CAPCOM: Roger, we all envy you the view up there.
COLLINS: But still no star.
CAPCOM: 11, this is Houston. Over.
COLLINS: Roger. Go ahead, Bruce.
CAPCOM: On our ground computer we confirm the shaft and trunnion angle that you have as being pointed at the star. However, it looks as if that shaft and trunnion angle is also pointing into the structure of the Lem so that while you will be getting the earth horizon, the star is obscured by the Lem. We recommend an automaneuver to the attitudes in the flight plan. Roll 177.2, pitch 298.2, and yaw 330.0. Over.
COLLINS: Okay, fine, let’s try that …
But this line of inquiry was interrupted.
CAPCOM: 11, this is Houston. While you’re maneuvering, could we get an LM CM Delta P reading from you? Over.
COLLINS: Roger. Just a tad under 1, Bruce—.95.
CAPCOM: Roger. 95.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER: This is Apollo Control. That reading was the difference in pressure between the Lunar Module cabin and the Command Module cabin …
Now they resumed efforts to solve the position of the star, the instrument, and the horizon.
COLLINS: Okay, our maneuver is complete and at this attitude the M-line is exactly ninety degrees out of phase. It is exactly pointed along the vector toward the center of the earth instead of being parallel to the right.
CAPCOM: Roger.
COLLINS: I’m going to hold right here for your next suggestion.
CAPCOM: Roger.
COLLINS: Okay, Houston. It appears to be okay now. We’ve changed our attitude slightly and I have a star and I’m maneuvering to get the M-line parallel.
CAPCOM: This is Houston. Roger, we copy …
COLLINS: I gave it back to the computer for a second. I put the mode switch from manual back to CMC while I fooled with the DSKY, and the computer drove the star off out of sight, so the delay here has been in going back to manual and finding the star again which I’ve finally done, and just a second here, I’ll go to enter and get a 51 and mark on it. As I say, for some reason the computer drove the star off out of sight.
CAPCOM: Okay, Roger, out.
CAPCOM: Apollo 11, this is Houston, over.
COLLINS: Go ahead.
CAPCOM: Roger, we show you as a little less than an hour to the midcourse Correction Number 2 burn, and we recommend that you terminate the P23 activities here, and press on with the waste-water dump which we need from you and getting ready for the burn, over.
COLLINS: Okay.
CAPCOM: And I have your midcourse correction number 2 pad when you’re ready to copy.
COLLINS: Stand by. Roger, Houston. Apollo 11, ready to copy MCC 2.
CAPCOM: Apollo 11, this is Houston. Midcourse correction number 2, SPS G&N 63 zero 59’er plus 09’er 7, minus 020, GET ignition 026 44 57 9’er 2 plus 00 118 minus 00 003 plus 00 177 Roll 277.
So they proceeded, the M-line never getting to parallel. Of course, there were other means of calculating their position. Emphasis now shifted to the midcourse correction. The Service Propulsion Motor, the main motor at the rear of the Service Module, was scheduled to be fired for three seconds. That would be time sufficient to slow their speed by 21.3 feet per second and thereby bring them nearer to the moon on their first orbit two days later. In preparation radios were readjusted. Then the burn took place. For three seconds, the ship now reversed, the astronauts looking toward earth, the motor pointing along the path toward the moon, a quiet churn of rocket fire came back to their ears. A little later, they commented on the readings of chamber pressure in the motor.
Work continued. It is not difficult to conceive of the three men pursuing their details in the small cramped volume of the Command Module, the sunlight glancing through the window, the view of space dark, neuter, numb, blank but glaring except when there is sight of earth. The sounds of the pumps and the ticking of a hundred instruments are in their ears mixed with the sound of static. It is time spent like the sense of time the inner mechanisms of a machine might possess if machines had a sense of time.
So they worked. With ground they discussed the entrance of Verb 66 into the computer, and chatted about the quality of the TV transmission the night before, then they mentioned the changing of the carbon dioxide filter. Having been obliged to quit Passive Thermal Control in order to set their attitude for the midcourse correction burn, they proceeded now to go back to it. Ground told them to use Quad thrusters Alpha and Bravo, “from a propellant balancing standpoint.” S-band antenna angles next were given. A little later the spacecraft proceeded to report on the view of the Mediterranean and Europe through the monocular optic—as the earth turned, and the telescope swiveled, came descriptions of a cyclone over Brazil and panoramas of Central America, the Caribbean, of Greenland, then the east coast of the United States.
Discussion began again of simpler methods to find stars by which they could check their course. The fiasco with the M-line had not been altogether forgotten. Jokes followed. Since Collins would later remain with the Command Module while Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the moon in the Lem, so Collins had taken on a metaphor for himself: he was the storekeeper of the Command Module, the caretaker, the worrier, the passive sufferer, the little woman—it is the only clue to the deep bite in his competitive pride. “I’ve been very busy so far. I’m looking forward to taking the afternoon off. I’ve been cooking, sweeping, and almost sewing, and you know, the usual little housekeeping things.”
But ground took him up on this to inquire on the condition of moisture condensation on the walls, which in turn suggested the functioning of the hydrogen filter on the hot-water squirt gun. Queries come up on the temperature of the water, reports went back and down on the character of the coffee “not piping hot, but it beats stone-cold coffee.” The progress of Passive Thermal Control was reported up from the ground: “PTC has started and looks good.” Adjustments followed on the oxygen flow transducer.
CAPCOM: Okay, we want you to install the cabin vent quick disconnect which you’ll find in compartment R6, that is Romeo 6 on the urine connector on panel 257. When this is completed verify that the waste stowage vent valve is closed and then open or position the waste management overboard drain to the pump position. Over.
Well, it was no more difficult for a literary mind to follow these directives, injunctions, parleys and technological negotiations than to crack his way phrase by phrase through Finnegans Wake.
II
Five hours had gone by since the crew had awakened. Now the difference in cabin pressure between the Command Module and the Lunar Module was measured, so too the oxygen flow on the onboard gauge. Further analysis of the after-burn chamber pressure in the Service Propulsion Motor came next. “The SPS is definitely GO, over.”
ALDRIN: Good to hear it.
CAPCOM: Roger. We thought you’d feel that way about it.
ALDRIN: We’re right in the middle of salmon salad or something like that. That’s probably why we’re not answering you right away.
CAPCOM: Okay, well, we don’t want …
COLLINS: My compliments to the chef. That salmon salad is outstanding.
The food came in plastic bags. Some of it was hard like bread cubes or cereal cubes, cocoanut cubes, peanut cubes, or cheese cracker cubes. Some of the food was wet pack and could be eaten out of the bag, some was freeze-dried, and water had to be inserted through a one-way valve, the bag then kneaded to make cream of chicken soup, or Canadian bacon and applesauce, a species of pot roast, or beef and vegetables, or ham and potatoes. The mash could then be squirted through another valve into the mouth. Obviously most of the chow had a consistency like baby food. Any attempt to eat in other fashion required much care, for in the weightless space of the cabin, food lifted to the mouth by a fork or spoon was in danger of taking off from any sudden move and floating through the air, later to enmesh itself in the smallest apertures of the instruments, or be inhaled to irritate the lungs. Eating in such valve-and-mash fashion, the
y were obliged to drink that way as well. Water ran from a dispenser through a seventy-two-inch coiled hose which abutted in a pistol placed between the lips, a button-actuated pistol—one pressed the button and water shot through the barrel into the mouth. A miserable mode by which to eat and drink, yet the food was a considerable improvement over early space flights when there had been nothing but bricks of processed nutrient and water: that original space food had been designed to produce the lowest fecal content. Now the food was better—as a corollary, the post-nutritive disposal substances (how did NASA spell shit?) was worse, for there was more of it. The astronauts had the straight embarrassment of squatting in front of one another on a Johnny Camper type of stool. If urine could be conveniently dispensed into a rubber roll-on cuff which fit over the penis and was attached to a one hundred inch flexible hose—that passing in turn to a urine transfer system bag and eventually out the waste-water dump—pure molecules of urea now floating in space—the fecal subsystem had its problems. It was built on bag assemblies, that is to say, inner and outer fecal bags with pouches holding germicide and skin cleaning towels. The rim of the inner bag was covered with cement and a thin plastic cover. The plastic peeled off, the bag was pasted smack on the buttocks. Baby mash for food, and technological diapers for a squat. Afterward, the germicide was put in the inner bag, and both were sealed in the outer bag, then kneaded to work the germicide and break up noxious gases. There were also odor removal vents and deodorant canisters in the cabin.
It was a self-contained universe, everything from cosmic ray detectors to split-membrane traps in the waste disposal compartment to keep those wrapped bags of feces from floating back into the cabin—what a nicety not to dump them in space!
CAPCOM: Is that music I hear in the background?
COLLINS: Buzz is singing.
ALDRIN: Pass me the sausage, man.
CAPCOM: Okay.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER: This is Apollo Control at twenty-nine hours into the mission. Apollo 11’s distance from earth is now 115,837 nautical miles, velocity 4,788 feet per second. Spacecraft weight, 96,117 pounds.
Three-quarters of an hour of silence followed. It was the first long silence since awakening. When they came out of it, Capcom had a long thoughtful anticipation prepared for them on the functioning of the Passive Thermal Control, which conversation was followed by queries from Apollo 11 about clouds which had moved over the Gulf of Mexico. Was it raining in Houston, they asked? Yes, it was raining in Houston. Armstrong replied, “Well, it looks like it ought to clear up pretty soon from our viewpoint. The western edge of the weather isn’t very far west of you.”
Now Capcom came back with a report that the flow-rate sensor on the oxygen tank was in fact malfunctioning, but that it was a minor malfunction.
Time went by. The charge on Battery A was terminated about seven hours after it had first commenced. There were updates in the data necessary for going around the moon if they were obliged for any reason to return immediately to earth. The new data was a reflection of the change in velocity acquired in the three-second midcourse correction burn that morning. Now, the astronauts focused their television camera on the Display and Keyboard of the computer, and the big antenna in Goldstone, California, reported its ability to read the numbers.
The White team came on duty at Mission Control. Of the White, the Green, and the Black teams, the White team was obviously the most important on this mission, for its shift would be on duty Sunday, the fifth day of the trip, when the Lem would separate from the Command Module and descend to the moon. So their responsibility would be the greatest, and their tension the most. Today the spacecraft greeted them cheerfully, “How’s the old White team today?”
“Oh the old White team’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. We’re ever alert down here.”
“Ever alert and ready,” came back the spacecraft.
It was the self-conscious kind of joking one could expect when old drinking buddies were carrying on a conversation in the full hearing of churchgoers.
COLLINS: Hey, you got any medics down there … I’m trying to do some running in place here. I wondered just out of curiosity whether it makes my heart rate act up.
CAPCOM: Well, they will spring into action here momentarily. Stand by.
CAPCOM: Hello 11, we see your heart beating.
COLLINS: Okay we’re all running in place up here. You wouldn’t believe it.
But these fine spirits were replaced by a long sober discussion of flaws in the TV transmission. For the next half hour a dialogue about horizontal bonding and strayed lines, or bending of vertical lines followed by waviness in horizontal bands progressed back and forth—word eventually arrived that the TV people consulted on earth had said such aberrant lines were inherent in the design of the camera. Then the oxygen purge was terminated. Omnidirectional antenna was checked out for television transmission and found to be unusable. So only the high-gain antenna would be employed. That meant Passive Thermal Control must be halted. A complex discussion of the shift from PTC to the best TV attitude continued for a time, and was eventually decided. The PTC was terminated, the move was made, the earth was where they wanted it. The high-gain had its unobstructed line. Here came the TV.
COLLINS: Okay, world, hold on to your hat. I’m going to turn you upside down.
CAPCOM (CHARLES DUKE): 11, that’s a pretty good roll there.
COLLINS: Oh, I’d say sloppy, Charlie. Let me try that one again.
CAPCOM: You’ll never beat out the Thunderbirds.
CAPCOM: Apollo 11, Houston. That practice did you some good. It’s looking—real smooth roll, there.
COLLINS: Oops.
CAPCOM: Spoke too soon.
COLLINS: I’m making myself seasick, Charlie, I’ll just put you back right side up where you belong.
CAPCOM: Roger.
COLLINS: You don’t get to do that every day …
CAPCOM: We can still see the earth through the left window and it appears that we can see a floodlight off to the left, either that or some sun shafting through the hatch window.
COLLINS: It’s sunlight.
CAPCOM: Rog.
CAPCOM: Now we’re coming in. Can’t quite make out who that …
ALDRIN: That’s big Mike Collins, there. You got a little bit of—
COLLINS: Yeah, hello there, sport fans. You got a little bit of me, plus Neil in the center couch, and Buzz is doing the camera work just now.
CAPCOM: Roger; it’s a little dark, 11. Maybe a bigger F-stop might help.
COLLINS: Yeah, that should work.
CAPCOM: It’s getting a lot better now, 11. Mike, you’re coming in 5 by. I got a good—
COLLINS: I would have put on a coat and tie if I’d known about this ahead of time.
CAPCOM: Is Buzz holding your cue cards for you? Over.
COLLINS: Cue cards have a no. We have no intention 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 willing to find our favorite little corner to sit in. Zero g’s 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.
CAPCOM: Roger, looks like Neil is coming in 5 by, there, 11. Mike, see you in the background. The definition is really outstanding. The colors are good. Armstrong …
COLLINS: And Neil’s standing on his head again. He’s trying to make me nervous.
CAPCOM: Roger.
COLLINS: He’s disappearing up into the tunnel … going into the Lunar Module, only backwards.
The show went on further, it was on in America and the world for thirty-five minutes, and was watched by the astronauts’ families in Houston. Aldrin spoke for a while on stellar navigation and showed the instruments and Armstrong said ver
y little. During the telecast, reporters in the homes of Mrs. Armstrong, Mrs. Aldrin, and Mrs. Collins took notes. The comments of the wives and children were put down in all the fullness of History recording itself, caught in the act of laying out a groaning board of gold plate and Melba toast, Irish linen and Hawaiian punch. “They look great, don’t they,” said Mrs. Collins. “Look, Mike is growing a mustache!”
III
The day went on to its close as it had begun. PTC was recommenced after TV, and Guidance and Navigation data came up the miles from earth to be duly repeated by the astronauts before entrance into the computers. Verbs and Nouns were sent to them for further installations in the same computer. The programs with their Verbs and Nouns were, of course, demands upon the computer to be in readiness to give answers to certain kinds of problems for which the data had already been inserted. It was as if in a program designed to measure the size of rations in an Army kitchen, data consisted of the multiplication table and the inventories of food, the Verb was an order to divide, and the Noun directed the Verb toward what it should divide, which in this case happened to be the portions for supper. Apollo 11’s programs were naturally more complex. There was room for ninety-nine Verbs and ninety-nine Nouns in the computer, such Verbs for instance as those which called for Display or for Monitor, for Load, Request, or Recycle, for Mark or Calibrate, Update, Initialize or Start, Reject, Enable, Perform. The Nouns specified just what would be the subject of the operation, be it the Address in the computer, or the Alarm Data or Alarm Codes, the Time of an Event or the Time from an Event, the Apogee or Perigee of an orbit, the Angles of the Vehicle, the Change in Velocity, the Pitch of the S-Band Antenna. Naturally, Apollo’s programs concerned whole hierarchies of phase like Prelaunch, Earth Orbit Insertion, Coasting, Thrusting, Alignment, Moon Entry, and Abort—there would be, for example, seven distinct programs on Moon Entry covering each particular condition of separation from the Command Module through entrance into detectable moon gravity including several programs to choose for the moon landing itself, programs to offer much or little control by the pilot as he descended in collaboration with the computer.