Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure (24 page)

Beyond some of the trickiest moments of the trip, Michael was also responsible for keeping the spacecraft on track throughout the flight. This involved learning the intricacies of the guidance and navigation system, particularly the computer. Permanently cosseted and frequently tetchy, the computer nestled at the centre of the system like a giant queen bee, its 'operator error' warning light frequently stinging Collins as he struggled with the complexity buzzing at his fingertips. Only by spending hours in the simulator did he begin to master it. Of the three command module simulators available, the machine in Houston was mostly used for research and Michael principally used the two at the Cape. But from the moment his training began in January he had trouble getting access to any of them. Until March, priority went to the Apollo 9 crew and their backups, with the Apollo 10 prime and backup crews next in line. Collins was part of the fifth flight in the queue. He, Neil and Buzz were only given top priority once Apollo 10 was ready to fly, by which time there were just two months until they themselves were due to launch.

To enter the simulator, Michael climbed a carpeted staircase up to a hatch 15 feet above the ground. Built by North American, inside it closely replicated the command module, complete with images of constellations, the Moon and the Earth visible through the windows.
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Technical equipment and machinery were housed in more than a dozen odd-shaped boxes mounted on the shell of the simulator, each the size of a washing machine. From the outside it looked such a jumble of parts that when John Young first saw it he dubbed it the Great Train Wreck.
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The instrument displays were driven by a mainframe computer, controlled by a team of instructors whose task it was to prepare Collins for any eventuality. As virtual lunar and command modules attempted to rendezvous beside a virtual Moon, the computer kept track of Michael's progress. If the LM failed to reach the surface, or if it got there early or late, or was delayed in its journey back to the command module, the rendezvous would shift from a textbook manoeuvre into one of a number of emergency procedures. Sometimes the command module would need to remain in a high, slow orbit to meet its errant partner while in other situations it would have to fly low and fast. Nevertheless, Collins could only go so far in mounting a rescue attempt. There would be no point in retrieving Neil and Buzz only to find there wasn't enough fuel to get home.
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Collins practised 18 different options, and at the end of each session the instructors told him whether the rendezvous had succeeded before he had run out of time, fuel or both.
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The crew had to complete many mandatory simulations involving Mission Control before they could be said to be ready. With the flight fast approaching, the mission managers began to fear they might not make it.
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The 16 July launch date had been dictated by the need for the Sun to be in the best position to provide ideal lighting conditions during the landing. If necessary, lift-off could be pushed back a month as similar conditions would return in mid-August. But no-one wanted to ask for a delay, and to Deke's occasional questions about progress Michael gave reassuring answers. Privately, however, when they became the next crew to fly Collins felt that they still had a year's work ahead of them.
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Now with free access to the simulator, Michael anxiously sought to get to grips with his rendezvous procedures, entering notes, diagrams and instructions in the 'Solo Book' he would rely on once Neil and Buzz had departed. For each rendezvous option, a checklist had to be written detailing the sequence to be followed when pushing switches and using the computer. In focusing on the most likely scenarios, Michael struggled to find the time to master some of the more obscure alternatives, and as May slipped into June he stayed at the Cape for days at a time, working in the simulator. After each session he would wander over to the instructors and check the 'Collins looks good' light they had fitted to their huge bank of consoles. Usually it was glowing cheerfully. If not, he would switch it on himself.
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The instructors' computer, updated after the McDivitt and Stafford missions, had the final say over everything – until it broke down and stranded everyone in a bout of frustration while an army of technicians battled away at the problem. Sometimes Michael would spend hours going through the early orbital procedures only for the rendezvous itself to be suddenly scrubbed by the computer 'bombing out'.
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With many of the mandatory training exercises still to be completed, Collins yearned to tuck himself away in the simulator every day. But managers, memos and phone messages persistently demanded his attention. NASA's Langley centre – home of the Lunar Landing Research Facility, dangling from its A-frame – invited Collins to fly a full-size replica of the command module that was suspended from wires. Time also needed to be set aside for the centrifuge at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), and for fitting the pressure-suits in Delaware. Publicity photos had to be taken, meetings had to be attended (in various corners of the country), long-lost relatives chasing tickets to the launch had to be answered, and the family in Houston couldn't be ignored. With the training regime pushing ahead at full steam, the only lingering doubt was whether everyone would be ready. In the first weeks of June, Deke asked Neil, Buzz and Mike whether another month would be necessary but each of them stuck to the launch date.

On 17 June, Sam Phillips, the director of the Apollo programme, led a nine-hour flight readiness review at the MSC. Among other things, this focused on whether an attempt to land should continue if communications with Earth were disrupted. The exchange of information was essential. Mission Control managers, led by Chris Kraft, knew that in the event of a crash they would need to have enough data to be able to reconstruct what went wrong. At the end of the meeting, Phillips announced that the preparations were on target and he permitted Apollo 11 to proceed as planned. Collins was elated. Technicians at the Cape could now begin loading the spacecraft with hypergolic fuels. These were so corrosive that if the launch were delayed to August, any last-minute hardware failures could lead to serious problems. The fuel tanks would have to be drained and parts of the vehicle would have to be sent away to be repaired, and no-one knew how long this process might take.
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The debate about aborting the landing if communications were seriously interrupted rumbled on for weeks. Flight director Gene Kranz was asked to write down agreements on the subject, to be added to the rest of the rules for the mission. Writing mission rules was one of the first jobs Kranz had performed while working on the Mercury programme. In meetings held before each flight, Chris Kraft had tried to identify areas of uncertainty so that solutions could be agreed, which were then written down by an assistant. The assistant – Kranz – produced lists of all the agreed decisions, a task he was appointed to two weeks after joining NASA. Looking him in the eye, Kraft had muttered, 'Everyone else is tied up. You're all I've got.'
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At other times, on the instructions of his indomitable boss, Kranz ignored the agreed decision and wrote down what Kraft told him to.
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He put everything in an easily digested format, listing potential problems alongside the appropriate action to be taken.

The list of rules used during the Mercury programme was 30 pages long. By Apollo 11 it was up to 330.
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The first complete version was published on 16 May, and while some rules were virtually written in blood ('if data from the landing radar is not available before the LM descends to 10,000 feet, the landing must be aborted'), others gave the crew room for manoeuvre.
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Each flight controller would only allow a critical phase of the mission to begin if he were sure that the vehicle was measuring up to the rules. If everything was satisfactory, he would say so to the flight director. With a lot of information to be passed to one man by many controllers in a short time, the only way to do this quickly was to offer a simple yes or no – which in NASA jargon became 'go' or 'no go'. Even this could be confusing. After landing on the Moon, did 'go' mean 'OK' or did it mean 'leave'? To prevent the spacecraft launching unnecessarily just seconds after touching down, go/no go would become stay/no stay. The mission rules were supplemented by the flight-plan and associated checklists which together detailed everything that would or could happen throughout the trip. Individual controllers also prepared their own personal books. Kranz was so worried about losing his that he made them instantly recognisable by plastering them with pictures of women from the swimsuit edition of
Sports Illustrated
.
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Following lessons learned during training, new rules were added every week based on agreements between flight controllers, engineers, managers and astronauts. Kranz found that Buzz, who reminded him of an eccentric teacher, 'generally dominat[ed] the crew side of the conversations'.
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He admired Aldrin's intricate grasp of rendezvous trajectories as he gave his forthright opinions to the 'trench', the front-row controllers whom Kranz knew to be a pretty forthright bunch themselves. Neil was more the quiet observer, 'but when you looked at his eyes,' Kranz later said, 'you knew that he was the commander and had all the pieces assembled in his mind.' According to Kranz, the astronaut who spent the most time getting to know the key people in the Mission Operations Control Room was Mike Collins, whom Kranz regarded as 'steady, dependable' with 'a reputation as being extremely competent in his judgement'.
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Working alone throughout much of his training, Mike knew that during the mission the flight controllers would be looking over his shoulder, and he was grateful for their support.

Communication between Collins and the ground, like most components of manned space-flight, relied on procedures developed during Mercury. At launch, messages sent to the crew were transmitted directly from the Cape. But since radio signals travel in a straight line, communications would stop the moment the rocket went over the horizon, less than ten minutes after lift-off. There would be no telemetry from the booster, nor from the spacecraft it was carrying, and Houston would not know whether it was safe to let the crew head towards the Moon. During Mercury an additional transmitter was built on Bermuda, in British territory. But since a rocket travelled round the Earth in an hour and a half it would not be within reach of a single transmitter for very long. A chain of tracking stations was needed around the world.

In seeking to build transmitters at sites across three continents, Kraft and his colleagues suddenly found themselves embroiled in international politics. Dealing with the Brits was one thing, but installing tracking stations with space age telemetry facilities in remote corners of Africa was something else. Seven sites involved the State Department in 'serious diplomatic discussion', as Kraft put it, while two others were in the middle of oceans, and for these NASA needed help from the navy.
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Some of the locations were so remote Kraft felt that 'the word primitive was the accurate description'.
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According to Gene Kranz, late one night in 1962 flight controller Charles 'Skinny' Lewis was driving the two members of his team back to their quarters on Zanzibar when he saw a roadblock made of burning oil drums 'manned by natives not in uniform'
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. Lewis, a former tank commander who before joining NASA had never left America, accelerated towards the barrier and escaped by smashing his way through the blazing obstacles.

By the late 1960s, the tracking stations had been substantially developed and brought within the control of NASA's Manned Space Flight Network. The MSFN permitted a permanent link between Houston and Apollo 11 through a worldwide chain of 17 ground stations, supported by four specially adapted ships and up to eight aircraft. Eight of the ground stations were equipped with 30-foot antennas, capable of tracking the spacecraft in Earth orbit and for some distance beyond. Once the crew had reached an altitude of 10,000 miles, communications would be provided by the more powerful 85-foot antennas installed at Madrid, Canberra in Australia and Goldstone in California. These used a system known as S-band, a single signal capable of simultaneously carrying tracking data, telemetry, voice and television. The spacecraft responded by bouncing the signal back, which helped the ground keep track of its position. As the Earth spun on its axis, at least one of the three powerful antennas would be in sight of the Moon throughout the mission, with each station handing control to the next to maintain a continuous connection.

Voice signals, tracking data and telemetry were passed to Houston via NASA's Communications Network, which linked the ground stations and other facilities through two million miles of landlines and undersea cables. Relying on six intermediate switching centres around the world, and two communications satellites, the network included redundant signal routes to increase reliability. Some remote switching points were triggered automatically whenever the CapCom began to speak. Each time he pressed his microphone button, it emitted a short beep known as a Quindar tone. This prompted the remote site to begin operating, and gave a distinctive sound to transmissions from Mission Control.