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Eleven Things That Saved* Apollo 11. *These are eleven chosen by the author among 100s of equal significance. 1. President John Kennedy’s Goal. “This nation should commit itself… to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth .” May 25, 1961.
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Eleven Things That Saved* Apollo 11 *These are eleven chosen by the author among 100s of equal significance.
1. President John Kennedy’s Goal • “This nation should commit itself… to landing a man on the • moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” May 25, 1961
My role was to mitigate those dangers and hardships by warning the crew when the spacecraft might be in danger as manager of the Apollo spacecraft caution and warning alarm systems.
It was evident that tragedy might have ensued so that a statement of condolence was prepared by a Nixon speech writer: • Armstrong believed that the promise of not successfully returning “alive” to Earth was approximately one chance in 10. And one chance in two of actually landing successfully.
Armstrong said: “Each of the components of our hardware were designed to certain reliability specifications, and for the majority, to my recollection, had a reliability requirement of 0.99996, which means that you have four failures in 100,000 operations. I've been told that if every component met its reliability specifications precisely, that a typical Apollo flight would have about [1,000] separate identifiable failures. In fact, we had more like 150 failures per flight, [substantially] better than statistical methods would tell you that you might have.” Such considerations led to Neil Armstrong’s assessment of one chance in ten of not returning alive to Earth.
4. The Program Alarm Decision Steve Bales: Apollo 11 GUIDO Jack Garman: 2nd from left in Guidance Back Room
Discussion of Fuel Remaining • Earth Weight of LM 33,500 lbs. during descent would become 1/6 under lunar gravity or 5,500 lbs force. The descent engine had a maximum thrust of 10,000 pounds throttle-able down to a 1,000 pounds of thrust. The warning light lit at 2 minutes of remaining fuel at 25 percent thrust or 2500 pounds of thrust force. So the lander could hover without regard for the lower weight of consumed fuel (18,600 pounds) for approximately one minute at the 50% thrust force (5,000 pounds) of the descent engine equalizing the 5,500 pounds of the lunar weight of the lander. For that reason, the call of 60 seconds was voiced. However, including the reduced fuel weight would indicate a much longer time till depletion was available.
6. Piloting Eagle Standing (Removing Eagle’s Seats)
7. What’s Missing in this picture of Eagle is Item seven. Can you find what’s absent?
9. A Ball Tip Pen to Actuate the Ascent Engine’s Broken Breaker Handle
10. A Near Liftoff Abort Miraculously Avoided The broken breaker handle suggests just how blessed the crew was at launch to avoid a similar accidental situation with their bulky suits. At liftoff, the most important control was the abort handle next to Neil Armstrong’s left leg. Rotating it by 17 degrees would activate the ejection system. Note Armstrong’s left leg sported a large, bulky pocket that could snag the handle at any moment. Fortunately, the crew noticed, and Armstrong did his best to move the pocket away from the abort handle during launch.
