The Miami News from Miami, Florida • 1

IT n. if if Miami News METROPOLITAN EDITION TEN CENTS Apollo trio fired into 48 Pages Miami, Wednesday Afternoon, July 16, 1969 earth orbit Here are the facts, figures on Apollo 11 spacecraft, stands 363 feet tall. It is the world's most powerful booster, with first stage thrust of 7.7 million pounds. Cost of mission: Saturn 5, $185 million; Apollo 11 command shipi $55 million; lunar module, $41 million; launch operations, including recovery forces, $59 million. Total $340 million.

Total cost of Apollo program to date: $24 billion. ments, gathering soil samples and determining ability to work in one-sixth gravity field. Total length of time on moon: 22 hours, after which they rendezvous with Collins orbiting in command ship. Flight duration: Eight days, 3 hours, 19 minutes. Rocket: Three-stage Saturn 5, which, with Apollo Astronauts; Civilian Neil A.

Armstrong, 38; Air Force Col. Edwin E. Aldrin 39; Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Collins, 38.

Purpose: After attaining lunar orbit, Armstrong and Aldrin fly a landing craft to man's first landing on the moon on Sunday. They are to walk on moon for 2y2 hours Monday, setting up scientific experi Keaslcr at the Cape Man tests his wings and leaves the nest Bo 'AH I Hij By JOHN KEASLER Miami Newi Celumnitt minus nine This is Kennedy COCOA BEACH hours and holding finally figured out the thing about the wheel was it had to be round; next thing you know we got the hard road jammed with traffic, through this soft mysterious Florida night, and the people rush to the beaches where once the humans invented the clamshell knife and now they stand, proud by the multiple thousands. There, go our boys. Will Buzz Aldrin's descendants see faces in low-level clouds and lie on their backs, watching them float in fantasy? You know it. They'll never be just low-lying moisture formations to the real realists among us; they'll still be the same clouds which are there, primarily, to conceal Oz.

At this time systems are chilled down for liquid propellant as How the people pour in, pour in, all the livelong night. A nation of high-rollers, come to the big casino. You couldn't like people bet-Continued on Page 8A, CoL I launch control." The voice floods the news center building, nearly deserted now, this night before. The voice sounds familiar. We better get used to that.

All things terrestrial will be familiar, now that we're all from the same home town. Nobody will forget this night for some time to come and nobody will forget tomorrow forever. My God, they're really going. In the whole deep delusion of time, mankind is going someplace else. Getting himself a bigger circle and the immensity is hard to grab.

"Predicted visibility will be about 10 miles Did Neil Armstrong's mother ever tell him that if he didn't be more careful he would have to quit climbing up that tree-house? You know it. Well, it all went fast somebody TT-imir-r nnnnimii m.iin -inn, in irmirn urnirriii. i i j. Associated Press Wlreprnto Astronaut Edwin Aldrin gives the traditional thumbs-up sign as he leads his two shipmates to the Saturn 5 rocket at Cape Kennedy this morning. Michael Collins is the middle and Neil Armstrong on the left.

9 more moon missions slated in next 2 years By MILT SOSIN Miami News Rtporttr CAPE KENNEDY Apollo 11 blasted off today, carrying U.S. spacemen toward a landing on the moon that was just a dream a scant 10 years ago. About $24 billion went into the mighty adventure that should reach its spectacular climax early Monday when Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface 240,000 miles away. In a billow of yellow-orange flame, a mighty Saturn 5 hurled the 36-story moon rocket into space with Armstrong, Aldrin and the third moonman, Michael Collins, riding its tip. Twelve minutes after Apollo lifted off, the spacecraft was in a circular orbit 100 miles above the earth.

The next big critical event was scheduled two hours and 44 minutes later over the Pacific Ocean during the second revolution. This was a "burn" by the Saturn's third stage the only stage still joined to the spacecraft. It is designed to boost the payload from its earth orbital speed to an escape velocity of 25,000 miles and hour and start the long journey to the moon. At the end of the trip, Collins is to stay in the main spaceship while Armstrong and Aldrin descend to the desolate moon surface in their spidery "LEM" subcraft. To witnesses who had seen the launching of unmanned Redstones and the Mercury, Gemini and early Apollo shots with men aboard, this was the one they and an awestruck world had been waiting for.

It has been a long, long time since Alan Shepard made his short sub-orbital shot downrange in May 1961 to become America's first spaceman. This one was to put men on the moon! The countdown picked up at 11 p.m. yesterday after an 11-hour built-in hold which started at noon yesterday. Another built-in hold of one hour and 32 minutes began at 6:28 a.m. and ended at 8 a.m.

Then the final phase of the count to launch began. An hour before the second hold began, astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were awakened in the astronauts' quarters. Armstrong, the first man scheduled to set foot on the moon, was the first man out of the astronaut's quarters at 6:27 a.m. to enter the van for the launching pad. He was closely followed by Collins with Aldrin, the other man scheduled to walk on the moon, bringing up the rear.

They were smiling behind the wide face plates of their space helmets and they waved with their free left hands to the huge crowd of newsmen, photographers and NASA officials and employes who waited outside the building. In their right hands, they carried their portable air conditioning equipment. They entered the van and were driven to the pad, entering the spacecraft a full two hours and 40 minutes before liftoff time. Twenty minutes before the three astronauts appeared, Donald K. (Deke) Slayton, chief of astronaut training, appeared and told the crowd: "They're ready to go.

It's a morning same as any other morning. "They're up and charging. At breakfast, there was normal flight chatter like any other breakfast They're really looking forward to it. "It's as good a mission as any man could hope for." When the first newsmen arrived at the Cape in predawn hours, launch complex 39 was bathed in the crisscross beams of myriad searchlights. As the astronauts emerged from their quarters, the powerful beams blinked off one by one as the sun rose to reveal a mostly blue sky with some cumulous cloud cover but not enough to mar the launch.

Sending the sights and sounds and word pictures of the historic liftoff to more people than any other previous recorded event in history were more than 3,400 newspaper, press association, magazine, radio and television correspondents, cameramen and technicians. Seven hundred of them, speaking 30 languages, came from foreign countries. The largest delegation came from Japan, with 111 newsmen. Italy had 77; England 64; France 57; West Germany 47; Mexico and Ar-gentina 38 each and Canada 32. Australia has 21 reporters and photographers from "down under;" Spain and Brazil 19 each, Belgium 14; Continued on Page 4A, Col.

1 Prayers of us all are with you, Nixon says The Ntw York Times Nwi Service WASHINGTON President Nixon told the three Apollo 11 astronauts last night that the "good wishes and prayers of us all" would accompany them on their voyage to the moon. "What you are doing as you lift off to the moon will lift the spirit of the American people as well as the world," Nixon said during a five-minute telephone conversation with the three men. "You carry with you a feeling of good will in this greatest adventure man has ever taken," the President said. Ronald L. Ziegler, the White House press secretary, said Nixon placed the call from his office in the White House.

The Astronauts were gathered in the Cape Kennedy quarters of Neil Armstrong, the mission commander. Ziegler quoted Nixon as having said he was particularly impressed by "an attitude of quiet and serene confidence among the astronauts." i- By AL VOLKER Miami News Science Editor CAPE KENNEDY Nine more moon missions are expected in the next two years as man extends his experience to another world. The lunar landing craft of Apollo 11 will spend less than 22 hours on the moon's uninviting Of this period, only about 2l2 hours are planned for moon walks by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin. Future missions will lengthen both of these time periods. The Apollo missions will be sent to different areas of the moon's surface, which is about equal to the land area of Africa, to test composition of various soil samples.

None of these missions had been outlined by the National Space Agency except to announce that Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon and Alan Bean will fly Apollo 12 and that Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar "Mitchell will fly Apollo 13., It has been widely reported here that the Apollo 12 flight is expected in November. But there is a proviso that if Apo'lo 11 does not achieve all its goals and it will be known by Monday afternoon whether the landing and takeoff from the m6on were successful, Apollo 12 will repeat the mission. It stands now in the vertical assembly building, in an advanced state of preparation. It could be rolled out on the crawler-transporter to the launching pad a week from today if it must back up Apollo 11. If so, the September launch window for the moon would open on Sept.

13. iff I 'a 1 IUUHlf wfriiitfiVHrifiH LOCAL: Jack Roberts writes about a Miamian who became a 3-time loser on insurance. Three companies that have covered him have gone into receivership. Page 5A. EDITORIAL PAGE: It's going to be tougher for car thieves in Florida to peddle their merchandise.

Read Sylvan Meyer. Page 16A. FAMILY WORLD: Dade has a sleek, modern version of the paddle-wheel showboat touring county parks with plays and operatic productions. It's aimed at a young audience, but draws its share of oldsters, too. Page IB.

BUSINESS: A Miamian, dissatisfied with tee times at his old golf club, went out and built a new one limited in membership to 325 at $2,000 a throw. Page 4B. SPORTS: Cassius Clay is back in town, and still a hero to the young generation. Page 1C. vv wit Ra signals distress; yardarm split Reutere Newi Service SAN.

JUAN, Puerto Rico The Coast Guard here today intercepted distress signals from Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's papyrus raft Ra, crossing the Atlantic. The Ra, some 800 miles east of Barbados, called on ships in the area to stand by to answer any SOS signals. The message said the raft's yardarm was broken. Heyerdahl and his six-man crew are already worried about the stern of the Ra, which has been swamped by heavy seas. They planned to patch up the sodden rear with bundles of papyrus from the raft's high prow.

The crew will try to fix the broken yardarm without any help, according to the Coast Guard. LUSY CHEVROLET CITY Service-Parts 'til Mon. And Thure. Salei 'tilt p.m. Mon.

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SERVICE ti-ZZ" Adv. 'Lemmc outa tere' The sight of a small boy in a new toy called the "animal sacker was just too much for this 800-pound tiger in a wild animal compound near Buellton, Cal. The toy suit, a European invention, is to be introduced soon in the U.S. in tiger and baboon designs. Partly sunny.

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