Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11

by James Donovan

He was less than four years out of flight school and had only two hundred and thirty flight hours under his belt, and he was a passenger in every sense of the word during his 108-minute ride; the entire mission was controlled from the ground and automatically. There were manual controls, but the numeric code to unlock them was placed onboard in an envelope to be opened only in an emergency, since Gagarin’s superiors weren’t sure how a human would react to extended weightlessness. He didn’t need the instructions, but because his capsule came down over land, Gagarin ejected at about twenty thousand feet and parachuted the rest of the way, a detail that would remain hidden until 1971.

Despite the increased criticism and apathy toward it, the Apollo program continued, though NASA’s budget, adjusted for inflation, was about to start shrinking. It was still massive—for 1966, it was 4.4 percent of the federal budget—but the message from Congress appeared mixed; they were essentially saying, Go ahead and land on the moon, but don’t count on another program of equal size after that. More than anything, what kept NASA going was its commitment to a beloved leader cut down in his prime less than three years into his administration, a president who had been indifferent to the space effort at first but who had come to embrace it, at first for political purposes, then with genuine enthusiasm. His death had only strengthened that promise, and the people of NASA and others in government would keep it, despite the naysayers in Congress and the scientific community who said that the dangers of manned spaceflight outweighed its benefits and that machines and robots could do the same things as their human counterparts and more—and for a lot less money.

During the craft’s seventeenth revolution, ground control attempted to land it, but retrofire did not achieve the proper orientation. On the next orbit, Komarov managed to make a precisely timed manual retrofire and survived reentry through the atmosphere. But his parachute lines became entangled, and Soyuz 1 hit the ground near the edge of the Ural Mountains on the Kazakhstan border. Komarov died on impact, and the retro-rockets blew up, leaving his body a small, black, molten mass. Soyuz 2 was canceled, and the tragedy caused the Soviet program to pause and undergo its own reassessment. Jim Webb suggested that “full cooperation” between the United States and the Soviet Union might have helped save some or all of the two countries’ lost spacefarers. Komarov’s remains were displayed in an open-casket funeral—he had requested it before the flight and had told others the spacecraft wasn’t ready—then interred in the Kremlin Wall, close to Korolev. NASA sent condolences, but privately, many in the agency were relieved. The war might have been a cold one, but it was still a war.

And if it wasn’t possible and they didn’t come back, there was a plan for that too. Frank Borman, who had retired from the astronaut corps to become NASA’s liaison with the White House, suggested to Nixon’s speechwriter William Safire that he prepare a speech for the president in case the mission went badly and Armstrong and Aldrin were left stranded on the moon. Safire composed a short address that began, “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace”; it ended with an homage to lines written by Rupert Brooke, a British poet who fought in World War I: “For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.” The president would telephone each of the new widows before the statement. Afterward, a clergyman would treat their deaths as a burial at sea and commend their souls to “the deepest of the deep.”

Everyone in Mission Control was silent except for Carlton, who called out, “Thirty seconds,” and Duke said, “Thirty seconds,” but Armstrong was coming down and fuel was not a factor for him anymore; if the engine quit, they would just fall to the ground. He figured the compressible landing gear could absorb a fall from thirty or forty feet. “Drifting forward just a little bit—that’s good,” said Aldrin. They were moving left when a blue light flashed on the control panel: LUNAR CONTACT. One of the probes had touched the surface. Aldrin said, “Contact light.” Armstrong said, “Shutdown,” and quickly turned off the engine—the back pressure could cause an explosion. Aldrin said, “Okay. Engine stop.” Neither of them felt the touchdown, but they had stopped moving. Armstrong watched, fascinated, as dust particles continued to race out to the horizon, which appeared surprisingly close, and then disappeared over it. Except for the glycol pumps, it was silent. At 2:17:39 p.m. Houston time, Armstrong and Aldrin grinned at each other and shook hands firmly, then checked to make sure that everything, especially the engine arming control, was off. Duke half collapsed onto his console in relief and said, “We copy you down, Eagle.” “Engine arm is off,” said Armstrong. “Houston, uh…” He waited a couple of seconds, and then with added spirit, he said, “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”