Asleep on the Moon
The Apollo 11 lunar module (LM) Eagle touched down on the surface of the Moon at exactly 20:17:39, July 20th, 1969 UTC (previously known as GMT). That’s 40 years ago today. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, huddled in the ungainly LM had left the command module (CM) Columbia almost three hours earlier. Alone in the CM sat Michael Collins, intensely following Eagle’s progress. After visually inspecting Eagle for damage he watched it slowly disappear from sight below him.
Collins’ view of Eagle shortly after seperating from the Columbia
The ride down was not uneventful. A number of alarm signals distracted the astronauts but these were simply training errors, not faults. The tiny computer on board could not process all the tasks in real-time so had to postpone them, at which point an executive overflow alarm would sound. Their training had not catered for this.
Much more serious were the navigation problems. Armstrong had to take semi-manual control of the spacecraft when it appeared that it wasn’t going to land on the designated spot. When the rockets were turned off, they had only 25 seconds of fuel left.
It was a Sunday. The radio had been on all day. Lights-off for the juniors in the boarding house was 8:30. Not being in bed by this time or making any noise after it was an offence, punished by a caning. But this evening was different. The ever-vigilant prefects who usually made our lives a misery were away, listening to the radio. Our domitory was a cacophany of crackling radios. Sadly, it wasn’t long before an officious boy-Hitler put a stop to this. Then, like most of the other boys, I lay in bed in the darkness with a little earphone in my ear, literally glued to every sound popping out of my little radio.
Normally we would all be asleep by 9 PM. But I couldn’t have slept even with nothing to listen to. It was so exciting. That unexpectedly long descent made me start to fear the worst. But then at almost 10:20 (local time) a flurry of activity and Armstong’s, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” What relief!
Confident that they would immediately step onto the surface of the Moon, I woke up the boy in the bed next to mine. “Wake-up! They’ve landed! They’re going to walk now!“, I whispered. After a bit of swearing he plugged his earpiece in. And then we waited and waited. I drifted off for a while but woke up a little later only to hear that the astronauts were resting! Resting? How could they possibly be resting? I felt sorry for Michael Collins. What wouldn’t he have given to be on the Moon? And all his colleagues could do was rest!
By now it was past midnight and I happily gave up the fight. It was the next day – July 21 – and my heroes would take their first steps on the Moon on my birthday!
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