One Small Step Read online

  If I would execute what we call a “direct abort” in the next two hours, we could be home in about 32 hours. But we would have to do two things: we’d have to jettison the Lunar Module, which I’m thinking of using as a lifeboat, and we’d have to use the main engine. And we still have no clue what happened onboard the spacecraft. The other option: we’ve got to go around the Moon; and it’s going to take about five days but I’ve only got two days of electrical power. So, we’re now at the point of making the decision: which path are we going to take? My gut feeling, and that’s all I’ve got, says: “Don’t use the main engine and don’t jettison this Lunar Module.” And that’s all I’ve got is a gut feeling. And it’s based, I don’t know—in the flight control business, the flight director business, you develop some street smarts. And I think every controller has felt this at one time or another. And I talked briefly to Lunney, and he’s got the same feeling.

  Then John Aaron said: “There’s no way we’re going to make five days with the power in the Lunar Module. We got to cut it down to at least four days, maybe three.” So, we were now moving ahead. The team split up and moving in several different directions. I had one team working power profiles. I had another group of people that was working navigation techniques. I had a third one that was integrating all the pieces we need. My team picked up the responsibility to figure out a day to—a way to cut a day off the return trip time.

  During Apollo 9, we did a lot of testing of the Lunar Module engine while the two spacecraft were docked together. And immediately as soon as we recognized we had to perform a maneuver to speed up our return journey, that’s the set of procedures we fell back to. We updated these procedures, based on the situation at hand. My team came back on console and executed these procedures, and increased our velocity on return by almost 1000 feet per second. Changed the landing point from the Indian Ocean now to the South Pacific. We sent the aircraft carrier Iwo Jima to the new landing location.

  Apollo 13 was now in survival mode. Everything on the spacecraft had to be conserved for reentry. All the power they had was about the equivalent of a 200 watt light bulb. Everything else had to be powered down. Another problem occurred: the lithium hydroxide canisters that removed harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air were in the shutdown Command Module and the canisters in the Lunar Module were running out. The problem was that they were not interchangeable. The canisters in the one wouldn’t fit in the other.

  Mattingly: We had another consumable. I don’t remember anybody forecasting that we would have a CO2 problem, but as soon as the light came on, we recognized it. In the movie [Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks] there’s this really neat scene where they’ve got a tableful of stuff and Robert Smylie dumps a bag of what they had in space on the table, and he says: “Figure something out.” Well, the real world is better than that. The real world is that we had had a simulation, and I think it was on Apollo 8, I believe, where the simulation supervisor had jammed one of the cabin fans with a screw that floated loose. I think they had broken some electrical connections or done something of that ilk. The conclusion, you know, the simulations were done with the rule that the simulation may be four hours, but it’s not over until everything is under control. So sometimes those things got to be rather lengthy simulations. The solution that they came up with was that they could make a way to use the vacuum cleaner in the Command Module with some plastic bags cut up and taped to the lithium hydroxide cartridges and blow through it with a vacuum cleaner. So, having discovered it, they said: “Okay, it’s time for beer.” Well, on 13, someone says: “You remember what we did on that sim? Who did that?” So in nothing short, Joe Kerwin showed up, and we talked about: “How did you build that bag and what did you do?” Oh, it was easy. Solving that problem took an hour, maybe two. Because it’s real now, they made him build a demonstration model, so that took another 30 minutes. Then, “How are we going to tell these guys in the cockpit?” And the answer was, if you just said go tape your lithium canisters to the suit hose, that’s probably all they had to say.

  Haise: The vehicle had gotten very cold. We were a little warmer than freezing but not a lot. And that kind of wore on you after a while. We did not have adequate clothing to handle that situation. We did put on every pair of underwear we had in the vehicle. Jim Lovell and I wore our lunar boots, the boots we would normally put over our spacesuit boots on the lunar surface.

  Due to the cold there were fears about what the extensive condensation would do to the controls in the Command Module when it was time to power it up before reentry. Fortunately it worked. Many believe that was due to the extensive modifications made after the Apollo 1 fire.

  Safely Back Home

  Prior to reentry they jettisoned the Lunar and Service Modules. One side of the Service Module had been ripped out by the explosion. The last task was reentry. The Command Module entered the atmosphere.

  Kranz waited: There isn’t any noise in here. You hear the electronics. You hear the hum of the air conditioning occasionally. In those days, we used to smoke a lot. Somebody would only hear the rasp of the Zippo lighter as somebody lights up a cigarette. And you’d drink the final cold coffee and stale soda that’s been there. And every eye is on the clock in the wall, counting down to zero. And when it hits zero, I tell Kerwin: “Okay, Joe, give them a call.” And we didn’t hear from the crew after the first call. And we called again. And we called again.

  And we’re now a minute since we should’ve heard from the crew. And for the first time in this mission, there is the first little bit of doubt that’s coming into this room that something happened and the crew didn’t make it. But in our business, hope’s eternal, and trust in the spacecraft and each other is eternal. So, we keep going. And every time we call the crew, it’s: “Will you please answer us?” And we were one minute and 27 seconds since we should’ve heard from the crew before we finally get a call. And a downrange aircraft has heard from the crew as they arrive for acquisition of signal. And then almost instantaneously from the aircraft carrier, we get: “A sonic boom, Iwo Jima. Radar contact, Iwo Jima.” And then we have the 10-by-10 television view. And you see the spacecraft under these three red and white parachutes, and the intensity of this emotional release is so great that I think every controller is silently crying. You just hear a “Whoop!”

  Back on Earth they reenacted the drama. Fred Haise recalled what happened:

  It was interesting that when Jim Lovell and I, after the flight, went just out of curiosity—went back into a Lunar Module simulator, we could not replicate the time of that activation in … the nice, calm conditions of a ground simulator that we had done in flight.

  Lovell: NASA will claim that they are absolutely not superstitious. But I’ll bet you my last dollar, they’ll never name another spacecraft 13.

  Spurred on by the Apollo 13 setback the Soviets tested their own version of the lunar lander in Earth orbit in 1970 and 1971, but there was nothing to be gained by it. It took them a while to realize it.

  TIMELINE

  1969 November 14 US launches Apollo 12 successfully to the Moon

  1970 February 11 Japan launches its first satellite, making it the fourth nation with a space rocket powerful enough to launch satellites into Earth orbit, after the USSR, the US and France

  April 11 Apollo 13 blasts off on a mission to the Moon

  April 13 Four-fifths of the way to the Moon, Apollo 13 is crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen bursts. Despite this, the three-man crew manage to return to Earth

  April 17 Apollo 13 crew splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean

  April 24 China launches its first satellite

  “I cried a little”

  THE RETURN OF ALAN SHEPARD

  SOYUZ 9, APOLLO 14 AND SALYUT 1

  1970–1971

  Alan Shepard, the first American in space and a veteran of the Mercury and Gemini programs of the early 1960s, feared that his opportunity to fly in space again had been dashed by illness. However, he not only
overcame this problem but also found himself in charge of a mission to the Moon—Apollo 14. The start of the 1970s also saw the Russians launch the first-ever space station.

  The last of the pre–space station Soyuz craft was Soyuz 9. Its crew was 40-year-old Colonel Andriyan Nikolayev as the commander and 34-year-old civilian Vitally Sevastyanov as the flight engineer. It lifted off on June 1, 1970. For Nikolayev, it was his second spaceflight, having flown in space eight years before in 1962 as the pilot of Vostok 3. At the time Neil Armstrong was on an official visit to the Soviet Union. On the night of the launch, at the Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow, he was clearly surprised when his host, cosmonaut Major General Beregovoi, turned on the television to view film of the Soyuz 9 launch, telling Armstrong: “This is in your honor.”

  Soyuz 9 stayed in space for 17 days, exceeding the record set by Gemini 7 in 1965, but the crew displayed the first real signs of fatigue and decrease in working efficiency on their 12th day in orbit. Kamanin wrote in his diary: “Nikolayev and Sevastyanov look somewhat puffy, and listlessness and irritability can be sensed in their actions.” After landing, ground crews reached the cosmonauts and found that they were unable to get out of the ship themselves and had to be carried out. It was decided to cancel the flight of the crew to Moscow Airport. Instead, they rested for a day.

  Kamanin: When I entered the aircraft’s cabin, Sevastyanov was sitting on the sofa. while Nikolayev was at a small table. I knew they were having a hard time enduring the return to the ground, but I had not counted on seeing them in such a sorry state. Pale, puffy, apathetic, without the spark of vitality in their eyes—they gave the impression of completely emaciated, sick people.

  Apollo 14

  The US space effort did not recover from the Apollo 13 accident until January 1971. The cause was found to be relatively simple—a manufacturing fault in one of the liquid oxygen tanks. Alan Shepard, grounded after his Mercury flight due to a medical problem, returned to space and blasted off for the Moon in Apollo 14, having featured in one of the most remarkable stories in spaceflight.

  Alan Shepard had been suffering from Menière’s disease that causes elevated pressure in the inner ear. After NASA grounded him he contemplated his options:

  So there I was, what do I do now? Do I go back to the navy? Do I stick around with the space program? What do I do? I finally decided that I would stay with NASA and see if there wasn’t some way that we could correct this ear problem. Several years went by, there was some medication which alleviated it, but I still couldn’t fly solo. Can you imagine the world’s greatest test pilot has to have some young guy in the back flying along with you? I mean, talk about embarrassing situations!

  It was Tom Stafford who came to me and said he had a friend in Los Angeles who was experimenting correcting this Menière’s problem surgically. And so I said: “Gosh that’s great. I’ll go out and see him.” So he set it up. I went on out there. The fellow said: “Yeah, we do. What we do is we make a little opening there, put a tube in so that it enlarges the chamber that takes that fluid pressure, and in some cases it’s worked.” And I said: “Well, what if it doesn’t work?” And he said: “Well, you won’t be any worse off than you are, except you might lose your hearing. But other than that …” So I went out there under an assumed name, Victor Poulos. The doctor knew and the nurse knew who I was but nobody else knew … So, Victor Poulos checks in and they run the operation … it’s not that traumatic, obviously, because after about a day I was out of there. Of course it was obvious when you look at the big ball of stuff over my ear when I get back home. But NASA started looking at me. And several months, several months, several months went by, and finally they said: “Yes, all the tests show that you no longer are affected by this Menière’s disease.” So there I was, having made the right decision.

  When NASA finally said I could fly again, I went to Deke Slayton who was in charge of astronaut assignments and said: “We have not announced publicly the crew assignment for Apollo 13. I have a recommendation to make.” I had picked two bright, young guys—one of them a Ph.D, and one of them a heck of a lot smarter than I was—and made up a team to go for an Apollo flight. I said: “I would like to recommend that I get Apollo 13, with Stu Roosa as Command Module and Ed Mitchell as lunar pilot.” Deke said: “I don’t know. Let’s try it out.” So we sent it to Washington, and they said: “No, no way.” So we said: “Now wait a minute. Shepard’s got to be at least as smart as the rest of these guys, maybe a little smarter.” And they said: “Well, we know that. But it’s a real public relations problem. Here this guy’s just gotten un-grounded and all of a sudden, boom! He gets premier flight assignment.” So then the discussion went on for several days and finally they said: “All right, we’ll make a deal. We’ll let Shepard have Apollo 14. Give us another crew for Apollo 13,” and so that’s what happened.

  The flight had gone extremely well. We’d had one or two docking problems earlier, a problem with something floating around in the abort switch, which closed as if we were pushing the abort switch closed. All of these were taken care of. Now we’re on our way down, flying up on our backs with the engine pointing that way, slowing down, and getting gradually more steeper and more steeper. We had a ruling that the computer had to be updated by the landing radar; reason being is that while you’re on your back obviously you can’t see the ground, you can’t see the mountains, you can’t see the rocks, or anything. So we had a rule that said if the landing radar was not updating the computer by the time you were down at a level of about 13,000 feet, then you have to abort; you have to get out of there. Well, the landing radar wasn’t working. They called us up and said: “Your landing radar is not working.” We said: “Thank you very much, we’re aware of that.” And then a little bit further on they said: “You know what the ground rule is about aborting if you’re not at 13,000 feet.” Well, yeah we knew that. Finally some bright young man over in the control center said: “Hey your landing radar is working, but it’s locked up on infinity. Have them pull the switch, reset it, and see if it works.” So we pulled the circuit breaker, put it back in, and sure enough the landing radar came on. And shortly after that we got cleared to land with a margin of 1000 feet or so, which was a close thing. As soon as we pitched over there was beautiful Fra Mauro, just the way I had seen it hundreds of times from the scale model. We came on down, made a very, very soft landing. As a matter of fact soft enough so that even though we’d landed in a slight crater, the uphill leg didn’t crush like it was supposed to. We had crushable material in the lining. It was a slight ring wing down perfect landing. We shut off the switches and Ed Mitchell turned to me and said: “Alan, what were you going to do if the landing radar had not been working by 13,000 feet?” I looked at him and I said: “Ed, you’ll never know.”

  Of course the first feeling was one of a tremendous sense of accomplishment, I guess if you will. A tremendous sense of realizing that, “Hey, not too long ago I was grounded. Now I’m on the Moon.” There was that sense of self-satisfaction immediately. But then that went away, because we had a lot of work to do. But I’ll never forget that moment. Another moment which I will never forget is after Ed had followed me down and we had set out some of our equipment, taken the emergency samples, we had a few moments to look around, to look up in the black sky—a totally black sky, even though the Sun is shining on the surface it’s not reflected, there’s no diffusion, no reflection—a totally black sky and seeing another planet: planet Earth. Now planet Earth is only four times as large as the Moon, so you can really still put your thumb and your forefinger around it at that distance. So it makes it look beautiful; it makes it look lonely; it makes it look fragile. You think to yourself, just imagine that millions of people are living on that planet and don’t realize how fragile it is. I think this is a feeling everyone has had and expressed it in one fashion or another. That was an overwhelming feeling in seeing the beauty of the planet on the one hand but the fragility of it on the other. Then I cried a littl
e.

  The First Space Station

  The first of the USSR’s space stations was launched on April 19, 1971, by a Proton rocket. Called Salyut 1, it was the first of a series of nine single-module space stations. They were launched over a period of 11 years to 1982 to investigate the techniques and problems of lengthy stays in space as well as to perform a wide variety of experiments in the microgravity conditions of orbit. In a way the single-core Salyut stations were stepping stones, allowing space technology to develop from engineering development modules to larger, more complicated space stations designed for long-duration occupancy. Ultimately they paved the way for the Mir space station and the International Space Station currently in orbit.

  But whatever its technological legacy would eventually become, Salyut 1 was the scene of the worst ever tragedy in orbit.

  Soyuz 11 (right) docking in orbit with the Salyut 1 space station on June 7, 1971.

  TIMELINE

  1970 June 1 Russia launches Soyuz 9 during a visit to the Soviet Union by US astronaut Neil Armstrong

  July 22 Russian Venera 7 lander transmits data from the surface of Venus

  1971 February 4 Apollo 14 lander Antares descends to the Moon surface with Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell on board

  April 19 Russians launch Salyut 1, the first orbital space station

  Ten to 15 seconds of agonizing consciousness

  DEATH IN SPACE

  SOYUZ 10 AND 11, SALYUT 1 AND 2

  1971 AND 1973

  The Soviets’ attempts to successfully rendezvous their Soyuz spacecraft with the orbiting Salyut space station as a prelude to landing on the Moon were proving to be disastrous. Finally, a tragic accident during the reentry of Soyuz 11 heralded the cancelation of their lunar landing ambitions.