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By Root 1414 0

of our activities took place within a hundred feet or so of the Eagle. We were the moon’s first explorers, so on this mission we stuck pretty close to home. Just a short distance away from the LM, we found a spot to put up the American flag. But getting the flagpole to stand in the lunar surface was more difficult than we anticipated. The pole itself was hollow, and we were trying to push it down into the lunar “soil” that was made up of millions of years worth of asteroid impacts, all densely packed down into a hard surface. But the soil wouldn’t compress, because there was no air or moisture in the dust. Inserting the flagpole was almost like trying to punch a hole in a bunch of tiny rocks. For the first time a shot of panic seared through me. Since childhood I had seen pictures of great explorers planting their flags in their new worlds. Would I be the first to plant the flag and have it fall over?

Finally we secured the pole in the surface, and extended the Stars and Stripes along the telescoping arm so it wouldn’t droop down in the airless, breezeless plain of Tranquillity But the arm would not telescope out all the way, which, by accident, made the flag look furled as though waving in the nonexistent wind. As we raised the flag, almost instinctively I took a few steps back and proudly saluted our brave banner. The camera was still running, so the whole world saw me offer the salute. Neil caught it on the Hasselblad, as well. I still think it’s the best-looking flag up there, out of all six that would be planted during subsequent Apollo missions.

While Neil collected an assortment of rock samples, my next task was to test the various modes of locomotion in the lunar gravity. We knew the television camera was aimed at us and sending live pictures from its pedestal, so I moved into the camera’s field of view to begin experimenting with a variety of steps. I started jogging around a bit, and it felt like I was moving in slow motion in a lazy lope, often with both of my feet floating in the air. One of the pure joys of being on the moon was our somewhat lightfooted mobility. But on the moon, inertia seemed much greater than on Earth. Earthbound, I would have stopped my run in just one step with an abrupt halt. I immediately sensed that if I tried that on the lunar surface, I would end up facedown in the lunar dust. Instead, I had to exercise a little patience and use two or three steps to wind down to a halt. I cut to the side like a football player, skipped straight forward, and then tried the two-legged kangaroo hop—which looked fun, but proved tiring to do for long with the extra effort exerted. When I moved my arms more vigorously, I could nearly lift my feet off the ground with an easy buoyancy.

I almost wished that Neil and I had brought a baseball to test a few tosses back and forth to further demonstrate the effects of lunar gravity At the end of our EVA, when we jettisoned some of the materials from the LM to reduce our weight, we noticed how they fell in a slow, lazy trajectory as we tossed them onto the surface. Later Apollo missions would engage in a few more experimental pastimes, such as Alan Shepard hitting a golf ball. The experiments on this first mission, however, had a more serious tone altogether.

About that time, Bruce McCandless, who was communicating to us from Mission Control, said that President Nixon wanted to speak to us. The President wants to talk to us while we’re on the moon? I thought. I didn’t know that was going to happen. My heart rate, which had been low the entire flight, suddenly jumped. I could not help feeling a tinge of stage fright, but Neil had a fairly good, albeit short, conversation with the President. I remember Nixon saying, “Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world…. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one.” Our commander-in-chief invited us to visit him in the Oval Office after the mission, an invitation we were delighted to accept, assuming all went well and we could get off