(Ash already mentioned this in the above post, but I thought it deserved it's own posting.)
July 20th...On this day in 1969:Apollo 11 successfully lands on the lunar surface, allowing Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin to become the first and second men, respectively, to walk on the moon.
Up... up... and away!One Small Step..."Wish you were here..."Old GloryI am going to chime in here, and in fact I'm going to make a rather unobvious statement about the Apollo 11 Moon Landing
no one really knows about...and this might surprise folks..
Way back in 1969 when America did land on the moon and these brave souls did walk on the lunar surface, I bet no on realized how close we almost came to
NOT making it to the lunar surface.
Well we actually were
just 16 seconds from failing... That's right you heard me,
just 16 actual seconds.
I'm going to put up a few items here and this does deal with the moon landing that Buzz and Neil made, and when you read this you'll say 'holy crud, that
WAS close'
when you go to this site:
www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.landing.html you can read over this rather long transcript, but as you read it, you realize one thing:
We almost didn't make it..The real trouble began at 102 hours :36 minutes:18 seconds into the mission when this first 'cryptic message' came up
102:36:18 Armstrong: (To Houston) Our position checks down range show us to be 'a little long'.
What Neil Armstrong was saying was that according to the computer readouts onboard the LM and the way things were going the Lunar Module (LM) was going to be off target.. by a full 3 miles!
Less than 6 seconds later, Aldrin tells Mission control the worrisome news:
102:36:24 Aldrin: AGS is showing about 2 feet per second greater (descent) rate (than is the PGNS). (Pause)
Already the mission at this point was in Jeopardy..as
Eagle (The LM) was going to overshoot their landing position and was headed well downrange of where they actually were.
and then just 2 minutes later, the real trouble begins when this cryptic message comes from Neil Armstrong:
102:38:26 Armstrong: (With the slightest touch of urgency) Program Alarm.
It's at this point, the computer makes it's first glitch and already the computer (which had in today's world the computing power of a furby toy), all of a sudden got overloaded as the data overwhlmed it.. In short, the computer was literally overloaded with information and couldn't compute fast enough.. and it wasn't until this comment came out that we knew how serious the problem was.
102:42:25 Duke: Roger. 1201 alarm. (Pause) We're Go. Same type. We're Go.
Now Duke (Cunningham) who was part of Mission Control back in Houston saw that the computer wasn't just overloading it was being totally overwhelmed.. The computations we coming in so fast that the computer was literally unable to keep up, and it's not until 8 seconds later, that Armstrong states something that sounds oblivious to a lot of folks, but in reality, was very serious.
102:42:33 Armstrong: (On-board) (With some urgency in his voice, possibly as he sees West Crater) Give me an LPD (angle).
Neil Armstrong could see that the computers were taking the LM all the way to a very large crater.. A large impact crater that was strewn with bouldersm, some as large as a house, and if Neil and Buzz hadn't done what they did, well You would have had a major failure or at worst an abort situation, and Apollo 11 wouldn't have made it to the surface of the moon.
But then from there, things started to spiral out of control and this is where the term
"Right Stuff" kicked in.
It's at this point in the audio that you hear something really ominous... yet from the commentary in the audio it doesn't sound so.
102:45:02 Duke (Cunningham):
60 seconds (of fuel left before the 'Bingo' call).
Now "Bingo Call" is a military Pilot's call for "Low fuel" at this point Eagle was just
60 to 75 seconds from running out of fuel altogether on it's descent engine. Add to that the fact that they were over a large lunar crater and it's where Neil Armstorng really showed how much of "The Right stuff" he really had, as he had Buzz literally calling out distances and Neil Armstrong was doing something you wouldn't see in the movies..
He was actually piloting the LM (Eagle) all the way to the Lunar Surface. No computers working this..
It was all manual. Now when Duke Cunningham made that '60 second call on the tape, it literally meant that in 60 seconds, Neil and Buzz would have either had to land or at worst crash, or abort the descent .. not a good thing..
It's not until we hear this that it really gets downright serious..and you can feel this is not a good sitch and yet you can't really tell it in the audio. Here's a situation that in just seconds could go from Triumph to tragedy:
102:45:31 Duke: 30 seconds (until the 'Bingo' call).
At this point the Lunar Module Descent Engine had just 30 seconds of fuel remaining before this engine would just be in such a situation that either an abort or a landing (even a Crash landing) would have been the case, and if it had been a crash landing, there would have been no way on the moon for Armstrong and Aldrin to get off the planet had they crashed.
Yet all this time Armstrong is steering this vehicle Manually overflying the large crater and the boulder strewn field near the crater to find a landing spot, just some 300 feet away.
It isn't until we hear those famous words that we know that they were down saffely on the moon:
102:45:58 Armstrong (on-board): Engine arm is off. (Pause) Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
of course the landing had actually taken place when the call came down, and in fact from what engineers tell us later, they had at worst 13 seconds of fuel left, and at best 16 seconds.. and yet someway, somehow, thanks to Neil's superb piloting skills, they somehow had managed to get down on the moon.
It's kind of ironic because just 2 years earlier during a training test Neil Armstrong lost control of a Bell Company Lunar Landing Test Vehicle and had been force to eject from the test craft because he couldn't handle the instability.
And what is even more interesting is that 4 years earlier during the Gemini 8 flight, Armstrong who was the commander lost control of his vehicle as well as it spun wildly out of control after doing a rendezvous mission.
Yet in the end for some odd reason, Neil Armstrong really showed the world what kind of astronaut he was.. He was able to use his brains and his gut reactions, and using his unique piloting skills, he was in fact able to take potential disaster, and somehow turn it into success..
It's ironic that Tom Wolfe had written
The Right Stuff, and if there was ever a footnote to this landing.. I will say this.. Neil Armstrong probably personified what Tom Wolfe wrote in his book.
Taking a life threatening situation and turning it into amazing success.
That's what really seperates the Pilot from the astronaut.. the ability to snatch failure and turn it into sucess.. that's what
The Right Stuff really is..
And Neil and Buzz definitely showed us that when the chips were down, gut, instinct and piloting skills took over, and that's really why we have a spot in history.. it's all based on... The right stuff.
Tucsoncoyote--