Reno Gazette-Journal from Reno, Nevada • Page 12

12A Reno Gazette-Journal Sunday, July 18, 1999 gppollo 11 July 20, 1 969: The first manned lunar landing An ungainly ship called 'the spider' oviet threat posliec I tun- 1 U.So into space race I bSrber resident of a Texas suburb, with black spot on my roses, state of mind unsettled, about to be shot off to the moon. Yes, to the moon." Tense moments On launch day, an estimated 1 million people assembled along Florida beaches and causeways to witness the departure of the 363-foot-tall Saturn 5, the master work of the German rocket builder Wern-her Von Braun and his team at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. After the four-day transit, Collins remained alone in splendid isolation in lunar orbit while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the historic descent in the insectile lunar lander. Suddenly computer alarms began to sound. The mission might have been aborted then, flight officials say, if not for the foresightedness of Gene Kranz's ground team at mission control and the astronauts' steel nerves.

A similar situation had prompted Kranz to abort the landing during a simulation, or dress rehearsal, a few weeks back. As a result, Kranz and a group of computer experts had spent long hours familiarizing themselves with each type of alarm, what it meant and how to respond rapidly. Now the decision to proceed, or not, rested with the team's expert on the lander computer, Steve Bales, age 26. As Aldrin and Armstrong, hustling toward the lunar badlands 240,000 miles away, pressed urgently for information, Bales took just seconds before he decided the system was suffering a task overload but would continue functioning, and blurted, "We're we're 'go' on that, Flight." He was later decorated, along with the crew, at a White House ceremony. When the distracting alarms finally quit and Armstrong focused on the intended landing site looming out his window, he suddenly realized the computer navigation was steering them into a field of potentially lethal boulders along a crater.

He took control and began to fly the lander like a helicopter, searching for a clear spot. The first lunar tourists spent only about two and a half hours actually walking around outdoors. There, they spent a cold, damp and virtually sleepless rest period curled up in their spacesuits, kept awake by adrenaline, spacecraft noises and the light of the long lunar day leaking in. However, less than 22 hours after landing, the Eagle's ascent stage shot itself back into orbit for a successful reunion with the craft that would carry them home to global acclaim. An undertaking that had been born out of the divisions of Cold The lunar lander, nicknamed "the spider" by astronauts, was a unique machine that doubled as a spacecraft and an outpost.

The vehicle had two parts. The top was a crew module that held two men and everything they needed to get the job done computers, radar, oxygen, food and spacewalk gear. To sleep, the astronauts slung hammocks inside the tiny craft. Staying clean was hard moon dust covered everything. The bottom of the craft was a four-legged lanaing platform that also served as a launch pad to start the ride back home.

It held extra equipment such as the lunar rovers or "moon buggies" that were used by astronauts on Apollo 15,16 and 17. A number of books have been published on the space program and the Apollo project. Among them are: For adults "A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts" Andrew L. Chaikin (1994). "Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys" Michael Collins (1974).

"Men from Earth" Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. and Malcolm McConnell (1989). "Apollo An Eyewitness Account" Alan Bean and Andrew L. Chaikin (1998).

"The Race: The Uncensored Story of How America Beat Russia to the Moon" Jim Schefter(1999). "October Sky" Homer H. Hickam Jr. (1999). "The Moon: A Guide for First-Time Visitors" Frommer's (1999) "The Moon" Maryam Sachs (1998).

"Atlas of the Moon" Antonin Rukl and Thomas W. Rackham (1992). "30th Anniversary of the Lunar Landing" Neil Armstrong, Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins.

"First on the Moon: What It Was like when Man Landed on the Moon" Barbara Hehner and Greg 5 nan for i 4 iu Ruhl and and Robin the 1 1 Jen E. "To the M. For the By Kathy Sawyer WASHINGTON POST July 1969: The moon rocket, towering 37 stories tall on its pad, began its skyward climb with 10 million pounds of thrust. Less than half a second later, a pump in one of its 43 engines drew in a stray metal shaving and blew up. The entire booster fell back to Earth and exploded with the force of a small nuclear bomb, wiping out the launch complex on the remote steppes of Central Asia.

The catastrophe, unknown to most of the world but monitored by U.S. intelligence, effectively ended the "space race" for the Soviet Union. Thirteen days after the failure of the Soviet N-l rocket, half a world away, other men in other control rooms watched in an agony of suspense as their own fire-breathing monster rumbled and roared to life on a Florida launch pad. This time, the rocket didn't falter. Three Americans were on their way to a historic lunar landing and even though much of the competitive steam had puffed out of the race a stunning victory for their side.

Politics powered flight The public focus since then has been mostly on the technology, the science and the sheer human audacity of it all, but the driving force behind the project was geopolitical. More than a decade earlier, on Oct. 4, 195 7, Russian engineers had fired the first round in the battle for the new "high ground" with the launch of a seemingly inconsequential 1 84-pound sphere: a radio transmitter hooked up to a thermometer, powered by a pack of chemical batteries. Once in orbit, Earth's first artificial satellite, or Sputnik emitted a benign signal: "Beep, beep, beep Yet to then-Sen. Lyndon B.

Johnson, entertaining guests at his ranch in the Texas hill country when he got the news, "in some new way, the sky seemed almost alien," he wrote later. Americans who had thought themselves technologically superior and safely isolated by two great oceans now suddenly felt vulnerable. How could a primitive little space ball discombobulate a powerful nation? Science-fiction enthusiasts had long dreamed of space travel for peaceful purposes, but the real Space Age dawned with more-sinister meaning. Because Sputnik had been launched on an intercontinental ballistic missile, Soviet leaders hailed the feat as proof of their ability to deliver hydrogen bombs at will and of the superiority of communism over democracy. Prowess in space emerged as a Cold War propaganda tool, with astronauts as surrogate combatants.

Even so, it wasn't until 1961, as the Soviets continued to taunt America with a string of "firsts" in space, that incoming President Kennedy asked his vice president to find out quickly whether there was some way "we could win." As recommended by NASA and the Defense Department, Johnson proposed a lunar landing "to symbolize the technological power and organizing capacity of a nation part of the battle along the fluid front of the Cold War." On May 25, 1961, when Kennedy issued his call to do it before the decade was out, the entire American experience in human space flight totaled just 1 5 minutes and 28 seconds, the duration of Alan B. Shepard suborbital flight three weeks earlier. Kennedy himself had second thoughts, in 1963 proposing to the United Nations a joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. lunar project. But Johnson, succeeding the slain president, was determined to make the United States a leader in space.

"The hope that rode on Apollo was the hope for human adequacy in the face of awful challenges," wrote Walter A. McDougall in his Pulitzer Prize-winning history, The Heavens and the Earth." But the sense of urgency drained from the space effort as the Soviets failed to keep up the pace of their own triumphs, and liberal advocates for the poor, the environment and other causes attacked the costs of the Apollo program (through 1972), which would amount to 1 20 billion in today's inflation-adjusted dollars. But the push of people and machines toward the moon, for the moment, had an independent momentum. The program had mushroomed into one of the most complex undertakings in human history, engaging a workforce of almost 500,000 people around the country. Program takes shape The fledgling American space program gradually built an understanding of new technologies and human reactions that space flight entails, through the six one-man flights of the Mercury program, which grew from suborbital to orbital missions up to 34 hours and 20 minutes duration, and the 10 two-man flights of the Gemini series, which featured the first spacewalk, the first rendezvous and docking of two spacecraft, the first emergency landing, once reaching a (then) record altitude of 739 miles and extending mission duration up to almost 14 days.

But the space program also grew huge and impersonal and, under the pressure of the Kennedy deadline, cut corners. Its most painful lessons emerged from the fire that blazed up inside a prototype command module at the Florida launch complex in January 1967, killing the crew of Apollo 1. The tragedy led to reforms in management practices and spacecraft design that, according to astronauts and others, were essential to Apollo's later successes. These included four manned flights between since then. There are more maria on the near side of the moon because Earth's gravity tugs harder at that side shifting the lunar center of mass off geometric center and causing the crust to be thinner on our side.

On the far side, the crust is much thicker, making it less likely that basalts could well up to fill impact holes. Some of the Apollo samples, it turned out, were more than 4 billion years old, far more ancient than nearly all existing Earth rocks. Their chemistry was very similar to, yet intriguingly different from, the terrestrial crust. Lunar surface rocks, predominately made up of low-mass elements such as aluminum, calcium and silicon, revealed the same telltale mix of oxygen isotopes found in Earth's part of the solar system but in no other. Many Apollo 1 1 samples and the nearly 800 pounds retrieved by later Apollo missions were similar to common Earth minerals such as olivine or pyroxene.

But all were surprisingly deficient, compared to Earth, in the kinds of volatile elements that would boil off easily when heated. These findings seemed to rule out all three leading theories of lunar origin. Instead, they supported a radical new "giant impact" model: About 4.5 billion years ago, an object perhaps one-fourth the diameter of Earth and as much as three times the mass of Mars whacked our planet obliquely. The collision blew off a huge amount from the outermost layers ofboth objects, spraying dust and vapor into space. The most volatile elements evaporated into the vacuum; much of the rest condensed again into orbit APOLL0 11 lunar lander "Eagle" leaves the moon behind with Armstrong and Aldrin aboard.

Lunar liftoff Crew module FLORIDA TODAY (1999). "Apollo 11: The NASA Mission Reports, Vol. 1" Robert Godwin Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. 11" Richard Conrad Conrad Stein (1992).

"Apollo 11: First Moon Landing" Michael D. Cole (1995). "Encounter on the Moon" Moore (1996). "One Small Step: Celebrating 30th Anniversary of Apollo and the Race to the Moon" Eugene Fowler (1999). "Race to the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 (Expedition)" Jen Green, etal (1998).

"Race to the Moon: The Story of Apollo 1 1 (Picture a Country)" Green and Mark Bergin (1999). "Apollo 1 1 with CDROM" Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. and Robert Godwin (1999). Meet the Moon: The Story of First Lunar Landing" Lisa Combs and Robert F. Goetzl.

children "Moon Landing: The Race for Moon" Carole Stott and Richard Bonson (1999). "Man On The Moon Anastasia Suen and Benrei Huang (1997). "Eyewitness Readers: Spacebusters" Philip Wilkinson (1998). 1 Mesnik (Bob Gilruth), Jack Conley (Deke Slayton). Michael Chieffo (Dr.

Charles Berry), Jeffrey Nordling (Neil Armstrong), Barbara Whinnery (Lola Morrow), Wendie Malick (Pat Collins), Jim Metzler (Mike Collins), Samantha Dapper (Annie Collins), Jane Kaczmarek (Jan Armstrong), Maureen Mueller (Joan Aldrin) and Xander Berkeley (Buzz Aldrin). if Tin Associated Press file ON THE MOON: Buzz Aldrin prepares to begin taking lunar rock samples during a moonwalk. Tom Hanks' award-winning space miniseries, "From the Earth to the Moon," is being rebroadcast this week on cable television. Only cable customers who subscribe to the HBO premium package can receive the program; please check your cable guide for the channel on your system. HBO 7-9 p.m.

today through Friday. HBO Plus 9-11 p.m. today through Friday. October 1968 and May 1969 that paved the way for the lunar landing. For the men on point, the adventure of Apollo 1 1 was by turns tedious, exhilarating, exhausting, noisy, eerily quiet, cold, sweaty, smelly, heart-pounding and at times almost beyond comprehension.

History had selected them to live out a fantasy that had dominated science fiction for centuries. And perhaps to die. "I think we will escape with our skins, or at least I will escape with mine, but I wouldn't give better than even odds on a successful landing and return," Apollo 1 1 crewman Michael Collins would write of his pre-launch mindset. "There are just too many things that can go wrong." Sitting wedged into the right seat of the command module atop the Saturn moon rocket, flipping switches, in the final hour or so of the countdown, he mused, "Here I am, a white male, age thirty-eight, height 5 feet 1 1 inches, weight 165 pounds, salary 1 7,000 per annum, TRACES OF MAN: Footprints left by Apollo astronauts will remain undisturbed for centuries. around Earth, where it eventually formed the moon.

This impact theory also explains the moon's unusual orbit, which is tilted with respect to Earth's path around the sun, as well as the Earth's rapid spin rate. Thereafter, incoming rubble pounded our new satellite for a billion years or so, heating the outermost layer and engraving the craters. The entire surface probably was molten at one time, as suggested by the preponderance of lighter minerals and breccias in the upper crust. And certainly some element of the mantle was once liquid, or lava could not have filled the mare depressions. Whether the moon has a small, partially molten iron core analogous to Earth's is a matter of debate.

If so, it is not creating a magnetic field these days, although there appears to have been at least a weak field about 3.8 billion years ago, judging from remnant magnetic evidence in lunar rock samples. And illll Moon rock analysis rewrote history I'iilKiHliiHiiHf War had, for a fleeting moment of history, united much of the world in celebration of the human spirit. Even the official Soviet newspaper reported the event on page one though not at the top. an iron core is hard to reconcile with the mascons, or dense lumps below the surface: If the entire moon had been heated to the melting point, all the heaviest materials would have separated out and gravitated to the center. Finally, if the entire moon had been fairly plastic at one point, it would have assumed a much more uniformly spherical shape.

On the other hand, seismometer readings from instruments left by various Apollo missions suggest that a quasi-melted mantle layer may begin at a depth of 500 or 600 miles. In short, there is still no definitive explanation for the moon's origin. Much, however, is known. Its crust makes up 1 2 percent of its volume, versus 0.5 percent for Earth, and it is now clear that, although the moon is not one solid piece of rock, it is only about three-fourths as dense as our planet. The moon's diameter is about 2, 160 miles; Earth's is about 7,930.

if they had exactly the same composition, we would expect the moon to have approximately 1 60th the mass of Earth. Volume increases as the cube, or third power, of radius. So an object whose dimensions are four times larger than another will have 4 4 4, or 64 times, the volume. If the moon has only 1.25 percent of Earth's mass, why do moonwalk-ers feel attracted by about one-sixth Earth gravity? The answer is that the distance between an astronaut and the moon's center of gravity is only about 1,080 miles, versus about 3,965 miles on Earth. And although gravitational force is a function of both mass and distance, it varies with the square of the distance from the center.

The Internet has a large number of space-related sites. Here is a list at some of the sites that have information andor links to Apollo 1 1 Apollo 11, 25 years later http:nssdc.gsfc.nasa.govplanetarylunarapollo1 1 CNN In-Depth Specials, Apollo 11 at 30 http:cnn.comTECHspecialsapollo The Apollo Manned Space Program http:www.nasm.eduAPOLLOApollo.html 30 Anniversary of Apollo 11 http:www.nasm.eduapollo30th Planetary Science World Wide Web Sites http:cass.jsc.govpublibrarywebsites. html National Space Society http:www.nss.org The Apollo Space Programme http:www.nmsi.ac.ukon2Dlineapollo10apollo.html NASA http:www.nasa.gov NASA Anniversary http:www.hq.nasa.govofficepaoHistoryap11ann NASA Apollo Mission, Apollo 11 http:www.ksc.govhistoryapolloapollo-1 1apollo-1 1 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center http:pao.gsfc.nasa.govgsfc Apollo 11 Facts http:www.nasm.eduAPOLLOAS1 1Apollo1 1fact.html Welcome to Apollo 11 http:www.angelfire.comwaapollo11 Apollo 1 1 Lunar Surface Journal http:www.hq.nasa.govalsja11a11main.html The Apollo 1 1 Mission http:members.aol.comsmokebombbapollo1 1 Project Apollo http:www.ksc.govhistoryapolloapollo.html Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum http:www.nasm.edu:80APOLLO Newseum http:www.newseum.orgdateline moon Broadcast.com http:www.onnow.comeventsevent20123.htmpl is the site for a special Newseum program, '30th Anniversary of the Lunar Landing," to be webcast from 9:55 to 1 1 a.m. Tuesday. Apollo 1 1 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins will discuss their historic moon landing and media coverage of the event, live from the Newseum in Arlington, Va.

Theories of origin: Meteorites, volcanic activity helped shape moon surface. By Curt Suplee THE WASHINGTON POST The Apollo 1 1 moon samples, brought back in pieces for all mankind, rocked astronomy. For openers, they neatly resolved the conflict between the meteoric and volcanic theories of the lunar landscape: Both were correct. Many iron-rich rocks from the Sea of Tranquillity were plainly basalt, very similar to basalts produced by volcanoes on Earth. But the specimens also contained substances that could be formed only by meteoroid impact.

There were, for example, tiny orangish bits of glass typical of material liquefied by impact and then rapidly cooled. And many of the samples were a form of breccia, fragments of several rock types welded by the heat of collision. Gradually, most scientists came to agree that meteoroids punctured the lunar surface to form craters and basins during the period of furious bombardment from 4.5 billion to 3.5 billion years ago. Then the maria, or seas, were created by lava that oozed up, often to a depth of 300 feet, from below the crust. What caused the melting presumably heat from radioactive elements remains unclear.

It seems certain that the process seems to have ended about 3 billion years ago, by which time the moon's innards had cooled considerably. Things have been extremely quiet One television movie was produced about the Apollo 1 1 mission: "Apollo 11" This 1 996 dramatic made-for-TV movie, also known as "Apollo 1 1 The Movie," was directed by Norberto Barba and written by Phil Penningroth. The cast included: Carmen Argenziano (Tom Paine), Tuck Milligan (Martin Wells). Dennis Lipscomb (George Low), William.