“Unlocking the Secrets of the Moon: The Ingenious Strategies That Made NASA’s Historic Landing Possible”
Meanwhile, the ascent stage was powered by a 16,000 Newton thrust Bell Aerospace rocket engine, also fuelled by Aerozine 50 and Nitrogen Tetroxide. These propellants also fuelled the reaction control system or RCS thruster quads that allowed the LM to be manoeuvred in the vacuum of space. Due to the corrosive nature of these propellants, the ascent engine could only be ignited once before having to be rebuilt, meaning the first time a production engine was fired was when the LM lifted off from the lunar surface. If it failed, the astronauts would be stranded with no hope of rescue. Understandably, a huge amount of effort was devoted to ensuring the ascent engine would fire the first time, every time; failure, as they say, was not an option.
In addition to the ascent engines and thrusters, the LM also contained the pressurized cabin for the Commander and Lunar Module pilot, flight controls, batteries, oxygen tanks for the life-support system, navigation and communications systems, and everything else needed to land on the lunar surface, keep the astronauts alive for the duration of their mission, lift off again, and rendezvous and dock with the orbiting CSM. This included a hatch and docking ring at the top of the module, which allowed the LM to dock with the CSM and the crew to transfer from one vehicle to another through a short tunnel. Originally, a second docking port was integrated into the forward ingress/egress hatch to allow the LM crew to take an active role in docking. However, this was eventually deleted in the name of weight savings and responsibility for docking given to the Command Module Pilot. Early on, it was unknown whether the crew would be easily able to perform the procedure of pulling away from the SIVB rocket stage, turning around, docking with the LM, and extracting it from its adapter. Therefore, various rigid and flexible tether mechanisms were devised to assist this process. However, the ten 2-man Gemini missions flown between 1965 and 1966 demonstrated that orbital manoeuvres – including the dreaded rendezvous and docking – were far easier than expected to perform, so these features were deemed unnecessary. Meanwhile, the Ranger and Surveyor unmanned probes, launched between 1961 and 1968, determining that the lunar surface was mostly solid with only a thin coating of dust. The LM and the astronauts inside would be in no danger of sinking into oblivion.
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