July 20, 1969

July 20, 1969

 

Today marks the 50th anniversary of what may be fairly characterized as the most momentous act to have ever taken place in human history, namely Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully landing and then walking on the moon.

The scale of the endeavor was huge. Some 400,000 people were employed by either NASA or its many contractors. The effort to build the flight control computer was a significant factor in the development by the integrated circuit and the modern computer industry. By another estimation, one million man hours of work were accomplished for every hour of the eight day mission.

Essentially, the first and second stages of the Saturn V rocket were expended in order to put the third stage in an orbit from which it could launch the command module, service module and lunar lander into a moon intercept orbit. Just to clear the launch tower, the point at which control was shifted from Cape Canaveral to Houston, required 4% of the rocket’s fuel load. Ultimately, only the command module, essentially the size of a minivan, would return to earth.

Fairly described as the most alone man in history, Michael Collins remained in the command module while Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the surface. While some half-billion people watched the broadcast, Collins had no way to watch the event.

Had something gone wrong, Collins would have returned to Earth alone. Things could easily have gone wrong. There were fears that the lunar soil, upon contact with the oxygen in the lunar module, would combust.  And that was only one of things that could have gone wrong. Armstrong and Aldrin carried with them suicide pills, and there had already been written for then President Nixon an announcement to be read in the event of mission failure.

But they were successful, and all returned safely to Earth as challenged by President Kennedy.

When I was an undergrad, I was fortunate to be able to take a class on space history from Father Faherty, S.J., who had been an official NASA historian; check out his book Moonport. Not only did he know what had happened, but he knew all of the people involved and as such had great anecdotes about the major players.