The Eagle Has Landed: The Story of Apollo 11 (18 page)

NASA officials were eager to examine the hundreds of photographs taken by Armstrong and Aldrin while on the lunar surface, but fears of biological contamination rendered immediate picture-viewing difficult. NASA Chief of Photography, Richard Underwood, proposed that the film remain undeveloped until the quarantine period was complete. Underwood was quickly over-ruled by NASA administrators, and ordered to develop a method to decontaminate the film, without damaging or destroying the irreplaceable photographs. Consequently, the film rolls were placed in stainless steel containers and exposed to gaseous ethylene oxide, designed to exterminate potential lunar pathogens. As hoped, the still photography was magnificent, and many of those images now grace the pages of history books.

At 9:00 p.m. on August 13, 1969, three weeks after splash down, the
Apollo 11
crew exited the quarantine facility. Over the next several weeks, the conquering heroes were featured guests at numerous banquets and receptions. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were flown aboard
Air Force Two
to New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, where ticker tape parades were held in their honor. In Los Angeles, an official State Dinner honoring the astronauts was hosted by President Nixon and Vice-President Spiro Agnew. Among the distinguished guests attending the black tie affair were 44 Governors, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Ambassadors from 83 foreign nations.

President Nixon formally recognized the historic achievements of the
Apollo 11
crew: “It has been my privilege in the White House, and also in other world capitals, to propose toasts to many distinguished people, to Emperors, to Kings, to Presidents, to Prime Ministers, and yes, to a Duke, and tonight, this is the highest privilege I could have, to propose a toast to America’s astronauts.”

On August 16
^th
, 300,000 people jammed the streets of Houston for a parade honoring the
Apollo 11
crew. That night, a crowd of 45,000 gathered in the Astrodome to celebrate the triumphant lunar mission. Frank Sinatra was among the featured entertainers, serenading the joyous crowd with
Fly Me to the Moon.

The
Apollo 11
crew soon departed on a six-continent
Giant Leap Tour,
otherwise known as
Operation Giant Step.
Greeted with international acclaim, the astronauts and their spouses traveled to 23 countries over the course of 45 days.

Amidst the post-mission celebration, the astronauts occasionally encountered unpleasantness. At Marquette University, the
Apollo 11
crew was pelted with eggs and tomatoes by an angry mob of Vietnam War protestors.

On September 16, 1969, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins addressed a joint session of Congress. The astronauts presented the Senators and Congressmen with a pair of American flags that had traveled to the Moon and back—one each for the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The numerous accolades received by the
Apollo 11
astronauts were justifiable, etching their names in the annals of history. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins seemed largely unfazed by the publicity, and would remain forever grateful for the opportunity afforded to them. The
Apollo 11
crew viewed their historical achievement as simply a call to duty.

Perhaps the single best tribute came from the pen of Michael Collins. While still in quarantine aboard the
USS Hornet,
Collins made a secret visit to the command module. On the capsule’s cockpit wall, he wrote: “Spacecraft 107—alias
Apollo 11
—alias
Columbia.
The best ship to come down the line. God Bless her. Michael Collins, CMP.”

.

EPILOGUE

O
n November 19, 1969, four months after Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot on the Moon,
Apollo 12’s
lunar module touched down in the
Ocean of Storms,
only 600 feet from the unmanned
Surveyor
probe that had landed there in 1967. Astronauts Alan Bean and Pete Conrad spent over 31 hours on the lunar surface.

The
Apollo 12
mission was barely underway, when complications arose. Just 36 seconds after lift-off, at an altitude of 1,859 meters, the
Saturn V
rocket was struck by lightning. Fifty-two seconds later, lightning struck the rocket a second time. The spacecraft’s electronic systems immediately went haywire, leaving the crew in total darkness, before the back-up system restored power.

On April 11, 1970,
Apollo 13
was launched from Cape Canaveral. After traveling some 200,000 miles from Earth, mission commander James Lovell radioed Mission Control with the now famous words: “Okay, Houston. We have a problem.”

A ruptured oxygen tank in the service module forced cancellation of the lunar landing and threatened the lives of the crew. Lovell and his crewmates, John Swigert and Fred Haise, had to conserve electricity and water, utilizing the lunar module’s power and oxygen supply during their perilous, but ultimately successful swing around the Moon and return home.

On February 5, 1971, the
Apollo 14
lunar module landed in the
Frau Mauro
lunar highlands. Forty-seven-year-old Alan Shepard, America’s first space voyager, served as mission commander, having returned to active duty following surgery to correct vertigo— a medical problem that had grounded him for nearly 10 years. Shepard and fellow astronaut Ed Mitchell became the fifth and sixth men to walk on the Moon. The image of Shepard hitting a golf ball on the lunar surface with a modified six iron is a permanent fixture in
Apollo
lore.

Apollo 15’s
LM landed on the Moon on July 30, 1971. The lunar rover, a battery-powered dune buggy-type vehicle, folded and stored inside the base of the LM, was used for the first time during this mission, allowing the astronauts to travel greater distances from the landing site. During their lunar excursions, spread out over three days, astronauts David Scott and Jim Irwin launched a small satellite into lunar orbit, providing NASA scientists with a new means of collecting data about the Moon. The
Apollo 15
astronauts were the first crew to forego the post flight quarantine; repeated tests had established that there were no infectious
Moon bugs.

On April, 20 1972, the
Apollo 16
lunar module landed on the Moon. Astronauts Charlie Duke and John Young set up an observatory on the lunar surface, providing NASA scientists with a bird’s eye view of the Milky Way and beyond. During their three-day-stay on the Moon, Duke and Young collected 208.3 pounds of rocks and soil samples.

The sixth and final manned lunar landing occurred on December 11, 1972. The
Apollo 17
mission lasted for 12 days, during which time astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt collected 240 pounds of geological specimens.

Apollo
missions
18, 19,
and
20
were cancelled due to NASA budget cuts.
Apollo’s
demise was directly related to economic, philosophical, and political issues. Liberals believed congressional expenditures should be diverted from lunar exploration to address social ills. New York Congressman Ed Koch echoed the sentiments of many fellow lawmakers: “I just can’t for the life of me see voting to find out whether there is some microbe on Mars, when in fact I know there are rats…in Harlem apartments.”

At the same time, many Conservatives championed fiscal restraint and a shift from the big-government,
Great Society
mentality of the 1960s. Supporters of the burgeoning
environmentalist movement
also chimed in, alleging that the by-products of science and technology were destructive to the ecosystem.

The general public’s long-standing fascination with lunar missions waned near the end of the
Apollo
program. After
CBS
preempted a popular prime time series to televise the
Apollo 17
launch, the network was inundated with complaints from angry viewers.

When
Project Apollo
was cancelled, the United States had not yet fully extracted itself from the costly and futile war in Vietnam. With so many competing agendas, space dollars became scarcer. In 1965, NASA’s annual budget had been 5.25 billion dollars; by 1972, funding for the space program had shrunk to 3.3 billion dollars.

After scrubbing the final three
Apollo
lunar missions, the Nixon Administration devoted the lion’s share of space appropriations to the Space Transportation System (STS), which would later become known as the Space Shuttle.
Apollo 17
astronaut Eugene Cernan remains the last man to have walked on the Moon. In 1976, the Soviet Union’s
Luna 24
became the last unmanned vehicle to land on the Moon in the 20
^th
century.

In the 40 plus years since the
Apollo 11
mission, the United States, Soviet Union, Japan, India, and the European Space Agency have continued to launch unmanned spacecraft into lunar orbit. In 1994, an American space probe,
Clementine,
orbited the Moon and generated the first global lunar topographical map.

In 1998, another American spacecraft, the
Lunar Prospector,
began orbiting the Moon with highly sophisticated molecular detection equipment. Utilizing neutron spectrometry, the unmanned probe discovered excess hydrogen in the Moon’s Polar Regions—suggesting the possibility of hidden water stores on the lunar surface.

On June 18, 2009, the 79 million-dollar Lunar Crater Observation Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was launched from Cape Canaveral, entering into lunar orbit, 31 miles above the Moon’s pock-marked surface. On October 10
^th
of that same year, the
Centaur
portion of the spacecraft (roughly the size of a sports utility vehicle) separated from its
Atlas V
rocket, and crashed into the Moon’s surface at the
Cabeus
crater. Traveling at a velocity of 5,600 miles per hour, the spacecraft generated a hole, 100 feet in diameter, at impact. The resulting dust cloud rose six miles into the lunar sky, allowing the LCROSS to analyze its contents. The plume’s content included 220 pounds of ice, equivalent to 26 gallons of water.

“We always think of the Moon as dead, and this is sort of a dynamic process going on,” University of Maryland astronomer Jessica Sunshine enthusiastically reported.

Further exploration by India’s
Chandrayaan-1
lunar orbiter detected an estimated 600 million tons of frozen water in vast reservoirs at the bottom of craters near the Moon’s North Pole. The ice deposits, permanently shaded from sunlight, are estimated to contain 100 times more water than previously thought. The stores of frozen water, two and one-half times the volume of the Great Lakes, are large enough to cover the entire lunar surface in a three-feet-deep sea.

The existence of water on the Moon bodes well for future lunar exploration and colonization. According to NASA geologist, Paul Spudis, lunar water can be purified for drinking purposes and also used to generate oxygen: “Now we can say, with a fair degree of confidence, that a sustainable human presence on the Moon is possible.”

Many space enthusiasts long for establishment of a permanent lunar space colony. Moon colony supporters cite the need for a lunar launch pad, which could be used to fire missiles at asteroids and comets threatening to collide with Earth, and also provide mankind a safe haven in the event of Armageddon. Unless more compelling and less far-fetched arguments are offered, the prospect of lunar colonization will be a tough sell to American tax payers.

Nonetheless, many Americans still dream of one day returning to the Moon. On October 28, 2009, a prototype of NASA’s 21
^st
century lunar launch rocket blasted-off from Cape Canaveral. The successful launch of the 327-feet-tall, 425 million-dollar
Ares-I-X
was part of
Project Constellation;
an ambitious plan to transport the
Orion
crew capsule on manned missions to the Moon, Mars, and possibly other planets.

America’s hopes for future manned lunar exploration were dealt a powerful setback on February 1, 2010, when President Barack Obama announced the cancellation of
Project Constellation.
The 100 billion-dollar funding for lunar exploration was instead diverted to future NASA rocketry development.

At the end of the space shuttle program in 2011, the United States became dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry American space crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS), for at least seven years. The United States will reimburse Russia 51 million dollars for each astronaut launched into space; considerably more than the 35 million dollars Russia charges private citizens. As of 2012, Russia undertakes 40 percent of all global space launches.

The demise of the space shuttle was predicted to send economic shock waves throughout the Cape Canaveral area. In early 2010, Florida’s Brevard County anticipated a loss of 23,000 jobs after the shuttle stopped flying; 9,000
direct
jobs at the Kennedy Space Center, and 14,000
indirect jobs
in retail businesses, hotels, and restaurants.

What is America’s future for manned space exploration? In September of 2011, NASA unveiled its 30-story Space Launch System, which will be powerful enough to take astronauts to the Moon and beyond. The 18 billion-dollar rocket, featuring five space shuttle main engines augmented by strap-on boosters, is designed to lift 77 tons of cargo into space. The rocket will carry a modified version of the
Orion
space capsule, originally designed for the defunct
Constellation
program.

NASA plans to launch an unmanned Space Launch System rocket in 2017. If this flight proves successful, a manned launch is thought to be feasible by 2021.

In the four plus decades since the conclusion of
Project Apollo,
the American space program has largely shifted its focus away from the Moon. At the same time, the much ballyhooed Space Race has been supplanted by a cooperative spirit. In May of 1972, President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin signed a five-year
Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes.
On July 17, 1975, an American
Apollo
capsule and a Soviet
Soyuz
spacecraft docked in Earth’s orbit. The American and Russian crews exchanged handshakes and gifts, and also practiced joint docking maneuvers. The joint space mission marked a rare warming of Cold War tensions between the former Space Race competitors.