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Document #1: Transcript from The First Lunar Landing

(Neil Armstrong’s and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin’s televised presentation on August 12, 1969, to 200 members of the national press)

ARMSTRONG

A number of experts had, prior to the flight, predicted that a good bit of difficulty might be encountered by people attempting to work on the surface of the Moon due to the variety of strange atmospheric and gravitational characteristics that would be encountered. This didn't prove to be the case and after landing we felt very comfortable in the lunar gravity. It was, in fact, in our view preferable both to weightlessness and to the Earth's gravity. All the systems on the LM were operating magnificently -- we had very few problems. We decided to go ahead with the surface work immediately. We predicted that we might be ready to leave the LM by 8 o'clock, but those of you who followed on the ground recognize we missed our estimate a good deal. This was due to a number of factors:

• We had housekeeping to perform (food packages, flight plans, all the items that we had used in the previous descent had to be stowed out of the way prior to depressurizing the lunar module)
• It took longer to depressurize the lunar module than we had anticipated
• it also took longer to get the cooling units in our backpacks operating than we had expected.

In substance, it took us approximately an hour longer to get ready than we had predicted. When we actually descended the ladder it was found to be very much like the lunar gravity simulations we had performed here on Earth. No difficulty was encountered in descending the ladder. The last step was about 3 1/2 feet from the surface, and we were somewhat concerned that we might have difficulty in reentering the LM at the end of our activity period. So we practiced that before doing the exercise of bringing the camera down which took the subsequent surface pictures. Here you see the camera being lowered on what might be called the "Brooklyn clothesline." I was operating quite carefully here because immediately to my right and off the picture was a six-foot-deep crater. And I was somewhat concerned about losing my balance on the steep slope. The other item of interest in the very early stages of EVA, should it have been cut short for some unknown reason, was the job of bringing back a sample of the lunar rocks. The photograph shows the collection of that initial sample into a small bag (Photo 14) and then that bag being deposited in my pocket. This was the first of a number of times when we found two men were a great help. I quickly put up the TV camera. And then more leisurely Buzz and I joined together to erect the American flag. (Photo 15.) We found on a number of occasions when we were able to help each other in many ways on the surface. You probably recall the times that I got my foot caught in the television cable, and Buzz was able to help me extract it without falling down.

ALDRIN

We had some difficulty at first getting the pole of the flag to remain in the surface. In penetrating the surface, we found that most objects would go down about 5, maybe 6 inches, and then meet with gradual resistance. At the same time there was not much of a support force on either side, so we had to lean the flag back slightly in order for it to maintain this position. So many people have done so much to give us this opportunity to place this American flag on the surface. To me it was one of the prouder moments of my life, to be able to stand there and quickly salute the flag.

ARMSTRONG

The rest of the activity seemed to be very rushed. There were a lot of things to do, and we had a hard time getting them finished.

ALDRIN

We did find that mobility on the surface was in general a good bit better than perhaps we had anticipated it. There was a slight tendency to be more nearly toward the rear of a neutral stable position. Loss of balance seemed to be quite easy to identify. And as one would lean a slight bit to one side or the other, it was very easy to identify when this loss of balance was approaching. In maneuvering around, one of my tasks fairly early in the EVA, I found that a standard loping technique of one foot in front of the other worked out quite as well as we would have expected. One could also jump in more of a kangaroo fashion, two feet at a time. This seemed to work, but without quite the same degree of control of your stability as you moved along. We found that we had to anticipate three to four steps ahead in comparison with the one or two steps ahead when you're walking on the Earth.

ARMSTRONG

We had very little trouble, much less trouble than expected on the surface. It was a pleasant operation. Temperatures weren't high. They were very comfortable. The little EMU, the combination of spacesuit and back pack that provided or sustained our life on the surface, operated magnificently, We had no cause for concern at any time with the operation of that equipment. The primary difficulty that we observed was that there was just far too little time to do the variety of things that we would have liked to have done. In earlier pictures, you saw rocks and the boulder field out Buzz's window that were 3 and 4 feet in size -- very likely pieces of the lunar bedrock. And it would have been very interesting to go over and get some samples of those, There were other craters that differed widely, that would have been interesting to examine and photograph. We had the problem of the five-year-old boy in a candy store. There are just too many interesting things to do. The surface as we said was fine-grained with lots of rock in it. It took footprints very well, and the footprints stayed in place. (Photo 17.) The LM was in good shape, and it exhibited no damage from the landing or the descent. Here is a picture of the ladder with the well-known plaque on the primary strut. (Photo 18.) There was a question as to whether the LM would sink in up to its knees. It didn't, as you can see. The footpads sunk in, perhaps, an inch or two. And the probe in this picture was folded over and sticks up through the sand in the bottom right-hand corner (Photo 19) showing that we were traveling slightly sidewise at touchdown. There was a wide variety of surfaces. Here Buzz is standing in a small crater (Photo 20), and gives a very good picture of the rounded rims of what we believe are very old features. The LM was in a relatively smooth area between the craters and the boulder field. (Photo 21.) And we had some difficulty in determining just what straight up and down was. Our ability to pick out straight up and down was probably several degrees less accurate than it is here on Earth. And it caused some difficulty in having things like our cameras and scientific experiments maintain the level attitude we expected.

ALDRIN

Following the EVA, we had a sleep period, which in a word, didn't go quite as well as we thought it might. We found it was quite difficult to keep warm. When we pulled the window shades over the windows, we found that the environment within the cabin chilled considerably and after about two or three hours, we found that it was rather difficult for us to sleep. You see mounted in the right hand window, the 16-millimeter camera (Photo 31), that was mounted for taking the pictures on the surface. Following the sleep period, as we're approaching the lift-off point we progressed with a gradual power-up of the lunar module, which included another star alignment check and as Mike came over in Columbia, one revolution before lift-off, we used the radar to track him as he went over. We continued the check out. You see here, one of the data books that's mounted up in front of the instrument panel (Photo 32), that was used to record the various messages that were sent up to us, a whole host of numbers, for the particular maneuvers that were coming up, that we would copy down. We would log these on that sort of a data sheet.

Document #2: The Legacy of Project Apollo
by Roger D. Launius, NASA History Office

July 1999 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the epochal lunar landing of Apollo 11 in the summer of 1969. Although President John F. Kennedy had made a public commitment on 25 May 1961 to land an American on the Moon by the end of the decade, up until this time Apollo had been all promise. Now the realization was about to begin. Kennedy's decision had involved much study and review prior to making it public, and his commitment had captured the American imagination, generating overwhelming support. Project Apollo had originated as an effort to deal with an unsatisfactory situation (world perception of Soviet leadership in space and technology), and it addressed these problems very well. Even though Kennedy's political objectives were essentially achieved with the decision to go to the Moon, Project Apollo took on a life of its own over the years and left an important legacy to both the nation and the proponents of space exploration. Its success was enormously significant, coming at a time when American society was in crisis.

The first Apollo mission of public significance was the flight of Apollo 8. On 21 December 1968 it took off atop a Saturn V booster from the Kennedy Space Center. Three astronauts were aboard—Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William A. Anders—for a historic mission to orbit the Moon. It orbited the Moon on 24-25 December and then fired the boosters for a return flight. It "splashed down" in the Pacific Ocean on 27 December. That flight was such an enormously significant accomplishment because it came at a time when American society was in crisis over Vietnam, race relations, urban problems, and a host of other difficulties. And if only for a few moments the nation united as one to focus on this epochal event. Two more Apollo missions occurred before the climax of the program, testing critical systems and procedures and confirming that the time had come for a lunar landing.

That landing came during the flight of Apollo 11,which lifted off on 16 July 1969 and, after confirmation that the hardware was working well, began the three-day trip to the Moon. Then, at 4:18 p.m. EST on 20 July 1969, the Lunar Module—with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin aboard—landed on the lunar surface while Michael Collins orbited overhead in the Apollo Command Module. After checkout, Armstrong set foot on the surface, telling millions who saw and heard him on Earth that it was "one small step for [a] man—one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin soon followed him out, and the two plodded around the landing site in the 1/6 lunar gravity, planted an American flag but omitted claiming the land for the United States as had been routinely done during European exploration of the Americas, collected soil and rock samples, and set up scientific experiments. The next day they launched back to the Apollo capsule orbiting overhead and began the return trip to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific on 24 July.

This flight rekindled the excitement felt in the early 1960s during the first Mercury flights, and set the stage for later Apollo landing missions. An ecstatic reaction enveloped the globe, as everyone shared in the success of the mission. Ticker tape parades, speaking engagements, public relations events, and a world tour by the astronauts served to create good will both in the United States and abroad. Five more landing missions followed at approximately six-month intervals through December 1972, each of them increasing the time spent on the Moon. The scientific experiments placed on the Moon and the lunar soil samples returned have provided grist for scientists' investigations ever since. The scientific return was significant, but the program did not answer conclusively the age-old questions of lunar origins and evolution. Three of the later Apollo missions used a lunar rover vehicle to travel in the vicinity of the landing site, but none of them equaled the excitement of Apollo 11.

Project Apollo in general, and the flight of Apollo 11 in particular, should be viewed as a watershed in the nation's history. It was an endeavor that demonstrated both the technological and economic virtuosity of the United States and established national preeminence over rival nations—the primary goal of the program when first envisioned by the Kennedy administration in 1961. It had been an enormous undertaking, costing $25.4 billion (about $95 billion in 1990 dollars), with only the building of the Panama Canal rivaling the Apollo program's size as the largest non-military technological endeavor ever undertaken by the United States and only the Manhattan Project being comparable in a wartime setting.

There are several important legacies (or conclusions) about Project Apollo that need to be remembered at the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. First, and probably most important, the Apollo program was successful in accomplishing the political goals for which it had been created. Kennedy had been dealing with a Cold War crisis in 1961 brought on by several separate factors—the Soviet orbiting of Yuri Gagarin and the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion only two of them—that Apollo was designed to combat. At the time of the Apollo 11 landing, Mission Control in Houston flashed the words of President Kennedy announcing the Apollo commitment on its big screen. Those phrases were followed with these: "TASK ACCOMPLISHED, July 1969." No greater understatement could probably have been made. Any assessment of Apollo that does not recognize the accomplishment of landing an American on the Moon and safely returning before the end of the 1960s is incomplete and inaccurate, for that was the primary goal of the undertaking.

Second, Project Apollo was a triumph of management in meeting the enormously difficult systems engineering and technological integration requirements. James E. Webb, the NASA Administrator at the height of the program between 1961 and 1968, always contended that Apollo was much more a management exercise than anything else, and that the technological challenge, while sophisticated and impressive, was also within grasp. More difficult was ensuring that those technological skills were properly managed and used. Webb's contention was confirmed in spades by the success of Apollo. NASA leaders had to acquire and organize unprecedented resources to accomplish the task at hand. From both a political and technological perspective, management was critical. For seven years after Kennedy's Apollo decision, through October 1968, James Webb politicked, coaxed, cajoled, and maneuvered for NASA in Washington. In the process he acquired for the agency sufficient resources to meet its Apollo requirements.

More to the point, NASA personnel employed a "program management" concept that centralized authority over design, engineering, procurement, testing, construction, manufacturing, spare parts, logistics, training, and operations. The management of the program was recognized as critical to Apollo's success in November 1968, when Science magazine, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, observed:

In terms of numbers of dollars or of men, NASA has not been our largest national undertaking, but in terms of complexity, rate of growth, and technological sophistication it has been unique....It may turn out that [the space program's] most valuable spin-off of all will be human rather than technological: better knowledge of how to plan, coordinate, and monitor the multitudinous and varied activities of the organizations required to accomplish great social undertakings.

Understanding the management of complex structures for the successful completion of a multifarious task was a critical outgrowth of the Apollo effort.

Third, Project Apollo forced the people of the world to view the planet Earth in a new way. Apollo 8 was critical to this sea of change, for on its outward voyage, the crew focused a portable television camera on Earth and for the first time humanity saw its home from afar, a tiny, lovely, and fragile "blue marble" hanging in the blackness of space

Finally, the Apollo program, while an enormous achievement, left a divided legacy for NASA and the aerospace community. The perceived "golden age" of Apollo created for the agency an expectation that the direction of any major space goal from the president would always bring NASA a broad consensus of support and provide it with the resources and license to dispense them as it saw fit. Something most NASA officials did not understand at the time of the Moon landing in 1969, however, was that Apollo had not been a normal situation and would not be repeated. The Apollo decision was, therefore, an anomaly in the national decision-making process. The dilemma of the "golden age" of Apollo has been difficult to overcome, but moving beyond the Apollo program to embrace future opportunities has been an important goal of the agency's leadership in the recent past. Exploration of the solar system and the universe remains as enticing a goal and as important an objective for humanity as it ever has been. Project Apollo was an important early step in that ongoing process of exploration.