity simulator. To critics, however, the extraterrestrial golf shot symbolized the frivolity of spending $25 billion to send men to the moon. Shepard's response: "I paid for the club head and golf balls, so there was no expense to taxpayers."
Shepard's place in history was secure before he ever swung a club on the moon. His 15-minute flight aboard Freedom 7 in 1961 earned him the distinction of being the first American in space. But landing on the moon was a more personal triumph. Shepard had been grounded by an inner-ear disorder for six years until an inch-long drainage tube inserted behind his left ear got him back in action. So standing on the surface of the moon, Shepard looked long and hard at faraway Earth. And suddenly, the hard-nosed fighter pilot known as the Ice Commander wept. Today, the 70-year-old real-estate developer is among the few Apollo moonwalkers as successful in business as he was in space.
EDGAR MITCHELL APOLLO 14, 1971 Edgar Mitchell could never reconcile his two worlds. He was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household but studied science and engineering in college. Then, on the long flight back to Earth aboard Apollo 14, he had what he calls an "insight." As he peered at the Earth from across the vastness of space, he realized that the universe was neither the grinding machine described by Newton nor predetermined by God. In that moment, he knew, "I was not separate from the universe. It's a part of me."
For Mitchell, nothing has looked quite the same since. He has spent the last 23 years trying to piece together what happened to him then, to understand the nature of human consciousness and spirituality. Following splashdown, he divorced, left NASA and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a branch of parapsychology. He also created a stir by admitting that he'd conducted secret ESP experiments in space. As his lunar excursion module dived toward the moon, Mitchell placed symbols against a table of random numbers, while four associates on Earth tried to guess the orderings (they guessed 51 out of 200 right). Today, Mitchell, 63, believes that audiences are more receptive to his ideas: "It's much more accepted," he says, "that we live in a holistic universe, that everything is connected."
DAVID SCOTT APOLLO 15, 1971 Children explore from the minute they crawl," says David Scott. "They may bump their heads, but they explore." As commander of Apollo 15, Scott, who also flew on Gemini 8 and Apollo 9, knows a thing or two about exploring. But he also bumped his head in an embarrassing post-splashdown scandal.
Under Scott, a new era of lunar exploration got underway with the moon rover, a four-wheel vehicle designed by Boeing and General Motors. The television networks, which had all but ignored the mission because of declining ratings, switched to dramatic live coverage of Scott cruising across lunar boulder fields--and NASA got a sorely needed PR boost.
Then came the PR nightmare. News that the Apollo 15 crew had taken 398 unauthorized first-edition postage-stamp envelope covers on their flight--to be sold later--scandalized the astronaut corps. Scott says he did nothing wrong, that his crew simply forgot to enter the covers in the log. Nevertheless, Scott was summarily dropped from the astronaut corps and reassigned to a technical assistant's post. His bad luck has continued. The business he started designing satellite launch systems for space shuttles lost millions after the Challenger disaster; recently, he was sued for fraud. But Scott, 60, remains philosophical. "I've had bad breaks, but it all balances out," he says. "I had the best flight of the Apollo program."
HARRISON SCHMITT APOLLO 17, 1972 Glimpsed from the moon, Earth struck almost every astronaut as fragile and vulnerable. But Harrison Schmitt looked at the shimmering blue planet 240,000 miles away with the detached gaze of a scientist. What he saw was not fragility but majestic power and strength. "As a geologist, I'd been thinking about the Earth as a whole body in space throughout my career, so seeing it there wasn't a surprise," he recalls. "It's a very sturdy place."
For the astronauts of the last couple of moonshots, fame was fleeting. But it was enough to help Schmitt get elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate from New Mexico in 1976-- and he put his training to good use as chairman of the subcommittee on space. But during his re-election bid, Schmitt's opponent turned his status as a former astronaut against him, asking: "What on Earth has he done for us?" Schmitt lost.
Asked if his time in Washington was well spent, Schmitt recalls a cartoon of him dressed in his spacesuit orbiting the Capitol dome. The caption said: "I looked for intelligent life and found none." Today, Schmitt, 59, is an Albuquerque-based business consultant. Driving around in a beat-up pickup truck, he is proof that NASA did not pay its astronauts a million dollars each to go to the moon. "I fully intend to write a book," he says, "but I have to pay the mortgage."
EUGENE CERNAN APOLLO 17, 1972 Eugene Cernan traced his daughter's initials--TDC--in lunar dust, closed the hatch on his lunar module and, just prior to liftoff, blurted, "Let's get this mother out of here." Cernan could never have guessed that 22 years later, his would still be the last footprint on the lunar surface--and that his gruff test-pilot slang would be the last words uttered on the moon. "I thought by now we'd be to Mars," he grouses. "It's as though Columbus discovered the New World and no one wanted to go back."
For Cernan, the fact that Apollo 17 was the last lunar voyage of the century is especially poignant. As the command module pilot for Apollo 10, Cernan flew within 50,000 feet of the lunar surface but did not land. But when NASA offered him the chance to land on the moon as second-in-command for a later flight, he declined. He wanted a chance to command his own mission. Although NASA canceled future flights, it was not before asking Cernan to skipper the last flight. Today, the 60-year-old Cernan takes time out from his consulting business for frequent public appearances. Watching the D-Day commemorations reinforced his commitment to sharing his experiences. Says Cernan: "It's important that those of us who stormed the beaches of the moon explain what we did."
This story appears in the July 11, 1994 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.