Of a Fire on the Moon (9780553390629) (35 page)

But then that discussion was interrupted in order to do an oxygen fuel cell purge—periodically a fuel cell would be shunted over to inactive status and nitrogen flushed through its oxygen or hydrogen pipes in order to clean out the detritus. Reports were then made on the flow rate during purge.

New discussion began of ways to attack the problem of the M-line, but it was again interrupted by a remark from ground that the level of carbon dioxide in the Command Module seemed to be increasing. Had they changed the canister? They had not. Would they then “plan on accomplishing that after P23 is over?” Back to the M-line, where more maneuverings were commenced to offer positions for the telescope and sextant so that they might sight on stars which could fix their position. Let us follow that dialogue for
the next quarter of an hour. It is impossible to comprehend altogether—one would need to work for a year in the Mission Control Room at Houston—nonetheless it has all the authority of discussion at vast distances about small measurements.

But this line of inquiry was interrupted.

Now they resumed efforts to solve the position of the star, the instrument, and the horizon.

So they proceeded, the M-line never getting to parallel. Of course, there were other means of calculating their position. Emphasis now shifted to the midcourse correction. The Service Propulsion Motor, the main motor at the rear of the Service Module, was scheduled to be fired for three seconds. That would be time sufficient to slow their speed by 21.3 feet per second and thereby bring them nearer to the moon on their first orbit two days later. In preparation radios were readjusted. Then the burn took place. For three seconds, the ship now reversed, the astronauts looking toward earth, the motor pointing along the path toward the moon, a quiet churn of rocket fire came back to their ears. A little later, they commented on the readings of chamber pressure in the motor.

Work continued. It is not difficult to conceive of the three men pursuing their details in the small cramped volume of the Command Module, the sunlight glancing through the window, the view of space dark, neuter, numb, blank but glaring except when there is sight of earth. The sounds of the pumps and the ticking of a hundred instruments are in their ears mixed with the sound of static. It is time spent like the sense of time the inner mechanisms of a machine might possess if machines had a sense of time.

So they worked. With ground they discussed the entrance of Verb 66 into the computer, and chatted about the quality of the
TV transmission the night before, then they mentioned the changing of the carbon dioxide filter. Having been obliged to quit Passive Thermal Control in order to set their attitude for the midcourse correction burn, they proceeded now to go back to it. Ground told them to use Quad thrusters Alpha and Bravo, “from a propellant balancing standpoint.” S-band antenna angles next were given. A little later the spacecraft proceeded to report on the view of the Mediterranean and Europe through the monocular optic—as the earth turned, and the telescope swiveled, came descriptions of a cyclone over Brazil and panoramas of Central America, the Caribbean, of Greenland, then the east coast of the United States.

Discussion began again of simpler methods to find stars by which they could check their course. The fiasco with the M-line had not been altogether forgotten. Jokes followed. Since Collins would later remain with the Command Module while Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the moon in the Lem, so Collins had taken on a metaphor for himself: he was the storekeeper of the Command Module, the caretaker, the worrier, the passive sufferer, the little woman—it is the only clue to the deep bite in his competitive pride. “I’ve been very busy so far. I’m looking forward to taking the afternoon off. I’ve been cooking, sweeping, and almost sewing, and you know, the usual little housekeeping things.”

But ground took him up on this to inquire on the condition of moisture condensation on the walls, which in turn suggested the functioning of the hydrogen filter on the hot-water squirt gun. Queries come up on the temperature of the water, reports went back and down on the character of the coffee “not piping hot, but it beats stone-cold coffee.” The progress of Passive Thermal Control was reported up from the ground: “PTC has started and looks good.” Adjustments followed on the oxygen flow transducer.

Well, it was no more difficult for a literary mind to follow these directives, injunctions, parleys and technological negotiations than to crack his way phrase by phrase through
Finnegans Wake
.

Five hours had gone by since the crew had awakened. Now the difference in cabin pressure between the Command Module and the Lunar Module was measured, so too the oxygen flow on the onboard gauge. Further analysis of the after-burn chamber pressure in the Service Propulsion Motor came next. “The SPS is definitely GO, over.”

The food came in plastic bags. Some of it was hard like bread cubes or cereal cubes, cocoanut cubes, peanut cubes, or cheese cracker cubes. Some of the food was wet pack and could be eaten out of the bag, some was freeze-dried, and water had to be inserted through a one-way valve, the bag then kneaded to make cream of chicken soup, or Canadian bacon and applesauce, a species of pot roast, or beef and vegetables, or ham and potatoes. The mash could then be squirted through another valve into the mouth. Obviously most of the chow had a consistency like baby food. Any attempt to eat in other fashion required much care, for in the weightless space of the cabin, food lifted to the mouth by a fork or spoon was in danger of taking off from any sudden move and floating through
the air, later to enmesh itself in the smallest apertures of the instruments, or be inhaled to irritate the lungs. Eating in such valve-and-mash fashion, they were obliged to drink that way as well. Water ran from a dispenser through a seventy-two-inch coiled hose which abutted in a pistol placed between the lips, a button-actuated pistol—one pressed the button and water shot through the barrel into the mouth. A miserable mode by which to eat and drink, yet the food was a considerable improvement over early space flights when there had been nothing but bricks of processed nutrient and water: that original space food had been designed to produce the lowest fecal content. Now the food was better—as a corollary, the post-nutritive disposal substances (how
did
NASA spell shit?) was worse, for there was more of it. The astronauts had the straight embarrassment of squatting in front of one another on a Johnny Camper type of stool. If urine could be conveniently dispensed into a rubber roll-on cuff which fit over the penis and was attached to a one hundred inch flexible hose—that passing in turn to a urine transfer system bag and eventually out the waste-water dump—pure molecules of urea now floating in space—the fecal subsystem had its problems. It was built on bag assemblies, that is to say, inner and outer fecal bags with pouches holding germicide and skin cleaning towels. The rim of the inner bag was covered with cement and a thin plastic cover. The plastic peeled off, the bag was pasted smack on the buttocks. Baby mash for food, and technological diapers for a squat. Afterward, the germicide was put in the inner bag, and both were sealed in the outer bag, then kneaded to work the germicide and break up noxious gases. There were also odor removal vents and deodorant canisters in the cabin.

It was a self-contained universe, everything from cosmic ray detectors to split-membrane traps in the waste disposal compartment to keep those wrapped bags of feces from floating back into the cabin—what a nicety not to dump them in space!