the 40th
anniversary of man landing on the moon.
NAS' founding
member Dr Colin Keay was lucky enough to have
had a first hand view of the Apollo 11 launch at
Cape Canaveral.
APOLLO 11 FROM
THE FRONT ROW
Associate Professor Colin S. L. Keay
"Nobody at Cape Kennedy,
Florida on the morning of July16th, 1969, is
likely to forget the magnificent flight of
the huge Saturn 5 rocket blasting the Apollo
11 expedition into space on its epochal
voyage to the Moon."
Seldom has such an
historic event been witnessed by so many
spectators, not to mention several hundred
million television viewers. Nearly one million
people gathered at the Cape to see at first hand
the dawn of a new age of exploration.
The vast majority of the spectators were
American who
contrived their summer vacation itinerary to
bring them to the east coast of Florida in time
for the launching. Almost fifty thousand of
those watching were connected in some way with
the activities of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration and there were ten thousand
V.I.P. guests present. The most favoured
watchers were the 3,500 representatives of the
news media of the world. They had the closest
view because the press-site is barely three
miles from the launch pad. I was fortunate to be
one of the dozen or so Australians among this
privileged group, and no word can adequately
convey the impact of the occasion.On the day
prior to the launching. Brevard County, Florida,
was fit to burst. Motels and hotels were fuller
than full, the caravan park were overflowing
onto the street and for a hundred miles around
there was nowhere to sleep except in a car or on
the beach.
Apollo 11 was the sole topic of conversation as
anxious eyes surveyed the occasional wisp of
drizzly rain and people wondered if the good
weather forecast for the morrow would allow the
launching to proceed. The drizzle was very light
and scarcely troubled the campers pitching their
tents and awnings along the edges of all the
causeways and clear road side as much as fifteen
miles from the Apollo launch-pad.
The Pre Centre at Canaveral
City, just south of the Cape
Kennedy restricted area, was like a mad-house on
the event of the launch-day. Reporter,
cameramen, commentators and correspondents lined
up ix deep to register and be issued with the
all-important press-badge which was essential
for entry to the Press- site at Launch Complex
39.
It was also essential for
unchallenged access at the
front entrance of the Pre Centre where a very
burly bouncer
efficiently took care of all unbadged
gate-crashers. Outside the Press Centre a couple
of youthful entrepreneurs all caught everyone,
coming and going, for the purchase of an Apollo
11 bumper sticker at a dollar a time-proceeds
going to some obscure student organisation.
The bedlam at the Press Centre
continued by night as well
day. Hundreds of foreign journalist created a
Babel of tongues and it was every man for
himself. After all, they were there to get news
and get it they did with the harassed staff
being kept busy handing out red hot news
release, answering rapid-fire questions and
making transportation arrangement to and from
the launch area fifteen miles to the north. Most
of the staff of the Press Centre carried out
their duties with an efficiency and aplomb born
of previous experience, but this was their
greatest test yet and many of the key personnel,
particularly those in the transportation
section. had not slept for day.
At midnight the buses began a
shuttle service taking new men to the Press site
near the huge Vertical Assembly Building, some
three miles west from the Apollo II launch pad.
The seventeen-mile journey led through the Cape
Kennedy Air Force Station. Originally known to
the world as Cape Canaveral-the scene of
hundreds of rocket firings-then across a
two-mile causeway leading to the John F. Kennedy
Space Centre on Merritt Island. Seen from the
causeway the northern horizon was aglow with
light from the searchlight focussed on the
Saturn rocket and the thousands of floodlights
around the Vertical Assembly Building. The bus
travelled west through the industrial launch-
support area where the astronauts lay asleep in
the Manned Spacecraft Operation Building and
turned north on the last four miles to the
Vertical Assembly Building and the nearby
Press Site, already a hive of activity.
At this stage, eight hours
before lift-off, the astronaut back-up
crew had finished their pre Iaunch checks and
with scores of other technicians were clearing
the pad area as the tanks of the three stage of
the Saturn 5 were chilled with liquid nitrogen
prior to loading the liquid oxygen and hydrogen,
referred to a cryogenic propellants because of
their extremely low temperature.
A steady stream of vehicles
returned along the three-mile causeway from Pad
39-A as this operation commenced and the three
stage of the giant rocket began to glisten with
frost as their temperature was lowered. Already
700 tons of kerosene was aboard from fuelling
operations carried out the previous day and in
the course of the next four hours almost 2000
tons of cryogenic propellant was pumped in at
the rate of 10,000 gallons a minute from storage
tanks around the perimeter of the pad area.
During this hazardous operation nobody was
allowed within half a mile of the rocket.
Back at the Press site the view
of the Saturn 5 was unforgettably impressive as
it stood illuminated by the best part of a
hundred searchlights. The new men in the Press
stand found their vocabularies stretched to the
limit to do justice to the sight. Into the
dozens of telephones in the stand they were
breathing words like "translucent" and
"iridescent" in an attempt to convey to their
new editors thousands of miles away some idea of
the beauty of the rocket. One said "It gleamed
like white porcelain" and another admitted that
it was "just the greatest." I had to agree
because to me there was no doubt that the giant
white rocket, viewed against the velvet black of
the night sky. was the most beautiful man-made
object I had ever seen.
In the long hours before dawn
the Press site steadily became
more crowded and the tension grew. Everything
was proceeding so unbelievably smoothly-even the
weather forecast was good. I badly needed sleep.
The night before on the transcontinental flight
I had scarcely dozed but at the Press site the
air of expectancy made sleep impossible. Beside,
there was no place comfortable enough.
So I listened to the countdown commentary from
the loudspeakers everywhere, took a few
telephoto time exposures of the rocket and
watched the professional newsmen at work.
Shortly before dawn flashes of
lightning could be seen in the eastern sky from
a thunder storm far out to sea. Apprehension was
dispelled when the grey light of dawn revealed
an almost clear sky over Cape Kennedy, except
for a very thin, very high cloud layer and a few
wisp of cloud at lower altitudes. No wind.
Almost perfect launch conditions.
A little after 6 a.m. the loud
speakers announced that the astronauts had
boarded the crew transfer van and were on their
way. This was followed by the news that liquid
hydrogen was leaking from a faulty valve in the
launch tower. but no hold was necessary-yet. A
wail of sirens heralded the arrival of the
astronaut. They could have been lost amid the
thousands of vehicles everywhere had it not been
for the flashing red light on the transfer van
and the blue rotating beacons on the escorting
patrol cars. They paused near
the Vertical Assembly Building for last shots by
photographers and TV cameramen and headed
through the barriers erected at the end of the
causeway leading to Pad 39A.
There they left their escort
behind and sped to the pad at 40 miles an hour.
As they rode the elevator 300 feet up the launch
tower they passed the technician who were busy
switching the liquid hydrogen fuelling operation
to
a duplicate set of feed pipes thoughtfully
provided for just such an emergency. At this
point in the countdown the fuelling should have
been finished except for topping off but
fortunately it had nearly been completed when
the leak occurred and the topping off operation,
with the astronauts aboard the capsule, was
stepped up a little
to avoid a hold in the count-down.
As the Sun rose above the thunderclouds out to
sea where
an occasional flicker of lightning could still
be seen, the activity at the Pre Site began to
resemble the confusion in the tally room at a
General Election. Leaving aside the TV cameras
and monitor screens the amount of photographic
equipment scattered around the area was quite
fantastic. Every conceivable camera-telescope
combination
was there being fussed over in readiness for the
lift-off.
I would guess that never before has history been
so comprehensively recorded on film.
The sun and the temperature
climbed higher together and
the generally clear conditions proved a
temptation for many airlinerpilot who brought
their big Miami-bound jets down low to let
passenger view the rocket. The last to do so
flew past barely 45 minute before lift-off. In
the late stage of the count-down helicopters
continuously patrolled the whole launch area,
keeping inquisitive light aircraft at a safe
distance.
The sound of helicopter blades
had been almost unbroken from daylight as 18
helicopters chartered by N.A.S.A. ferried the
V.V.I.P's in over the heads of the multitude
blocking the highways outside all six entrance
to the Cape Kennedy restricted area. The
V.V.I.P's. Very Very Important
Persons, included ex-President Lyndon Johnson
who, more than anyone else, had squeezed out of
Congress the funds necessary for the Apollo
programme. It was his first attendance at a
major launching. Other V.V.I.P's included Herman
Oberth, the Romanian born father of
space-flight, and Mrs. Robert Goddard, widow of
America's rocket pioneer who designed and fired
the world's first
liquid propellant rocket.
The count-down proceeded with
unhesitating smoothness , each loud speaker
announcement confirming that all systems were
"go" and ending with what seemed almost like a
magical incantation: "It is- now T minus X
minutes and Y seconds and counting."Lift-off
time had been fixed months previously at 9.32
a.m. This was the sixth Saturn 5 rocket. Its
five predecessors had all left the pad within
seconds of their scheduled launch-time. Everyone
wondered if this one would as well. As the
minutes and seconds ticked away the tension
grew. Attention focsed more and more on the huge
rocket standing majestically on its pad and
thoughts were with the three astronauts
performing final check in their sealed capsule.
At T minus 15 seconds a great
hush descended except for the measured
intonation of the count-down over the
loudspeakers. But for the network commentators
in vans parked at the back of the Pre enclosure
nobody spoke and all eyes were glued to the
rocket, its internal systems flexing in a
computer-controlled pre-launch sequence. A puff
of smoke from underneath the rocket at T minus 9
seconds signalled the start of the ignition
phase. The computer,
in its own way, had pressed the firing button.
Next came a small spurt of flame
as the turbine powered pumps began to feed
propellants into the rocket motors. Then. at T
minus 3 seconds, all hell broke loose from under
the rocket and flames shot out for almost a
quarter of a mile on either side of the pad.
Hundreds of feet into the air rose huge clouds
of smoke and steam from the deluge of cooling
water in the flame trench. Unperturbed by the
cataclysm the computer checked that all five
engines were running smoothly and flashed a
signal to release the hold-down clamps on the
launcher platform. Lift-off. The Saturn urged
upward to the shout and cheers of the million
spectators. Later we learned that the Saturn
left the pad seven tenths of a second late-the
computer was playing it cool!
At about T plus 5 seconds, as
the tail of the rocket was about
to clear the top of the 400-foot mobile launcher
tower, the sound hit the Press site. It lacked
the thunder-clap quality of the ignition of the
smaller Saturn 1 rocket. Instead. it rose in
about half a second from silence to a deep.
earth-shaking, rumbling roar which submerged all
other sounds. It was awesome, as was the
sight of the Saturn blasting its way into the
sky on a 500-foot column of flame. Here was
enough power to feed, if harnessed electrically,
the whole electric power system of Western
Europe, Great Britain included. To provide it
the rocket motors were consuming propellant at
the fantastic rate of fifteen tons every second.
Cape Kennedy veterans claim that
Apollo 11 was the best
Saturn 5 firing to date from the spectator's
point of view. Except for a brief disappearance
behind a small cloud the whole period of
first-stage burning was clearly visible all the
way up and down the
coast. Especially interesting was the way the
huge exhaust flame cut a neat round hole through
the thin cloud layer at about 25,000 feet.
Although the noise was deafening
it was not quite as loud as I expected. The
noise level produced by Saturn I. which has only
one fifth the power of the Saturn 5. is
also deafening but the din of the Saturn 5 ha a
more staccato quality and make the ground
seem to bake and tremble like a small
earthquake. Perhaps the very lowest sound
frequencies -too low to hear---contained enough
energy
to actually shake the body and make us imagine
the ground
trembled. It was certainly severe enough to
shake any loose clothing.
Whatever the true explanation. these low
frequencies are not transmitted by TV or radio
and the viewer or listener does not in
consequence gain a full and complete impression
of a Saturn rocket firing. Certainly the term
"blast-off" has been aptly coined.
As the Saturn 5 climbed higher its noise was
heard over a
wider area. On one previous firing it was
detected by instrument near New York. about 1OOO
miles away from the flight path of the rocket.
When the Saturn 5 disappeared from view near the
eastern
horizon we were left with the voice of Mission
Control as our only contact. The remainder of
the flight was followed as readily from
Australia as from Cape Kennedy. With everyone
heading for home and their TV set the exodus
caused one of the biggest traffic jams Florida
had ever experienced. The snarled vehicles of
all descriptions took hours to clear but the
million sightseers were in a good mood their
eyes had seen the glory and were satisfied. They
would carry the image of the Apollo II rocket
and its huge exhaust flame burnt into their
memories for life.
The subsequent landing on the
Moon and the televised
moon-walk gave a tremendous boost to the morale
of the American people, for years wearied and
worried by the Vietnam conflict over sea and
civil disorders at home. It was obvious to any
visitor that Americans were once again proud to
be American. And the long-suffering American
taxpayer felt a lot less grudgingly toward the
tens of billions of tax-dollars spent on space.
This national feeling of euphoria will not last
for ever, although new Apollo exploits will
refresh it from time to time. But, having felt
the heady exhilaration of success in space
exploration, the American nation is
now psychologically prepared for the next major
goal-the voyage to Mars.
(By courtesy of Newcastle
Morning Herald)
