I don’t think most people realize how terrifying the Moon Landings were. They look back at it, and see this great achievement in human spaceflight but don’t grasp the gravity of the situation. (No pun intended)
OP mentions Michael Collins, who is often forgotten. He was the third member of the Apollo 11 mission, who manned the Command Module whilst the other two landed with the Lander Module. People might hear that and thing he got the short end of the stick, but honestly… I’d argue the opposite. At 20:17:40 UTC on Sunday July 20 1969 the Landing Module touched down on the Moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren spent 21 hours, 36 minutes on the surface of the Moon before beginning ascent to rendezvous with Michael Collins in the Command Module.
This is where things get unnerving. The thruster used on the Lunar Ascent Propulsion System used a hypergolic fuel, which is a fuel that spontaneously ignites when the fuel and oxidizer meet. Hypergolic fuels are useful for when spacecrafts need reliable ignition or repeated ignitions, however they’re nasty things. The specific fuel used for this thruster was a mixture of Aerozine 50 and Dinitrogen tetroxide. These are incredibly toxic, and more importantly incredibly corrosive. In fact, they are so corrosive that once you fire an engine you essentially have to completely rebuild it in order to reuse it. This means that the engine on the Lunar Ascent Propulsion System had never been fired before.
That engine was their bridge home. If it failed, they would be stranded on the surface of the Moon. As mentioned the Moon Landing lasted roughly 22 hours. For twenty two hours the two astronauts were on the moon, completely unsure if the never-before fired thruster would even fire up. Completely unsure if they’d be able to go home.
This picture shows the entirety of the human race on January 21st, 1969. All of it except the man who took it, that is. Micheal Collins stayed back on the Command Module during the mission to await Aldrin and Armstrong’s return… or potential lack thereof. This earned him the title “The Loneliest Man in the Universe”. For about 50 minutes for each orbit around the Moon Collins would be out of contact with the earth. That means for about 50 minutes during each orbit he’d have no way to contact any other human, completely alone over 230,000 miles from earth. For roughly 50 minutes during each orbit Collins had no clue whether his fellow astronauts were still alive, and them not returning was a very real possibility. Orders were in place that if the other two could not return to the command module that Collins would return alone.
This wasn’t just some disaster protocol either. This was a very real possibility. Both the astronauts, and NASA were very much prepared for it to happen. So much so that Richard Nixon, the president at the time, had a speech prepared if it were to happen. It doesn’t sugar coat it. It starts off
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery.“
If that isn’t bone chilling, then I’m not really sure what is. People often romanticize space exploration, but back then, and even today, well… this is the reality of it. All of that is what astronauts go through.
It was a tense time. I watched them land and take off from my hospital bed because I had my tonsils removed in the middle of this all, and I remember the absolute hush that fell over the floor as we waited for them to connect. Even at eight, I knew that if they didn’t, there was no coming home.
One if the reasons I did was because my dad was one of those been one of the team that had worked to get them there. He wasn’t with NASA by the time they launched; he’d left after the capsule fire in Florida. But he understood the calculations because some of his work was in there. And the loss of Grissom — a man I’d met a couple of years before — and his crew underscored how dangerous this exploration could be.
We learned it again with Apollo 13, watching helplessly as waited to learn if those men would make it home. There were the deaths in the Cosmonaut program, even if we didn’t know the details then. Challenger — which found my father and repeating the conversation we’d had after the capsule fire of how dangerous it was and how we need those risks. Columbia.
Exploration is dangerous and the men and women who chase that dream are a special breed. But every time a flight goes up, there’s a breath thatks held until they’re safely home again. And a prayer we won’t have to hear a speech like Nixon’s.
