Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure (17 page)

Houston: 'OK. I concede.'

Once Collins had finished working on the navigation exercises, he returned to the business of flying the spacecraft. From the moment TLI ended until the point they entered lunar orbit, the service module engine was tested once and then virtually ignored. Although Earth's gravity was slowing them down, they would soon gain speed once they became vulnerable to the gravity of the Moon. In the meantime, nobody needed to do much actual flying. An exception came at 26 hours and 44 minutes when Collins fired the service module engine for three seconds in order to refine the spacecraft's trajectory. Once the burn was completed he reinstated PTC, and as he did so the spacecraft passed the halfway point between the Earth and the Moon. Because they were still slowing down, it was a statistic that meant little in terms of journey time.

As well as navigation tasks, other chores also had to be performed at regular intervals, including purging the fuel cells contained in the service module. The electricity required to run the spacecraft's computer, lights, instruments and other systems was supplied by three fuel cells, each of which generated power by combining hydrogen and oxygen. When the gases came together they produced water. Since electrons in the gases contained more energy than those in the water, the process released excess energy, about 50 per cent of which could be captured and converted into electricity. Compared to batteries, fuel cells produced several times as much energy per equivalent unit of weight, and better still the water they generated was drinkable.
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Since weight was an important factor, doing away with the need to carry enough batteries and water to last the journey was of great value to the mission planners. In fact so much water was produced, the crew were obliged to dump the excess into space, a routine task that had to be done carefully in order to avoid creating any unwanted momentum. A device attached to the water gun was designed to reduce the hydrogen in the water before the astronauts drank it, but it wasn't always effective and left the crew with wind. At one point the problem got so bad that according to Buzz it was suggested they shut down their thrusters 'and do the job ourselves'.
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As Collins went about his work, he exchanged banter with Houston, where Jim Lovell was still at the CapCom position.

Lovell: 'I said it's a lot bigger than the last vehicle that Buzz and I were in.'

Collins: 'Oh, yes. It's been 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.'

Lovell: 'It was very convenient the way they put the food preparation system right next to the NAV station.'

Armstrong: 'Everything is right next to everything in this vehicle.'

Given the lack of room, nothing triggered as much interest among space fans on the ground as the toilet arrangements. Since there wasn't a toilet, weightlessness made the arrangements primitive, difficult and public. The urine transfer system involved an astronaut peeing into a bag via an interchangeable device that was colour-coded per crewman. In weightlessness it was a difficult process, and spills were frequent. When the bag was periodically vented overboard, the urine formed a vapour around the spacecraft,
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glinting in the sunlight as if a new constellation had been created. This made it difficult to pick out genuine stars, so a P52 could not be performed immediately after a urine dump.

It was the arduous ordeal of defecation that really tested the men's resolve. In a process that took up to an hour, the astronaut would make himself comfortable in the lower equipment bay. While his colleagues two or three yards away contemplated the meaning of life, he would take up a position with a bag, part of which was designed to fit over the hand like a glove. At the bottom of the bag a pocket contained tissue wipes, and at the top a wide lip incorporated a tape that sealed against the buttocks. Afterwards a germicidal liquid would be added to prevent bacteria developing, then once the bag had been sealed the astronaut was required to knead it in order to provide the desired degree of 'faeces stabilisation'. In case all of this wasn't humiliating enough, the bag was then stowed in empty food containers for post-flight analysis. Such bags would be used a total of five times on Apollo 11. The flap at the back of the underwear created an opening that was too small to seal the bag accurately and 'misses' were a common problem on most Apollo flights. Odours were difficult to control, as Jim Lovell discovered during Gemini 7, which he described as '14 days in a men's room'.

The P23 experiment and household tasks took up most of Michael's morning. After lunch, waste water was dumped and the lithium hydroxide filter – which removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – was changed. The crew were then ready to test the TV camera in preparation for a scheduled broadcast. After stopping PTC in order to send a continuous signal, at 6.32pm, 34 hours into the mission, the astronauts began the show. With the spacecraft now moving at 3,000mph, Collins focused on the Earth, 130,000 miles away, before handing the camera to Buzz who filmed his crew-mates in the lower equipment bay.

Collins: 'I would have put on a coat and tie if I'd known about this ahead of time.'

Houston: 'Is Buzz holding your cue cards for you? Over.'

Collins: 'Cue cards have a no. We have no intentions of competing with the professionals, believe me. We are very comfortable up here, though. We do 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 tend to find a little corner somewhere and put your knees up or something like that to wedge yourself in, and that seems more at home.'

Houston: 'Roger. Looks like Neil is coming in five-by there, 11. Mike, see you in the background. It's a real good picture we're getting here of Commander Armstrong.'

Collins: 'Yes, Neil's standing on his head again. He's trying to make me nervous.'

With their flight-suits opened at the neck, white boots protecting their feet and communication wires taped over one ear, the men appeared comfortable and at ease. Buzz aimed the camera at a star-chart hanging over one of the windows while giving the audience an explanation of some its mysteries. Armstrong, taking the camera, then filmed Buzz exercising before inviting the audience over to a locker containing a variety of food. Michael pulled out a pack of chicken stew as an example of the menu on offer. Although
Columbia
's interior was well lit, the lighting was uneven and left many dark nooks and crannies. To look through the food locker Michael needed to use a small torch. At launch, when the crew had been wearing their pressure-suits while strapped into their couches, they had been hemmed in by the grey instrument panels and barely had room to move. Most of the windows had been covered by a protective shroud, and sitting in a gloomy half-light they had been confronted by a vast array of instruments and switches. Now, with the windows uncovered, sunlight flooded the cabin, bouncing off the men's white flight-suits and the bright surfaces of the storage lockers. What had once appeared to be no more than a means of getting from A to B now looked like a bright living space. As the men freely floated about their new home,
Columbia
had the sterile look of a clean, state-of-the-art spacecraft. The era of cramped capsules had been replaced by a taste of the future.

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Apollo 11 was spared the sense of trepidation that had accompanied the Block II command module's first outing into deep space. With the LM running behind schedule, Frank Borman's flight was changed to include a pass around the Moon. Then it was changed again, allowing Borman to spend hours in lunar orbit. At the time, Collins believed it was 'rather far-out'
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to contemplate such ideas before the first Apollo flight had even flown.

While preparing for the mission, in July 1968, Michael had begun to notice something strange. During handball games his legs didn't seem to be functioning normally, his knee would sometimes give way while walking downstairs, and hot and cold water produced abnormal nerve reactions. Finally he turned himself in to the NASA flight surgeon, knowing that as a pilot there were 'only two ways he [could] walk out: on flying status or grounded'.
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He was referred to a Houston neurologist who found that a bony growth in Michael's neck, between the fifth and sixth vertebrae, was pushing against his spinal cord. It was agreed that he needed surgery, despite the implications of the decision to operate. Collins would have to give up his seat on Borman's mission and accept that he was grounded.

Chapter 7
RISKS AND RISKY REMEDIES

Kennedy had said America should commit itself to putting a man on the Moon 'before this decade is out'. There was some discussion as to whether his choice of words demanded the landing be made by 1969 or by 1970. Either way, although it was a challenging deadline, the end of the decade was at least easy to predict.

The Russians, however, remained an unknown quantity. By late 1968, suspicions were growing that they were about to send men into lunar orbit. NASA's slow but sure approach to the redevelopment of the command module threatened to come at a cost as once again there arose the spectre of being beaten into second place. In 1957, the Russians had launched the first satellite; they had put the first man into space in 1961; they sent a woman into space in 1963 and pulled off the world's first EVA in 1965. But in January 1966, the death of chief designer Sergei Korolev temporarily grounded their space programme. For more than a year Russia suspended its flights, and some in America began to suggest that the space-race was no more than a self-inflicted struggle against time.
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During this period the Russians were quietly preparing to return to space. They worked in such secrecy that when cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov launched on 23 April 1967 – beginning Russia's first manned orbital flight in two years – the mission came as a surprise even to Komarov's wife, Valentina. His spacecraft, Soyuz 1, quickly developed technical problems, and when it became clear that he might not survive re-entry Valentina was rushed into the control centre. She was allowed to bid her husband farewell, their final moments of anguish ending only when Komarov, unable to bear any more, asked her to go home.
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After re-entering the atmosphere, the spacecraft's parachutes failed to open and Soyuz 1 plummeted into the steppes before bursting into flames. Komarov took the unenviable title of becoming the first man to die during a mission. His loss was a devastating setback to Russia's space programme. Coming three months after the Apollo 1 fire, it led to a similar period of delay to that experienced by NASA. Not until the autumn of 1968 was Moscow ready to send men back into space – the same time as Houston. The space-race was very definitely back on.

On 18 September, Zond 5, an unmanned probe, flew around the far side of the Moon, carrying turtles, meal-worms and other species. Harking back to the days of Laika, when the Russians sent a dog into space before sending a man, Zond 5 appeared to be a prelude to something more ambitious. CIA warnings, presented to NASA's senior chiefs, suggested Russia was developing a giant lunar rocket,
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these reports fuelling fears that Moscow was about to launch a manned attempt on the Moon. Even if cosmonauts were simply sent on a pass around the far side, this would still be enough to claim that men had been to Earth's nearest neighbour. For NASA, the years of hard work, the loss of the Apollo 1 crew and all the billions of dollars were overshadowed by the prospect of Moscow beating them to it, again. On 26 October, cosmonaut Georgi Beregovoi blasted into Earth orbit aboard Soyuz 3, intending to dock with the unmanned Soyuz 2 which had been launched the previous day. On the face of it, it was a bold mission with objectives that were more adventurous than those of Apollo 7 – which had launched two weeks earlier, on 11 October. Schirra's crew did little more than orbit the Earth. Soyuz 3, however, completed a successful rendezvous and even attempted a docking.

But while Beregovoi's flight essentially resembled a Gemini mission, by demonstrating the reliability of the Block II command module, Apollo 7 took NASA into a new arena of opportunity. Spending 11 days in space, Schirra proved the vehicle was capable of flying to the Moon and back. In fact the hardware out-performed the crew. The astronauts operated a 'watch' system so that one man was awake at any time, but his movements made it difficult for the other two to sleep. Tired and suffering colds, the crew became tetchy and hard to handle. Despite enjoying luxuries unheard of on Gemini, including hot meals and enough room to move about, the astronauts bickered with Mission Control so often that none of them was permitted to fly in space again.

Equipped with a safe spacecraft and a capable rocket, NASA was ready to combine the two in a mission that promised to take the space-race close to the finishing line. As a result of McDivitt's flight being delayed by the problems affecting the lunar module, the flight schedule was rewritten and the next crew pulled forward. In August Frank Borman, a broad-shouldered air force fighter pilot capable of making tough decisions quicker than anybody else, was given command of a daring mission to the Moon.
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The two remaining seats went to Bill Anders and Jim Lovell (who had replaced Collins). Borman's backup crew was also pulled forward, so that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Lovell's replacement Fred Haise found themselves supporting Apollo 8 instead of 9. This meant they now had an unexpected shot at flying Apollo 11. Aldrin became the backup command module pilot, with Haise training to fly the lunar module.
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