FLIGHT DAY 2

While Apollo 11 had been in Earth orbit it had been able to communicate through the standard facilities of the Manned Space Flight Network, but once it had set off for the Moon NASA added in the large antennas of the Deep Space Network at Goldstone in California, Madrid in Spain and Canberra in Australia, which, being located at 120-degree intervals in longitude, provided continuous communications. Ron Evans, the CapCom on the ‘graveyard’ shift, never had occasion to talk to the crew. Biomedical telemetry indicated that the astronauts had been active for some time when McCandless made contact. ‘‘Apollo 11, this is Houston.’’

‘‘Good morning, Houston,’’ replied Armstrong immediately.

As flight day 2 began, almost 23 hours into the mission and with Houston time approaching 8 am on Thursday, 17 July, Apollo 11 was 93,085 nautical miles from Earth and its velocity had slowed to 5,638 feet per second.

McCandless immediately read up the flight plan updates and the status of the spacecraft’s consumables. As part of the post-sleep checklist, Collins gave a crew status report: he and Armstrong had slept for 7 hours, but Aldrin had gained only 5.5 hours. While the crew freshened up and prepared breakfast, McCandless read a selection of lighthearted news provided by the Public Affairs Office. ‘‘From Jodrell Bank, England, via Associated Press: The big Jodrell Bank radio telescope stopped receiving signals from the Soviet Union’s unmanned moonshot at 5.49 Eastern Daylight Time today. A spokesman said it appeared Luna 15 ‘had gone beyond the Moon’. Another quote from a spokesman for Sir Bernard Lovell, Director of the Observatory: ‘We don’t think it’s landed.’ Washington, United Press International: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew has called for putting a man on Mars by the year 2000, but Democratic leaders replied that priority must go to needs here on Earth. Agnew, the ranking government official at your launch, apparently was speaking for himself, and not necessarily for the Nixon administration. Laredo, Texas, AP: Immigration officials in Nuevo Laredo announced, Wednesday, that hippies will be refused tourist cards to enter Mexico unless they take a bath and get haircuts. Huberto Cazaras, Chief of Mexican Immigration in Nuevo Laredo, said authorities in popular tourist spots had registered complaints about the hippies. Next is from UPI in Washington: The initial reaction to President Nixon’s granting of a holiday, Monday, to Federal employees so they can observe a national day of participation in your lunar landing was one of surprise. Rodney Bidner, AP, London: Europe is Moon-struck by your mission. Newspapers throughout the continent filled their pages with pictures of the Saturn V rocket lifting off to forge Earth’s first link with its natural satellite. The headline-writers taxed their imaginations for words to hail the feat. ‘The greatest adventure in the history of humanity has started’, declared the French newspaper Le Figaro. It devoted 4 pages to reports from the Cape and has diagrams of the mission. The tabloid Paris Jour proclaimed, ‘The whole world tells them, bravo’. The communist daily L’Humanite led with the launch picture, and devoted its entire back page to an enthusiastic report describing the countdown and launch, the astronauts’ wives and families, and some background for the lunar activities. Hempstead, NY: Joe Namath officially reported to the New York Jets training camp at Hofstra University, Wednesday, after a closed-door meeting with his team mates to discuss his differences with the pro-football commissioner, Peter Rozelle. London, UPI: The House of Lords was assured, Wednesday, that a midget American submarine would not ‘damage or assault’ the Loch Ness monster. Lord Nomay said he wanted to be sure anyone operating a submarine in the Loch ‘would not subject any creatures that might inhabit it to damage or assault’. He asked that the plan to take a tissue-sample with a retrievable dart from any monster be done without damage and disturbance. He was told that it was impossible to say if the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act would be violated unless and until the monster was found.’’

And with that, it was back to work. McCandless provided feedback to Collins regarding the difficulties he had encountered in locating the substellar point during the P23 sextant sightings of stars during the previous day’s deep-space navigation. At the 24-hour point, Collins halted the PTC, Houston uplinked a new state vector based on tracking by the Manned Space Flight Network, and Collins performed a P52 to realign the platform prior to recalibrating the sextant as a preliminary to resuming the P23 exercise. Now at a distance of 102,436 nautical miles, Earth had a much smaller angular diameter and its horizon was sharper. He started with the star Alpheratz because it was near the horizon, simplifying the task of checking whether the automatic alignment correctly identified the star’s substellar point. Although the axis of measurement was clearly perpendicular to the horizon, the star itself was not apparent. ‘‘Everything looks beautiful except there is no star in sight. It is just not visible.’’

McCandless announced the belated realisation that the star was occulted by the body of the LM, and recommended a different attitude.

While Collins performed the manoeuvre, Jim Lovell called, ‘‘Is the commander aboard?’’

‘‘This is the commander,’’ replied Armstrong.

‘‘I was a little worried. This is the backup commander still standing by. You haven’t given me the word yet. Are you Go?’’ Lovell was reminding Armstrong that if he was not feeling up to the mission, he was willing to take his place – in jest, of course, as an exchange was impossible following launch.

‘‘You’ve lost your chance to take this one, Jim.’’

‘‘Okay. I concede.’’

Collins now announced that in the second attitude the axis of measurement was rotated 90 degrees from that needed to measure the elevation of the star. “I’m going to hold right here for your next suggestion.’’

Charlesworth decided that they should curtail the P23 exercise, and prepare for midcourse correction 2. Initiated at 026:44:57.92 at a distance of 109,245 nautical miles from Earth while travelling at 5,033 feet per second, the 2.91-second burn of the SPS engine slowed the spacecraft by 20.9 feet per second to reduce the closest approach to the Moon from the initial 175 nautical miles to the desired 60 nautical miles.

“We saw about 87 or 88 psi chamber pressure,’’ reported Armstrong, referring to the SPS. This was rather low. “I’d like you to look at that on the ground.’’

McCandless said he would pass on the result of an engineering analysis of the telemetry. Two hours later, he confirmed that the chamber pressure had been stable at 94 psi, which was acceptable. Further analysis established that the performance of the engine during both burns matched that of the acceptance trials, and that the discrepancy was merely inaccurate calibration of the onboard gauge.3 As the crew worked through the post-burn checklist, McCandless said, “we played the recorded television back last night, after you all turned in for your rest period, and the pictures came out quite well’’.

Having abandoned the P23 exercise, Collins began to re-establish PTC. He was impressed that the rotational axis had remained stable through their sleep period. While the computer worked to damp out oscillations, Lovell provided angles for the high-gain antenna, which was one of Aldrin’s tasks. “You may have to repeat some of that, James,’’ Collins warned. “We have got a LM guy taking care of the high – gain right now, and he’s got his head out the window.’’

“I understand,’’ said Lovell. “I had trouble on Gemini 12 with him, too.’’

“Hey, Jim,’’ Aldrin called, “I’m looking through the monocular now and, to coin an expression, the view is just beautiful. It’s out of this world. I can see all the islands in the Mediterranean – Majorca, Sardinia and Corsica. There is a little haze over the upper Italian peninsula, some cumulus clouds out over Greece. The Sun is setting on the eastern Mediterranean now. The British Isles are definitely greener in colour than the brownish green on the Iberian peninsula.’’

“Do you find that the monocular is any good to you, Buzz?’’ Lovell asked.

“It would be nicer if it had another order of magnitude of power on it. Of course, it has a tendency to jiggle around a little bit, and you might want to have some sort of a bracket. There is an anticyclone down in the southern hemisphere, southeast of Brazil, and the diameter of it must be over 2,000 miles across.’’ Then he reported something he had not expected. “I’ve got a comment about the point on the Earth where the Sun’s rays reflect back up toward us. In general, the colour of the oceans is mostly uniform and it’s bright and darker blue except for this circular area that’s about one-eighth of an Earth’s radius in diameter in which the blue of the water turns a greyish colour.’’

Houston would revisit this issue at the start of flight day 4.

“We noticed the same thing on Apollo 8. It’s very similar to looking at a light shining on something like a billiard ball or a bowling ball; you get this bright spot in the blue of the water, and that turns it to sort of a greyish colour.’’ The technical term for this phenomenon was specular reflection.

Aldrin had also been experimenting. “Hey, Jim, the best way to get a steady view through the monocular is to steady it out and set it close in front of your eye, and then you kind of float up next to it so that you’re not touching it at all.’’

“How does it feel to be airborne again, Buzz?’’ Lovell asked.

“I’ve been having a ball floating around inside here – it’s like being outside, except more comfortable.’’

“It’s a lot bigger than our last vehicle,’’ Lovell observed, referring to Gemini.

Collins, the chauffeur, joined in the banter. “Oh, yes. It’s nice. I’ve been very busy so far. I’m looking forward to taking the afternoon off. I’ve been cooking, and sweeping, and almost sewing, and you know, the usual little housekeeping things.’’

“It’s very convenient the way they put the food preparation system right next to the navigation station,’’ Lovell said, implying that Collins could do everything from his position in the lower equipment bay.

“Everything is right next to everything else in this vehicle,’’ Armstrong noted, meaning that the designers had done well to squeeze everything into such a small volume.

With the spacecraft’s attitude stabilised perpendicular to the ecliptic, Collins initiated the PTC roll. As he did so, they crossed the point where they were equi­distant between Earth and Moon, 112,386 nautical miles from each. However, as they were still slowing down, they were by no means half-way in terms of time. As Earth drifted by, Collins took the opportunity to take a look for himself. “I’ve got the world in my window for a change, and looking at it through the monocular it’s really something. I wish I could describe it properly. The weather is very good. South America is coming around into view, and I can see all the way down to the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego.’’ With that, Earth drifted from his field of view. Aldrin promptly pointed out that he was waiting to pick it up in the sextant for a magnified view.

“It sounds like one of those rotating restaurants!’’ McCandless said.

The mention of a restaurant prompted them to start lunch.

“Is that music I hear in the background?’’ McCandless asked.

“Buzz in singing,’’ Collins replied.

“Houston,’’ Armstrong called, “we’re just looking at you out our window here, and it looks like there’s a circulation of cloud that just moved east of Houston over the Gulf and Florida area. Did you have any rain this morning?’’

“Our report from outside says it’s raining now. It looks like you’ve got a pretty good eye for the weather there!’’

“Well, it looks like it ought to clear up pretty soon,’’ Armstrong advised.

After lunch, Armstrong and Aldrin reviewed LM activities, and Collins did the routine chores of purging contaminants from the fuel cells, topping up the charges of the batteries, dumping waste water and exchanging the lithium hydroxide filter that absorbed the carbon dioxide of the astronauts’ exhalation.

A telecast was scheduled for later in the afternoon, and the astronauts decided to conduct another system test without announcing the fact. After several minutes, McCandless called, “Eleven, Houston. Goldstone reports that they are receiving a television picture coming down. It’s a little snowy, but a good television picture.” “We’re just testing the equipment up here,’’ Armstrong explained.

“Ask if they can read the numbers,’’ Collins prompted. The view was showing the DSKY, and he wanted to know if the display was readable, as a measure of the image quality.

“What numbers are you referring to?’’ McCandless asked.

“Well,” Collins sighed, “I guess if they can’t see any numbers, it’s kind of a lost cause!’’

“We want to know what numbers, before we ask them,’’ McCandless said. Collins realised the misunderstanding. “I’m showing them the DSKY.’’

After conferring, McCandless reported, “They can read the numbers, ‘VERB’, ‘NOUN’, ‘PROGRAM’, and the ‘COMPUTER ACTIVITY’ light is flashing. ‘‘Very good. Thank you.’’

Without providing commentary, the crew, handing the camera back and forth, aimed it through window 4 at the overhead window of the LM, through window 2 at the docking target, and then provided close-up views of the main control panel of the command module.

The picture was snowy because it was transmitted through the omnidirectional antennas, which could not provide the signal strength of the high-gain antenna, and the spacecraft was just about at the limit for transmitting television in this manner. For the telecast due later in the day they were to halt PTC in order to maintain the high-gain antenna pointing at Earth.

As the flight control teams switched shifts, McCandless handed over to Duke. ‘‘How’s the White Team today?’’ Collins enquired.

‘‘Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.’’

Collins, on the left side, braced his arms against the bulkhead ‘above’ his head to maintain his feet against the wall of the lower equipment bay. ‘‘Have you got any medics down there watching telemetry? I’m trying to do some running in place here, and I’m wondering just out of curiosity whether it brings my heart rate up.’’

‘‘We see your heart beating.’’

Armstrong, in the centre, joined in.

‘‘Look at Armstrong’s and Collins’s and see if they go up any,’’ Collins called. ‘‘We’re running in place up here. You wouldn’t believe it.’’

‘‘I’d like to see that sight,’’ Duke replied. ‘‘Why don’t you give us a television picture of that?’’

‘‘I think Buzz is trying,’’ Collins said. ‘‘Have you got it?

‘‘It’s coming in at Goldstone, but we don’t have it here in the Control Center.’’ ‘‘I’m afraid this isn’t going to help out the PTC very much!’’ Collins reflected. ‘‘I don’t know if it’s a vibration or what it is, but it makes the pitch and yaw rate needles on the FDAI oscillate a little bit where we jump up and down.’’

‘‘Goldstone say they see you running there, Mike. You’re about a 96 heart beat now.’’

“That’s about all that’s reasonable, without getting hot and sweaty.” They had only one change of clothes, one for the trip out and the other for the trip home.

Aldrin then aimed the camera through window 5 at Earth. At 31 hours into the mission, Apollo 11 was 121,158 nautical miles out, and travelling at 4,613 feet per second.

“For this television program coming, you might give some thought to how you want us to stop PTC for the best high-gain angle,’’ Collins suggested. Also, it’d be nice if you could stop us at such an attitude that we’ll have Earth out of one of our windows.’’

“Boy,” announced Aldrin, “you sure get a different perspective of the cabin in zero-g. Right now, Neil has got his feet on the forward hatch, and not only can he reach all five windows with his arms but he can also reach down into the lower equipment bay.’’

“Sounds like Plastic Man to me,’’ laughed Duke.

“I’m hiding under the left-hand couch, trying to stay out of his way,’’ Collins chipped in.

“Good idea, Mike,’’ Duke agreed. He then specified an attitude for the telecast that would both provide a good line of sight for the high-gain antenna and position Earth in the left-hand window. In fact, since the recommended attitude would hold the primary axis perpendicular to the ecliptic, Collins would be able to establish it simply by halting the roll.

When Duke said the weather over the Houston area had cleared, as Armstrong had predicted, Collins took a look through the sextant. “I can see that the coastline is clear; those clouds have moved inland. It looks like the southeastern part of the country is socked in, but California looks nice. The San Joaquin Valley shows up as a real dark spot with a lighter brown on either side of it. You can’t tell that it’s green; it looks just sort of dark grey, or maybe even real dark blue.’’

“How does the Mojave look?’’ Duke asked. “Is it clear?’’

“Yes – as usual.’’

“Can you pick out Edwards in the sextant?’’

“I can see an F-104 taxiing out for takeoff on the runway,’’ Collins joked.

“That’s super!’’

“They almost always have a 104 taxiing!’’ Collins explained.

“Hey, Charlie,’’ Aldrin called, “what’s the latest on Luna 15?’’

“TASS reported this morning that it has entered orbit close to the lunar surface, and everything seems to be functioning normally.’’ Nevertheless, the Russians had not confirmed that Luna 15 was to attempt to land, let alone that it was to scoop up a sample for return to Earth; they never announced missions in advance.

The flight plan called for a telecast starting at an elapsed time of 34 hours (i. e. 6.32 pm in Houston) and lasting for 15 minutes. After terminating PTC, they began to transmit, and this time Mission Control was configured to view ‘live’. The telecast began with a long shot of Earth. ‘‘This is Apollo 11, calling in from about 130,000 miles out,’’ Armstrong announced. ‘‘We’ll zoom our camera in slowly and get the most magnification we can.’’ Although the quality of the image using the high-gain antenna was excellent, Duke requested a description. ‘‘We’re looking at the eastern

Pacific Ocean, and in the top half of the screen we can see North America, Alaska, United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America, but South America becomes invisible just off beyond the terminator, or inside the shadow. We can see the oceans with a definite blue cast; white bands of major cloud formations across the Earth; the coastline of the western US; the San Joaquin Valley; the Sierra range; the peninsula of Baja California; and some cloud formations over the southeastern US. There’s one definite mild storm about 500 to 1,000 miles southwest of Alaska, and another very minor storm at the south part of the screen, at probably 45 degrees or more southern latitude. We can pick out the browns in the landforms pretty well. Green doesn’t show up very well, but there is some showing along the northwestern coast of the United States and Canada.’’

“The whites are distinct, but on this monitor the landmasses appear to be just a darker greyish colour rather than a brown,’’ Duke said.

“It’s true that we don’t have the depth of colour at this range that we enjoyed at 50,000 nautical miles out,’’ Armstrong said. “But the oceans still are a definite blue and the continents are generally brownish in cast, although they’re tending more towards grey now than they were at the closer range.’’

“I’ve just looked at another monitor,’’ Duke announced, “and sure enough, the browns are coming in a lot more distinctly on the Eidophor that we have up on our screen in the Control Center.’’

On the front wall of the Mission Operations Control Room there was a 10-foot by 20-foot main screen in the centre, with two 10-foot by 10-foot screens on each side. Television could be displayed using an Eidophor projector, a technology that was developed in the 1950s to create theatre-sized television images. Its optical system was similar to a conventional movie projector, but instead of spooling film it had a slowly rotating disk covered with a thick oil, and a scanning electron beam created electrostatic charges on the oil, deforming its surface in such a way that when light was passed through the oil it produced an image with light and dark areas. As the disk rotated, a blade discharged and smoothed the surface, readying the oil for the next cycle. The modern Eidophors could show colour television using sequential red, green and blue projections.

At this point, Collins, who was holding the camera while Armstrong provided commentary, interjected, “Okay, world, hold on to your hat. I’m going to turn you upside-down.’’ He slowly rotated the camera through 180 degrees.

“That’s a pretty good roll,’’ Duke complimented.

“I’m making myself seasick, Charlie. I’ll just put you back rightside-up where you belong.’’ He completed the circle.

“We would like to see some smiling faces up there, if you could give us some interior views,’’ Duke prompted. “I’m sure everybody would like to see you.’’ The astronauts’ wives especially.

The interior lights had been switched off in order to prevent reflections on the window through which the camera was viewing. Once the lights were reactivated, the camera was swung inside to display Collins. “Hello there sports fans. Buzz is doing the camera work now. I would have put on a coat and tie if I’d known about this ahead of time.’’

“Is Buzz holding your cue cards for you?” Duke enquired.

“We have no intention of competing with the professionals, believe me. We’re very comfortable up here, though. We have a happy home. There’s plenty of room for the three of us, and I think we’re all learning to find our favourite little corner to sit in. Zero-g is very comfortable, but after a while you get to the point where you sort of get tired of rattling around and banging off the ceiling and the floor and the side, so you find a corner somewhere and put your knees up or something like that to wedge yourself in.’’ Armstrong tended to remain in a couch and Aldrin spent much of his time in the lower equipment bay, but Collins, who was operating the CSM, was for ever flitting about.

The view switched to Armstrong. “It’s a real good picture we’re getting here of Commander Armstrong,’’ Duke complimented.

“Neil’s standing on his head again, trying to make me nervous,’’ said Collins. Armstrong had his feet up by the apex. “Directly behind his head are our optical instruments, the sextant and the telescope that we use to take sightings with.’’

“It’s a beautiful picture,’’ Duke enthused. “The clarity is outstanding.’’ In fact, the quality was even better than on Apollo 10. Unfortunately, this led the audience to expect to view the moonwalk in similar style.

Aldrin aimed the camera at one of his star charts, which he had taped up over window 5 to serve as a sunshade.

“He doesn’t really need the charts,’’ Collins noted. “He’s got them memorised. They’re just for show.’’ Aldrin had even brought a slide rule in case the computer should fail!

Aldrin explained that with Earth visible in one side window and the Sun in the other, the spacecraft’s current attitude was perpendicular to the ecliptic. From their viewpoint, the Moon was approaching the Sun in the sky and facing its darkened hemisphere towards them, which was why they could not show the audience their destination. He handed the camera to Armstrong, grasped wall handles using both hands, and gave a demonstration of weightless exercises.

Pointing out that it was approaching dinner time in Houston, Collins went to a locker in the lower equipment bay. “We’ll show you our food cabinet here.’’

“We see a box full of goodies there,’’ said Duke.

“We’ve got all kinds of good stuff,’’ Collins said as he pointed to the groups of packets. “We’ve got coffee up here at the upper left; and various breakfast items – like bacon in small bites; beverages like fruit drink; and over in the centre part we have all kinds of things. Let me pull one out here, and see what it is.’’ He read the label. “Would you believe you’re looking at chicken stew? All you have to do is add 3 ounces of hot water and wait for 5 or 10 minutes. Now we get our hot water out of a little spigot up here with a filter on it that filters out any gases that may be in the drinking water, and we just stick the end of this little tube in the end of the spigot and pull the trigger three times for 3 ounces of hot water and then mush it up and slice the end off it and there you go, beautiful chicken stew.’’

“Sounds delicious,’’ Duke said.

“The food so far has been very good,’’ noted Collins. “We couldn’t be happier with it.’’ Because that part of the cabin was dimly illuminated, he had been using a small torch to show the food packs. He showed how he could leave the torch in a stable orientation to illuminate the locker in order to have both hands free to sort through the packets. “The problem is that no matter how carefully you let go, you bump it just a tiny little bit and set it in motion.” He tapped one end of the slowly rotating torch with his finger, and set it spinning as a demonstration of rotation in weightlessness.

Aldrin pointed out that in preparing for the telecast, they had realised the cable for the television camera (which they had not seen in training) was probably long enough to run through the tunnel into the LM, and said that they intended to try to televise the LM inspection scheduled for the third day. Duke said that would be a great idea.

Armstrong pointed the camera back at Earth and operated the zoom to make it diminish. “This is Apollo 11 signing off.”

“Thank you for the show,” said Duke. At about 35 minutes, it had lasted twice the scheduled duration.

As they had not departed from an attitude perpendicular to the ecliptic, all that Collins needed to do to reinstate PTC was to resume the roll.