_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [65]
From atop its gantry, Apollo 11 is seen beginning its journey to the moon. (NASA).
Inside our NBC broadcast studio, Russ Ward and I thought the walls and ceiling would crash onto our shoulders, but the shaking building held and we kept shouting into our microphones and Gloria and Jimmy Stewart screamed and hollered along with all the people now crowding our wall-wide window for the best view.
Apollo 11 pushed through Max Q while below, the million-plus crowd was seeing a river of fire eight hundred feet long. The energy trail Saturn V left in the thin atmosphere created shock waves that danced in ghostly displays.
Inside Columbia, Armstrong and crew were standing by for the “train wreck.” At this point, the forces of gravity had them weighing four times what they did at launch. The five big rocket engines that made up the first stage had compressed the Saturn’s three stages and Apollo’s two stages like an accordion. But those mighty engines were shutting down. The sudden cutoff threw the three astronauts forward in their seats. The accordion stretched out and then compressed again, and then the astronauts heard metallic bangs and a mixture of clunks and clangs as explosive bolts blew away the now empty stage. They were forty miles high and sixty miles down range, climbing faster than six thousand miles an hour, and they heard more bangs and clangs from the second stage below as ullage rockets fired to settle the propellants in their tanks. Then, the second stage lit off and kicked the astronauts back in their seats with the new increase in acceleration.
The second stage burned and burned and once eleven minutes had passed, Apollo 11’s astronauts were 115 miles high, moving faster and faster, when the second stage emptied its tanks and went silent. Again the moon-bound crew snapped forward in their harnesses, only to be pushed back again as the third stage lit.
Two minutes later, the third stage shut down and the mooncraft raced around Earth at 17,300 miles per hour. Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin exchanged broad grins, and Neil Armstrong released his harness.
For the next two-and-a-half hours Apollo 11, still attached to its third stage, circled Earth with its crew taking the pulse and status of all its systems, the ones the astronauts would need to reach the lunar surface. Then, the words they wanted most to hear came up from Mission Control: “Apollo 11, you’re go for trans-lunar injection.”
That was it, boy. TLI. Trans-lunar injection, their tickets to the moon. Aldrin and Collins held up gloved thumbs in celebration. They ran through a final checklist and once again lit the fire. The third stage reignited, hurling back a magnificent plume of violet flame.
When they reached the speed needed to break free from Earth’s gravity, 24,200 miles per hour, they were on their way.
They were grinning like kids in a down-home swimming-hole. Even Armstrong.
THIRTEEN
The Landing
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stared through their helmet visors in wonder, mesmerized by the lifeless face of the moon rushing toward them. They were in their landing craft Eagle, standing with booted feet spread slightly. Each astronaut was sealed within the protective layers of his personal, pressurized spacesuit and helmet.
Flying backward with their bodies tipped toward the silent lunar surface below, they would soon fire the rocket in the descent stage beneath their feet. They would be aiming for a touchdown on a waterless ocean named the Sea of Tranquility.
Back on Earth, near a city called Houston, a fellow astronaut named Charlie Duke listened to the astronauts’ chatter