Who2 Editorial Blog
Notes and Commentary from the Editors
Monday, July 20, 2009
July 20th, 1969
Wonderful panorama here.
Labels: Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 5:23 AM 
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009
T Minus 2 Days and Counting: Steak and Eggs
The crew of Apollo 11 share the traditional launch day breakfast of steak and eggs on 16 July 1969. From left: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Director of Flight Crew Operations Donald "Deke" Slayton.
Steak and eggs does seem to have been de rigeur before all NASA missions in the 1960s. Here's Armstrong (second from left) eating the same meal before the launch of Gemini 8 on March 16th, 1966:
(That's Deke Slayton again, lower left. Dude got a lot of free breakfasts. Across from Armstrong is Roger Chaffee, who was killed the next year in the Apollo 1 fire.)
Gemini 8 is the mission where Armstrong made his bones, righting the capsule after it began spinning out of control in orbit, so maybe it worked.
Steak and eggs is a studly breakfast, yes, but it has a practical side. Craig Nelson's 2009 book Rocket Men claims the meal is "low in fiber and low in waste." Race to the Moon, the 1984 book by William Breuer, describes Alan Shepard eating a "low-residue breakfast" of steak and eggs before becoming the first American in space in 1961.
Do astronauts still eat steak and eggs today? Not so much. The Houston Chronicle in 2005 listed breakfasts for the seven astronauts before the launch of the shuttle Discovery:
EILEEN COLLINS: toast with margarineA chicken sandwich? It just ain't dramatic.
JAMES KELLY: fresh fruit
SOICHI NOGUCHI: fresh fruit and a bagel with cream cheese
STEPHEN ROBINSON: fresh fruit and a chicken sandwich
ANDREW THOMAS: chicken sandwich
WENDY LAWRENCE: fresh fruit and a chicken sandwich
CHARLES CAMARDA: chicken sandwich
On the other hand, astronaut Leroy Chiao came out for tradition earlier this year in a funny blog post about preflight routine.
What do you eat before?So steak and eggs is no longer de rigeur. But it's still studly.
Steak and eggs. Medium rare and over easy. This is what the first astronauts ate before launch and why not? I remember during one of my launch counts, the ladies were taking our pre-launch breakfast orders, going around the table. I was hearing things like, dry toast. A little yogurt. Cereal. You gotta be kidding me, what kind of pantywaists am I flying with?
They got to me and I replied firmly and evenly, "Steak and eggs, medium rare and over easy." Everyone looked at me funny. I stated the obvious. "Hey, we might go out tomorrow and get blown up. I'm going to have steak and eggs!" Immediately, three guys changed their orders to steak and eggs.
Labels: Alan Shepard, Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Deke Slayton, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong, Roger Chaffee
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 6:14 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Monday, July 13, 2009
T Minus 3 Days and Counting: Basic Transportation
17 June 1969: the Apollo 11 astronauts arrive in Florida for the final time from their training center in Houston. After this they were headlong to the launch.
It always startles me that these guys flew themselves out from Houston. Not that it doesn't make sense. They were pilots. Armstrong had flown the X-15 at a few thousand miles an hour; a T-37 trainer was like driving a Volvo. They had to stay sharp and they all loved to fly. I know all that.
It just doesn't seem to fit their stature as crucial cogs in the moon shot machine, I guess that's the issue. They could crash, for pete's sakes! You'd think they'd be flown around as passengers on some super-safe double-walled 727 or something.
I get the same feeling from yesterday's shot of Buzz Aldrin, which was taken on July 10th. Six days before blastoff and he's putting on his plaid short-sleeved shirt and driving in to the office? He could get clobbered on the freeway, some kid could back into him and give him whiplash, etc, etc. Shouldn't he have a chauffeur, or be in pre-quarantine or something? (Or be driving a Volvo?)
It just seems so casual.
I also wonder how come Neil Armstrong got a plane to himself while Aldrin and Michael Collins had to share. They couldn't spare a third plane?
(Photos courtesy of NASA.)
Labels: Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 7:35 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Saturday, July 11, 2009
T Minus 5 Days and Counting: The Ghosts of Apollo 1
The crew of Apollo 11 poses in the command module "Columbia" during an egress test on 10 June 1969. From left: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin.From a distance of 40 years it's pretty easy to see the Apollo 11 astronauts as loosey-goosey test pilots and thrillseekers. PR photos like this one help.
Sometimes there are hints of another 1960s group with the same jaunty angles:
Or even more directly:
The resemblance is not exact, but the attitude is familiar.
You could probably spend a few pleasant few hours drawing the lines from Sinatra to John F. Kennedy on through to the Apollo astronauts. Kennedy was occasional pals with King Cool Sinatra, and Kennedy was the man who in 1961 gave the country the goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
There's a certain laconic style of cool affected by nearly all astronauts and airline pilots, as I think Tom Wolfe pointed out in The Right Stuff, and it's not so far from Sinatra in its way.
What the Apollo astronauts did that Sinatra would never do, what most sensible people would never do, was this: Climb willingly into a space capsule that had already proved itself to be a death trap.
Climb in and then bolt the hatch.
1967 was the year that Apollo 1 went up in flames, killing astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. It was a simple launch-pad test gone wrong. A random spark or faulty wiring ignited the pure oxygen inside the capsule into an instant blast furnace of fire and poison gas.
The burst of pressure from the combustion was so great that the capsule actually ruptured, sending flame and smoke pouring out. People near the launch tower who heard the sound thought the capsule had exploded.
It took the support crew five minutes to remove the three separate hatches, fighting smoke and flames to use ratchets on red-hot bolts. Grissom, White and Chaffee were long dead from burns and asphyxiation before even the first hatch was cleared.
Among other grisly details, the melted masses of nylon from the astronauts' suits prevented the first rescuers from removing them from the capsule at all.
Bad wiring wasn't the only problem -- far from it. Dozens of design errors were exposed. Had the astronauts gotten to the main hatch, it wouldn't have helped: it opened inward, and they couldn't have pulled it in against the pressure from the fire. And on and on.
See NASA's chillingly clinical review of the fire for details. ("At 23:30:54.8 GMT, a significant voltage transient was recorded...")
A "significant voltage transient," yes. The hatch of Apollo 1 after the fire looked like the hatch to the main boiler of the HMS Titanic.
Yet two years later, Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin were climbing through another hatch, going through the same politely-named "egress tests," all with the assumption that the Apollo I problems had been fixed. They took their lives in their hands.
I guess the point is not that these were brave men or brawny men or the best and the brightest. Everyone can imagine the extraordinary qualities needed just to spend eight days crammed into a capsule the size of a Volkswagen without freaking out, to say nothing of performing the tasks of astronauts into the bargain.
Yet these man had still another extra measure of steel or calm or ambition (or philosophical enlightenment) that let them shinny into the capsule and look past that plain primal danger of Apollo 1... and get on with business.
That extra measure of whatever-it-was is just a little bit eerie or even scary in its way. Certainly it's well beyond "cool."
The Apollo 11 crew relaxes during training on 24 May 1969, two months before going to the moon.Plenty of sensible people came down on the Apollo program after the fire. NASA points out that respected Senator William Fulbright, a longtime critic of both NASA and excess government spending, blamed the tragedy on what he called "the inflexible, but meaningless, goal of putting an American on the moon by 1970."
Fulbright was right, but only in the way that a pitcher is right when he throws an 0-2 fastball in the perfect spot -- and then watches Babe Ruth knock it out of the park anyway. The absolute goal of reaching the moon by 1970 drove the whole Apollo project, and there were always men willing to climb through the hatch and take the chance.One of the small tasks that Armstrong and Aldrin managed on 20 July 1969 -- with, hey, a full 160 days on the deadline to spare -- was to leave a mission patch from Apollo 1 on the surface of the moon.
(Spacecraft photos courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Rat Pack photo from the 1964 film Robin and the Seven Hoods)
Labels: Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 12:43 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Thursday, July 09, 2009
T Minus 7 Days and Counting
Aldrin was inspired by geology, because it "opened my eyes to the immensity of time." Collins was not: "I hate geology -- maybe that's why they won't let me get out on the Moon."- David Michael Harland, The First Men on the Moon.
Armstrong, displaying an impishness worthy of Pete Conrad, later admitted that he had been "very tempted to sneak a piece of limestone up" and place it into a rock box as a sample, to see what the scientists would make of it.
A lesser-known part of astronaut training: geology field trips. Here Buzz Aldrin (left) and Neil Armstrong examine specimens in West Texas in February of 1969, five months before launch.
Apollo astronauts made visits throughout the 1960s to geology hot spots like Hawaii ("Incomparable display of recent basaltic volcanic features"), Oregon ("extreme range of differentiated volcanic rocks, obsidian flows, pumice cones, cinder cones and tuff rings," and Iceland ("Probably the most moon-like of the field areas").
Aldrin put his geology into practice when they reached the surface of the moon. From NASA's wonderful transcripts:
109:49:40 Aldrin: Hey, Neil, didn't I say we might see some purple rocks?Aldrin got ribbed about this later, in that joshing-of-the-flyboys way, after the rocks turned out not to be purple (or biotite). Tough audience.
109:49:42 Armstrong: Find a purple rock?
109:49:44 Aldrin: Yep. (Pause) Very small, sparkly (garbled) fragments (garbled) in places (garbled) would make a first guess at some sort of biotite. (Pause) We'll leave that to further analysis.
Another shot from the 1969 Texas trip:
Labels: Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 12:54 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
T Minus 8 Days and Counting
Continuing our countdown to the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11.
I love these formal portraits of the Apollo 11 astronauts. For one thing, their suits are just so white.
Armstrong and Collins are subdued or even bemused. Buzz Aldrin, ever the enthusiast, flat-out grins.
That's mission commander Neil Armstrong above, of course. (Nice of them to put names on the fronts.)
Below we have Michael Collins (as guy-who-won't-go-down-to-the-moon, he doesn't seem to need as many valves and gadgets on his suit) and Smilin' Buzz Aldrin.
Labels: Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 9:11 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Saturday, July 04, 2009
T Minus 12 Days and Counting
This is a good shot for the 4th of July: camping, cold drinks, parties.
The party in this photo is actually for the launch of Apollo 11. One million people, give or take, showed up at Cape Canaveral to watch the launch in 1969.
Buzz Aldrin describes this scene in his book about the mission, Magnificent Desolation. On the morning of the launch he was dropped off on the gantry of launch pad 39-A, 300 feet high, while the launch team loaded Neil Armstrong and Mike Collins into the capsule a few levels up.
Three and a half hours before liftoff, and for 10 minutes Aldrin is left standing by himself with nothing to do but sightsee.
Here's how the scene looked to him:
The sun had not yet come up and was barely peeking above the horizon as I stood on the grating and peered through the clear bubble helmet I wore. The only sound I could hear came from my ventilation unit.
Looking up and down the coastline, my eyes scanned the beaches for miles along the causeway near Cape Canaveral, where more than a million people had started gathering the night before, trekking in cars, motorcycles, pickup trucks, campers, and large motor homes, inching their way through bumper-to-bumper traffic as they sought the perfect launch viewing location. Already people were filling in every available spot of dry ground, and thousands of boats were anchored on the Indian and Banana rivers near the Cape.
Without a good set of binoculars, most of the spectators could not see me, and from my vantage point I could barely see them, but I could see the evidence of them in the flickering campfires that dotted the beaches in the pre-dawn darkness. Everyone knew that something big was about to happen.
Labels: Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 2:13 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments
Thursday, July 02, 2009
T Minus 14 Days and Counting
July 16th, 1969: launch day for Apollo 11, the ship that put the first men on the moon.Who2 will celebrate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 for the next three weeks, right through splashdown on 24 July. We'll have a photo a day, mostly from the marvelous NASA history archives, along with assorted notes and commentary.
And plenty of salutes to Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, the three stud astronauts who flew to the moon in a cramped command module, drinking Tang, sleeping upside down, and working a flight computer about as powerful as the gadget that now triggers the "fasten seatbelts" chime in your 1998 Corolla wagon.
They were the right guys for the job.
On to photo number one, from way back in 1961:
That's Neil Armstrong during his days as a NASA test pilot, next to X-15 #1 after a research flight. The X-15 was a rocket-powered aircraft 50 feet long, a "missile-shaped vehicle with an unusual wedge-shaped vertical tail."
NASA calls the X-15 "the most remarkable of all the rocket research aircraft." It was typically launched from a B-52 at 45,000 feet and went up from there. The plane set an unofficial world altitude record of 354,200 feet in 1964, and the speed record for winged aircraft -- a modest 4,520 miles per hour -- in 1967. It was retired in 1968.
Only three of the crazy things were built, and Armstrong was one of 12 test pilots. Michael Adams, one of the 12, was killed in the 1967 crash of X-15 #3 after the plane went into a spin at 200,000 feet.
By then, Armstong was already preparing for the ride of his life on Apollo 11.
Here's a wider shot of Armstrong and the X-15.
(Photos courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.)
Labels: Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 9:40 AM Share on Facebook 0 comments
