For all the celebrations surrounding the
first manned lunar landing of Apollo 11
1969 what is forgotten today is just how
close they and the other Apollo missions
flew to the edge of disaster. Apollo 11
came within seconds of aborting the
landing because they had overshot the
landing area and we're running low on
fuel.
This was only one of several issues with
the Apollo missions that arose that
could have led to the loss of the
mission and the crew, though as it turned out
only Apollo 13 came close to this
actually happening. This does obviously
excludes the Apollo one accident where
the crew died because of the fire as
they rehearsed the launch on January
27th 1967. Apollo 12 was struck by
lightning twice during the launch and
although it knocked out several
electrical systems the main navigation
systems continue to work and the rest of
mission proceeded successfully. On
Apollo 16 the engine backup system
malfunctioned on the command module as
it orbited to moon which resulted in the
flight being one day shorter but Mission
Control determined that they could work
around the fault
instead of aborting the mission. Even
Apollo 11 was just a test flight, it was
building upon the previous missions
result and achievement. It was to be the
first attempt at a manned landing and
was driven as much by the desire to
achieve President Kennedy's directive to
put a man on the moon before the end of
a decade as it was to beat the perceived
threat of the Soviets getting there
first, US national pride was a steak if
either of these a failed. As Apollo 11 was
to be the first landing NASA wanted to
make sure that it would be as event free
as possible, so they chose to land on the
largest flattest part of the moon they could
find, officially known as "Site 2" which
was 10 mile wrong elliptical area
in the northern sea of tranquility. The
idea was the flight computer on board
the lander would guide it down from 50,000
feet to 500 feet above the surface when
the Armstrong would
then take over the controls for the
final landing. However Armstrong became
aware early on that things were not
going to plan and then they'd already
flown over the landing site and were
heading to a boulder-strewn area known as
West crater about the size of a football
field. He assumed control from the
computer and manually flew over West
crater and another small crater before
landing on the outer edge of "Site 2"
about four miles from it's intended target
and uttering the immortal words
"Houston, Tranquillity Base here – the Eagle has landed."
As he was making the final
descent, Mission Control estimated that
they had just 25 seconds of fuel left at
the time they landed,
although this was later revised to 45
seconds after the mission. NASA rules
required that mission be aborted if they
were less than 20 seconds of fuel left
because if they didn't there was a
danger but they might not be able to
perform an emergency ascent. To abort the
mission they would have to start an
emergency ascent protocol which would
separate the ascent module from the
lander which they would fly back to
the command module. It would take between
two and four seconds for the emergency
abort to complete any ascent engine to fire.
All the time they would still be
traveling alongside the descent stage, if
they didn't get far enough away from the
descent stage then there was the danger
of any remaining rocket fuel exploding
when it crashed into the surface and the
flying debris could hit and damage the
escaping module. The other great danger
of the mission was but no one really
knew if the ascent module would be able
to take off as it not being tested on
the moon up until the mission. If this
was the case then the crew would be
stuck on the moon. It's not known if the
crew had suicide pills with them in case
they were stranded because there would
be no chance of any rescue. NASA did not
have any standby rockets or landers ready.
30 years after the first landing a
previously secret memo was discovered at
the American National Archives
showing what NASA planning to do in the
case of such an event. In the event of a
worst-case scenario NASA planned to cut
communications with the stranded crew
and they will be left to die as they ran
out of oxygen or committed suicide,
something but the crew later said they
had no knowledge of. Just two days before
the Apollo 11 mission Nixon's speech
writer William Safire was tasked with
creating for condolence speech that will
be delivered by the president in the
event of such a tragedy occurring.
unlike the Apollo one disaster, there would
be no way for NASA to examine the scene
close up in detail to determine what
happened if the lander of crashed on the
lunar surface. NASA had discussed using
one of the four remaining Ranger probes
which had six TV cameras onboard. The
Rangers didn't fly over the moon taking
video instead they picked areas to image
and then transmitted the images back to
earth as it approached and crashed into the lunar
surface.
Ultimately this idea was dropped in
favor of using a Hasselblad film camera
onboard the command module taking images
at a low altitude of 10 miles above the
surface. This would give a resolution of
down to one foot, enough to see what
happened to the lander and if the crew were
outside.
Although the commander taking the images
would have just 10 seconds to locate and
photo the scene from 10 miles above and
traveling at orbital speed around the
moon.
Luckily no major tragedies occured with
remaining apollo mission and neither
NASA's final plan nor the President's
speech were needed and as always thanks
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