Apollo 11

As of today, July 27, 2019, we are 50 years and one week distant from the Apollo 11 moon landing.  As I age, I guess I don't see 50 years as all that old, but when I was a boy of eleven, I am most quite certain that I thought fifty was old.  It was less than a year before the first moon landing that my Dad turned 50, and we children started calling him an antique. 

Apollo 11 Crew

Whether or not a person can be an antique is another story, but what we do know is that the nation was able to reach the moon with technology we can only marvel at, or shake our heads at today.  On the one hand, the computing power was quite small, some say 1300 times less than that of an I-phone 5.  Yet the computer was very reliable in part due to a technology of which I had never heard until recently reading the book Shoot for the Moon by James Donovan (2019, Little Brown).  I still do not understand how it worked, but it used a slim coiling of copper wire to provide some of the memory and do recall.  It was called the old lady device, because MIT, the developer of the computer, and NASA, had used old women that had once worked looms in textile factories of New England to loom the copper wire to the necessary configurations.  We all have dealt with, and still deal with software that has requires rebooting of the computer, or worse reloading. 

LM of Apollo 11

The departure from the moon of the top part of the lunar module (LM)  was time critical, due to the position of the command module piloted by Michael Collins.  Imagine, if Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were about to fire the ascent engine, and found out the LM computer was not working.  What would they do?  I don't think reboot was an option.  However, both were well trained engineers, and Buzz Aldrin was likely picked as the third person of the flight due to his expertise in math and science.  Aldrin had written his PhD dissertation  (1963) at MIT on lunar guidance, and it was titled: "Line-of -sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous."  It is quite possible that if the computer failed Buzz would have pulled out his slide rule and completed the necessary calculations.  If a reboot was possible, one would hope the computer system would not take as long as a Microsoft operating system takes to boot up on a non solid state drive machine.

Cover of Aldrin PhD dissertation

To this day the Saturn V rocket is the most powerful machine ever created and used by man.  At the time of the space race, the then Soviet Union was preparing a large rocket, but it was never used after what were two failed tests.  NASA is currently developing a mega rocket that will be even larger, bureaucratically titled "Space Launch System (SLS)."  It was announced earlier this week that they will green test (green meaning testing for the first time) the engine before it is used to send un-crewed Artemis 1 to the moon in 2019.  NASA is hoping to, once again, land a person on the moon in 2024. Elon Musk, who perhaps was smoking too much weed, announced this week that he could get a man to Mars in two years.  The preparation and training required for the LM was extensive, so I cannot imagine how long it would take to prepare for landing on another planet.

Image of moon showing Walk paths of Apollo 11
Astronauts while on the moon 

As with people and machines things can go wrong.  As the LM was descending two computer error codes were received, generally indicative of insufficient memory, in which case the computer would prioritize what needed to be done.  The errors turned out to be related to the use of the rendezvous antennae landing at the same time as the other systems.  After a night of study MIT suggested they turn off the rendezvous antennae when ascending from the moon to avoid the same error codes.  Then there was Buzz Aldrin noticing a piece of black plastic on the floor of the LM amid the grime of the moon.  Looking around he noticed it came off the circuit breaker for the ascent stage firing.  Houston was told and they said they would get a work around, but Buzz simply noticed that he could probably use his felt tip pen to push the metal piece to get the proper connection.  That is what he used.  I am not sure if Houston created a work around.  Aldrin believes the breaker piece fell off when it was inadvertently knocked while he was getting on his gear for the moon walk.  The LM, as quoted by Jim Lovell character in Apollo 13, was not much bigger inside than a couple of telephone booths.  Thus, it was a tight space for what was  required. While it may have been small, the LM was well designed for its purpose--landing on the moon and allowing two men to leave its surface.

Aldrin saluting US Flag

Then of course, their was the iconic statement by Armstrong when he stepped on the moon, where he left out the word 'a".  Saying:  That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."  Of course without the "a" between for and man, as Donovan says, the saying statement did not make sense.  I think most people have overlooked the missing syllable, although Armstrong was both praised and criticized for the statement that is in the history books.  Donovan quotes Armstrong as hoping "that 'history will grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was intended'" for with out it Donovan quoted Armstrong as saying it would be "inane."  This makes me wonder what type of reception the statement would have received in polarized blogosphere we inhabit today.

Apollo 11 Crew on 45th Anniversary of Launch
l to r:  Collins, Armstrong, Aldrin

When speaking to Armstrong and Aldrin while they were walking on the moon President Nixon ended his short conversation with: "For one priceless moment in the whole history of man all the people on this Earth are truly one--one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth." Mike Collins would comment after the astronauts completed a month long tour around the world that people would comment: "We did it."  A collective we.   One in six persons watched the moon landing on television, and it probably would have been more except that the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, to name a few countries, would not televise the event.  Russian cosmonauts were allowed to watch the landing and they would toast their American counterparts after seeing the historic walk.  As I write this, I think back to that midsummer day over 50 years ago and find that I am perhaps now more in awe of what was accomplished at that time than when I was eleven.