Footprints on the moon
Published 2:30 am, Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Forty years ago, on a sultry Texas night, dozens of corporate communications representatives from aerospace companies throughout America stood transfixed in an industry press room near the Johnson Space Center just outside Houston. We had been working hand in hand with journalists from all over the world for the better part of a decade to communicate the U.S. effort to land men on the moon, and now the long wait was almost over.
As everyone stood glued to the TV, with reports from Mission Control booming in over loudspeakers, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin piloted their Lunar Module spacecraft -- named Eagle -- toward the moon's surface. Then came the words the world had been waiting for:
"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed," Armstrong radioed to Earth. Shortly thereafter, Armstrong left the LM and, as he stepped onto the moon, said: "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." (The "a" is in parenthesis at the request of Armstrong since it was not heard over the radio, but later computer analysis showed it was said but lost in static). Aldrin exited the LM next, and the footprints of both men remain today on the airless, arid surface of the moon.
The moon landing was achieved only after an arduous effort that began on May 25, 1961, when, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, President John F. Kennedy issued this challenge: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
My role in this history-making event -- media relations for RCA Corp. -- was relatively minor compared with the work of the scientists, engineers and technicians who conceived the lunar landing and then carried it out by building the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module spacecraft.
I joined the space program in June 1963, when I was appointed editor of the company magazine for RCA's Missile Test Project at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The project's 4,000 employees operated the world-spanning electronic stations that tracked and communicated with missiles and spacecraft launched from the Cape.
The Mercury program, which put the first Americans into space, had just given way to the Gemini spaceflights. Gemini was a two-man capsule designed to test in Earth orbit the techniques of space rendezvous -- an essential maneuver for a moon landing. The program also enabled scientists to evaluate how humans withstood prolonged periods in the weightlessness of space.
Then came the Apollo project, the final step toward the moon. My involvement in that program expanded when RCA transferred me to New Jersey to handle its defense and space programs media relations. That assignment included working with news organizations to explain the complex electronic systems RCA developed for Project Apollo's spaceships.
In addition, we supplied the amazingly compact radios in the astronauts' life-support backpacks that enabled them to communicate with one another -- and their controllers, and, in fact, the entire world, back on Earth. That piece of equipment transmitted Armstrong's historic statement as he stepped onto the moon.
But the most glamorous and visible piece item my company supplied to Apollo was the small television camera used to send back to Earth images from the moon's surface as the astronauts galloped around the lunar surface kangaroo style to collect rock samples, plant an American flag and perform other duties. Who could ever forget those ghostly images -- limited in sharpness by bandwidth constraints -- as astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin became the first earthlings to move about on another planetary body?
From my perspective, the history of the Apollo Project can be viewed in two segments. The initial years after President Kennedy's charge to the nation seemed to drag endlessly, given the enormous scope and complexity of the job undertaken by the aerospace industry.
Then came the tragic accident on Cape Canaveral in early 1967, when three astronauts perished in a fire while sitting in an Apollo Command Module conducting tests. That event produced delays and made the lunar landing seem as distant as, well, the moon.
But in the fall of 1968, the moon-landing program sped ahead on an accelerating pace of missions. In early October, the first Earth orbit of a manned Apollo Command Module took place.
Then in late December, in a startling step forward, an Apollo Command Module with three astronauts aboard lifted off from the Cape, circled Earth a few times, then rocketed into an orbit around the moon. That was the thrilling mission when, on Christmas Eve, the astronauts read the account of creation from the Bible while RCA's camera sent back images of the moon's desolate surface.
That success was followed in March 1969 by an earth orbit mission during which both Apollo spacecraft -- the Command Module and Lunar Module -- were manned and performed exercises in earth orbit, including a rendezvous and docking of the two spaceships.
Next, in May, the Command Module and Lunar Module were sent into orbit around the moon. Once there, two of the astronauts detached the LM and flew within 50,000 feet of the moon's surface before returning to dock with their mothership for the return to Earth.
That mission was the final step leading to the moon landing on July 20, 1969 -- four decades ago Monday. What is amazing is that, in a matter of months, the program went from just one spaceship flying in earth orbit to men landing on the moon and leaving their footprints in the lunar dust.
It was a hectic but exciting time for all concerned -- one that made each of us, however small our role, proud of taking part in the historic achievement that freed mankind from the confines of Earth.