Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [25]
We docked with Mike at 5:35 p.m. (EDT), nearly four hours after lifting off from the Sea of Tranquillity The sound of those latches snapping shut as Mike secured the Eagle to the Columbia was one of the sweetest I’d ever heard. Neil and I vacuumed up as much moondust as we could, so we would be able to get into the command module without carrying too much of it in from the lunar module. No one knew the effects the dust might have on our skin, lungs, or blood, so Mission Control didn’t want us to drag along any more of it than necessary.
Once we were certain it was safe to do so, Mike unsealed the access tunnel between the LM and the command module, and we opened the hatch. It was great to see Mike’s smiling face at the other end of that tunnel!
We carefully transferred the rock boxes and the cameras’ film magazines, and then Neil and I went back into the Eagle for a final look to make sure we’d gotten all that we needed to get out of it. We knew we were saying good-bye to anything we left inside the LM. Our home on the moon would not be making the trip back to Earth with us. Before leaving lunar orbit, we would cut the Eagle loose, this time letting it fly on its own around the moon for what we thought might be hundreds of years. In fact, it crashed on the moon shortly after its fuel and batteries ran out. But this was no time to be sentimental. We still had a long journey ahead of us.
We prepared to leave lunar orbit, firing an engine burn on the backside, while out of radio communication with Houston. I had barely slept in more than three days, and had been running on adrenaline for the last two days at least. Now, as I sat in the command module, I could feel my body winding down. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep all the way back to Earth, but we still had several critical moves to make before we could relax.
The first came up soon enough, when Mike guided us into the Trans-Earth Injection burn, the extra push that would consume five tons of propellant in less than two minutes, boost our speed by 2,000 miles per hour, and, most important of all, break us free of the moon’s gravitational pull, sending us on our way back to Earth. Once again, there was no room for error; we had only one chance to get this right. If we failed, we’d share the fate of the LM, orbiting the moon until we ran out of fuel and batteries, and eventually crashing into the barren gray surface we had just left.
Mike eyed the guidance computer as he counted down, “Three, two, one …” barely breathing. The Columbia’s engines flared and ignited, just as we had hoped, right on the mark. Twenty minutes later we emerged from the back side of the moon for the last time. Once that maneuver was done, we could watch the moon getting smaller and smaller in our windows. I leaned back and closed my eyes. We were on our way home.
THE THREE-DAY journey back to Earth’s upper atmosphere was relatively uneventful. On the last night before splashdown, we took the opportunity to share some prepared remarks with the world via a live television broadcast. The words I chose to share remain deeply meaningful to me:
We’ve come to the conclusion that this has been far more than three men on a voyage to the moon. More still than the efforts of a government and industry team. More, even, than the efforts of one nation. We feel that this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown. Neil’s statement the other day upon first setting