In March of 1966, Neil Armstrong got his first chance to put his training to the test. He was the command pilot of Gemini 8, which was to “dock” or connect with another satellite already in space. This was an important step in the goal of reaching the moon. Why? NASA was designing a two-in-one spacecraft for the moon landing. A small landing device would disconnect from a larger spacecraft, touch down on the moon, and then blast off from the moon’s surface and reunite with the larger craft before returning to Earth.
On Gemini 8, the launch was perfect and so was the docking. Neil described it as “really a smoothie.” But then things went terribly wrong. The spacecraft started spinning, just like in training sessions. Only this time it was for real.
Neil’s copilot, David Scott, relayed the news to NASA officials in Houston. “We have serious problems here . . . we’re tumbling end over end.”
Even after Gemini 8 separated from the satellite, it kept rolling violently, faster and faster. Both astronauts’ vision began to blur. Somehow Neil managed to work the craft’s hand controls. He steadied Gemini 8, but NASA insisted that the craft return to Earth immediately. The mission was over. David Scott would not get to “walk” in space while Gemini 8 orbited around Earth.
The astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and were picked up, safe and sound. But newspapers criticized the mission. One called it a “nightmare in space.” Afterward, Neil was very depressed about not completing the mission. He worried that somehow he had made a mistake. Perhaps NASA would think twice before sending him on future trips into space. But it turned out that the problem was with a faulty thruster, a small rocket engine that provides forward motion. It was NASA’s mistake, not Neil’s.
Neil had a much closer call on May 6, 1968, during a training exercise. He was piloting a vehicle called the “flying bedstead” because it looked a little like a mattress. It had been a routine flight. Neil was less than two hundred feet from landing on the ground. With no warning, the flying bedstead began to spin out of control. Neil had to eject and parachute onto the runway just seconds before the plane crashed and went up in flames. The public sometimes lost sight of the risks involved in the space program. The astronauts and the scientists at NASA, however, never did. That’s why the training and testing was so long and hard.
At the end of December of 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts orbited the moon. The purpose was to search for good landing spots. This was the next-to-last step before landing a man on the moon. The next missions were to perfect the landing device that would separate from the larger spacecraft and touch down on the surface of the moon.
In January 1969, Neil Armstrong was named commander of Apollo 11. The other two astronauts were Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Most of the earlier Apollo crews became good friends during their many months training together. The three men of Apollo 11 worked well together but never grew close. It wasn’t that they disliked one another, but at the end of the day, they got in their cars and drove their separate ways. Then they’d return the next day and resume training.
BUZZ ALDRIN
MICHAEL COLLINS
They worked inside life-size models of their spacecraft and the landing device. Every step of the mission was practiced over and over. NASA engineers in Texas would control much of the flight through computers, but the astronauts were on their own if anything went wrong. Sometimes the engineers would purposely cause errors to test the skills of Neil, Buzz, and Michael.
A Saturn V rocket would launch the spacecraft named Columbia into orbit around Earth and then blast it in the direction of the moon. Once Columbia was pulled into the moon’s orbit, the four-legged landing device (similar to the flying bedstead) could separate and touch down. Neil and Buzz would spend about two and a half hours on the moon while Michael stayed alone in Columbia orbiting the moon.
After a couple of hours on the moon, Neil and Buzz would enter the top part of the landing device and blast off. (The bottom part of the landing device would remain on the moon.) Once they reconnected with Columbia, the astronauts would climb back into the cabin and the return trip to Earth would begin.
That was the plan . . . but would it work? |