Magnificent Desolation Read online

  I almost wished that Neil and I had brought a baseball to test a few tosses back and forth to further demonstrate the effects of lunar gravity At the end of our EVA, when we jettisoned some of the materials from the LM to reduce our weight, we noticed how they fell in a slow, lazy trajectory as we tossed them onto the surface. Later Apollo missions would engage in a few more experimental pastimes, such as Alan Shepard hitting a golf ball. The experiments on this first mission, however, had a more serious tone altogether.

  About that time, Bruce McCandless, who was communicating to us from Mission Control, said that President Nixon wanted to speak to us. The President wants to talk to us while we’re on the moon? I thought. I didn’t know that was going to happen. My heart rate, which had been low the entire flight, suddenly jumped. I could not help feeling a tinge of stage fright, but Neil had a fairly good, albeit short, conversation with the President. I remember Nixon saying, “Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world…. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one.” Our commander-in-chief invited us to visit him in the Oval Office after the mission, an invitation we were delighted to accept, assuming all went well and we could get off this rock.

  EVERY STEP ON the moon was a virginal experience. Exploring this place that had never before been seen by human eyes, upon which no foot had stepped, or hand touched—was awe-inspiring. But we had no time for philosophical musings. Our time on the surface had been designed by Mission Control to be extremely limited—a mere two and a half hours outside the LM, and that included getting out and getting ourselves and our rock samples back inside the lander. There would be time for philosophizing later. Reflecting metaphysically was contrary to our mission. We weren’t trained to smell the roses or to utter life-changing aphorisms. Emoting or spontaneously offering profundities was not part of my psychological makeup anyhow. That’s why for years I have wanted NASA to fly a poet, a singer, or a journalist into space— someone who could capture the emotions of the experience and share them with the world. Neil and I were both military guys, pilots who were accustomed to keeping our feelings reined in. Right now, we couldn’t dally; we had a job to do, a mission to accomplish.

  It was time to deploy a few scientific experiments that NASA planned to have us leave on the moon: the laser radar reflector, the passive seismometer to measure moonquakes, and the solar-wind experiment to catch particles from the sun. I was to erect the last two with their greater complexities, so I set about putting up the foil flag in the direction of the sun to catch the ions of helium, neon, and argon in the solar wind.

  The seismometer experiment was more of a challenge, since it had to be leveled and aligned just right for the readings to be accurate. After moving it around on the uneven surface, pushing dirt aside where necessary, at last it appeared to be level. Apparently the sensors were working just fine. When I made a mistake of walking in front of it, which I shouldn’t have done, it registered the data back on Earth. I hoped that the guys monitoring it weren’t wearing headphones. It probably would have sounded like King Kong’s footsteps in their ears!

  Neil was collecting additional rock samples and putting them in the rock box, so I retrieved the camera from him, and moved on to my next task, the “scuff/cohesion/adhesion” activity. With each step, I purposefully kicked up the lunar dust with my boots. I continued to be intrigued by the dust, as fine as talcum powder. It exhibited a most unusual quality. I must have kicked about a half-dozen sprays or more, and each time the dust flew out in front slightly, landing in a perfect semicircle, every grain spraying out uniformly and equidistantly without any rippling effect. I related my observations to Houston, and thought, This is surreal, how each grain of moondust falls into place in these little fans, almost like rose petals.

  Nearby, with the camera in hand, I searched for a relatively flat area of the surface undisturbed by my dust-kicking, so I could take a photograph of a footprint. Finding a good spot, I first took a picture of the pristine surface; then, right in the middle of that flat area, I put my boot down, and then I moved my boot away and took a picture of that. Framed in the photo was the evidence of man on the moon—a single footprint, showing in perfect detail a reverse mold of the treads from the bottom of my moon boot. That is kind of lonely looking, I thought. So I’d better put my boot down, and then move my boot away from the footprint, but only slightly so it’s still in the fame, and take a picture of that. These were my small contributions to our lunar photography, but that single footprint shot became one of the most famous photographs in history, and a symbol of man’s need to explore.

  NEIL SHOT MOST of the photos on the moon, having the camera attached to a fitting on his spacesuit much of the time while I was doing a variety of experiments. I didn’t have such a camera holder on my suit, so it just made sense that Neil should handle the photography. He took some fantastic photographs, too, especially when one considers that there was no viewfinder on the intricate Hasselblad camera. We were basically “pointing and shooting.” Imagine taking such historic photographs and not even being able to tell what image you were getting. Unlike the digital camera era of today, in 1969 we were shooting on film, typically looking through a small optical opening on the back of the camera that corresponded with what the camera’s lens was “seeing.” But with our large space helmets, such a viewfinder would have done little good anyhow. So, similar to cowboys shooting their sixguns from their hips, we aimed the camera in the direction of what we wanted to photograph, and squeezed the trigger. Given that ambiguity, it is even more of a credit to Neil that we brought back such stunning photographs from the moon.

  One of the most striking photos he took has come to be known as the “visor shot.” It is probably the one photo from our adventure seen more than any other. Indeed, it may be the most familiar photo from any lunar landing, and perhaps one of the most famous photos in history. It is a simple picture of me standing on the rough lunar surface with my left hand at my waist, with the curve of the horizon easing into the blackness of space behind me. But if you look more carefully at the reflection in the gold visor on my helmet, you can see the Eagle with its landing pad, my shadow with the sun’s halo effect, several of the experiments we had set up, and even Neil taking the picture. It is a truly astounding shot, and was the result of an entirely serendipitous moment on Neil’s part.

  Later, pundits and others would wonder why most of the photographs on the moon were of me. It wasn’t because I was the more photogenic of the two helmet-clad guys on the moon. Some even conjectured that it must have been a purposeful attempt on my part to shun Neil in the photos. That, of course, was ridiculous. We had our assigned tasks, and since Neil had the camera most of the time we were on the surface, it simply made sense that he would photograph our activities and the panoramas of the lunar landscape. And since I was the only other person there …

  Ironically, the photography on the moon was one of those things that we had not laid out exactly prior to our launch. NASA’s Public Affairs people didn’t say, “Hey, you’ve got to take a lot of pictures of this or that.” Everyone was interested in the science. So we did the science and the rest of it was sort of gee-whiz. We had not really planned a lot of the gee-whiz stuff that, in retrospect, proved quite important. But those pictures became the storyboard of our adventure that the public got to see and are now in history books.

  The time went by all too rapidly while we were outside the LM, and before we knew it, Houston was giving us our three-minute EVA termination alert. We had to prepare to head back inside. When it came my turn to depart the surface, oddly enough, explorer that I am, I sensed no desire to lengthen our stay. On this groundbreaking first mission, we had planned to limit our EVA, and stick close to the lunar module, rather than explore the low hills on the horizon. Those hills would yield to future exploration, but our mission had been accomplished. With Houston in constant radio contact with us to keep us on our strict time sch
edule, we didn’t worry about the potential hazards of venturing off too far and possibly encountering problems on the lunar surface. We were extremely conscious that we were setting precedents with everything we did, so we were extraordinarily careful to avoid any mishaps. We didn’t want to trip and fall on our faces in front of the whole world.

  According to plan, I was the first to climb up the ladder and reenter the Eagle. I was already on the ladder when Neil called out to me, “Hey, Buzz. Did you forget something?”

  I realized that in our excitement, I had indeed forgotten something—something extremely important to Neil and to me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small pouch that I had carried with me in my spacesuit while on the moon. It contained a patch from the Apollo 1 mission, the mission in which our three friends had died, and whose sacrifice carried a special meaning for us. Ed White had encouraged me to become an astronaut, so to me it was only a fitting tribute that Ed had come along to the moon with me. It also contained two medals commemorating Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov, who had perished, and Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. Also in the pouch was a tiny silicon disk etched with goodwill messages from seventy-three nations, including the Soviet Union, our space rival and nemesis during the Cold War. Then there was a small gold pin in the shape of the olive branch of peace. We had thought long and hard to come up with this universal symbol of peace to include on our mission patch depicting the American eagle landing on the moon. It lent a greater meaning to our mission. I took a long last look at the pouch and tossed it onto the moon’s surface.

  Neil brought over the rock boxes—we later discovered that we had collected an astounding 21.7 kilograms of lunar samples, about forty-seven and a half pounds—and we hoisted them up to the LM on our makeshift pulley system, and stored them in airtight containers. When Neil was safely inside, I closed the hatch to seal us from the harsh lunar environment.

  Once inside, Neil and I helped each other to remove the heavy backpacks and hook up to the Eagles life-support systems. After de-pressurizing the Eagle one last time, we opened up the hatch again and threw out some trash and the backpacks to reduce our weight for liftoff. When the backpacks hit the ground, the people back at Mission Control could hear the impact through the seismometer. They actually said they could detect our prancing around while we were on the lunar surface. It was an exceptionally sensitive seismometer. The laser reflector we set up helps scientists to measure with nearly perfect accuracy the moon’s distance and movement in relation to the Earth. The solar foil that we brought back with us has enabled laboratory analysis of the sun’s electrically charged particles.

  The science was brief, but it was very revealing, and of course the rocks were fascinating. Even though they were quickly collected, and were not documented with photographs because we were in such a hurry, they revealed that the moon was formed differently from how we had surmised beforehand. Following our mission, scientists concluded that a large object in the first billion years of the Earth’s existence hit the planet, blasting pieces of the Earth away, and one such piece became the moon.

  THE MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION of the moon was no longer a stranger to mankind. We came to experience firsthand the utter desolation of the orb’s lifeless terrain. In contrast, the achievement realized by scientific enterprise and teamwork in designing and engineering the rockets that could send two men to land on the moon was magnificent. I could not help marveling that the very first footsteps we had taken, and the footprints we had left on the moon’s surface, would remain undisturbed for millions of years to come.

  3

  HOMEWARD

  BOUND

  IT WAS 1:11 A.M. (EDT) ON JULY 21, BY THE TIME NEIL AND I got back inside the LM and sealed the hatch. We had started this leg of the trip just before 9:00 a.m. the previous day, and we were exhausted.

  The entire time Neil and I were exploring the moon, the third member of our crew, command module pilot Mike Collins, was orbiting the moon all by himself. No human being had ever spent so much time orbiting the moon alone. Making matters worse, during each trip around the far side of the moon, Mike was out of sight and out of radio contact. He was completely isolated, unable to talk with Neil or me on the moon, and unable to talk with anyone on Earth. Mike later commented about his orbital solitude, “I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before.”

  Besides getting us to and from the moon, Mike’s job was to conduct scientific observations and to photograph the lunar landscape. With each orbit around the moon, Mike took more photos, thousands in fact, that would later be used to map mountains and craters and to identify landmarks for future explorers.

  Although the world’s attention focused on Neil and me as we bounded along on the moon, Mike was an indispensable team member. Clearly we could not have accomplished our mission without him. We were looking forward to making our rendezvous with him and Columbia later that same afternoon.

  Back in the Eagle, Neil and I took time to eat—snacking on such tasty goodies as cocktail sausages and fruit punch, since we had no hot food on the LM—and to grab some much-needed rest. The LM had no space for cots or beds of any kind, and we had been so busy we really hadn’t decided who was going to sleep where, so I put my dibs on the floor. Neil said he was going to sit on the ascent-engine cover and lean back, and after rigging up the waist tether for a hammock to hold up his legs, he felt he could sleep okay there.

  The ascent engine cover was where we put the contingency sample of rocks that Neil picked up and put in a pouch in his pocket when he first climbed out, in case we had to make a hasty exit. When Neil and I got back in the LM, we watched carefully to see if the sample was affected by the oxygen in the cabin. Some “extravagant science” people had warned that lunar dust and rock might burst into flames if they were exposed to oxygen.

  Certainly, both Neil and I did not believe that the rocks or dust would combust, and in fact they did not, but the night before the launch, I had met with my uncle Bob Moon, who had come to the Cape for the launch of the flight, and was then going on to Houston to stay with my family during the remainder of the mission. In the course of our conversation, I told Bob that we had attended an unusual briefing that day. “Some harebrained chemist is afraid that lunar rocks and dirt might be combustible once they are introduced to oxygen.”

  “Are you worried about that?” Bob asked.

  “Naah, not at all.” I told Bob that most NASA scientists scoffed at such nonsense, but we would take no chances, especially in light of the Apollo 1 accident. I explained what we planned to do with the rock samples we gathered from the moon’s surface, which was basically to store them in vacuum-sealed, flameproof boxes. But we would take time to place the contingency sample on the ascent-engine cover while we were still in our pressurized suits. Then, as we turned on the oxygen in the cabin, if smoke started to come out of the rock sample, we could still open the hatch and toss it out. All of this was planned, just in case. If any problems ensued, we could dump the samples immediately.

  On the plane back to Houston, the person sitting next to Bob struck up a conversation with him. Bob told him why he was on the trip, and, in the course of the flight, mentioned his conversation with me about the rocks. Turns out that Bob’s seatmate was a reporter— although he never identified himself as such. A few days later, Bob was appalled to see a headline in a newspaper: ALDRIN FEARS LUNAR ROCKS. I didn’t fear lunar rocks; I feared unscrupulous, inaccurate reporters.

  WITH NEIL TRYING to sleep leaning back on the ascent engine cover, I curled up on the bottom of the LM, where I noticed some of the moon dust on the floor. It had a gritty charcoal-like texture to it, and a pungent metallic smell, something like gunpowder or the smell in the air after a firecracker has gone off. Neil described it as having a “wet ashes” smell.

  In my fatigue, I was still thinking about the dust when I noticed something lying on the floor that really did not belong there. I looked closer, and my heart jolted a bit. There in th
e dust on the floor on the right side of the cabin, lay a circuit breaker switch that had broken off. I wondered what circuit breaker that was, so I looked up at the numerous rows of breakers on the instrument panel without any guard protectors, and gulped hard. The broken switch had snapped off from the engine-arm circuit breaker, the one vital breaker needed to send electrical power to the ascent engine that would lift Neil and me off the moon. During our powered descent, this same engine-arm circuit breaker had been in the closed position, pushed in to engage the descent engine for our landing, and once we touched down we pulled it back out, in the open position, to disengage the circuitry and disarm the engine. Somehow, one of us must have bumped it accidentally with our cumbersome backpacks as we moved around in the cramped space preparing to get out of the LM, or as we came back in. Regardless of how the circuit breaker switch had broken off, the circuit breaker had to be pushed back in again for the ascent engine to ignite to get us back home.

  We reported it to Mission Control and then tried to sleep and forget about it—as if that were possible. But we knew Mission Control would help figure out a solution, and if we could not get that circuit breaker pushed in the next morning when we were ready to lift off, then we would have to do something else. For now, they wanted us to leave the circuit breaker out anyhow. So, while Neil and I tried to rest, the guys in Houston debated how we could work around that circuit, in case it had to be left open.