“Unlocking the Secrets of the Moon: The Ingenious Strategies That Made NASA’s Historic Landing Possible”
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
To which fellow astronaut Charlie Duke, acting as Capsule Communicator or CapCom, replied, slurring his words in relief:
“Roger, Twan—Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
Watching from Mission Control in Houston that day was the man whose insight and perseverance had made this historic moment possible: John Houbolt. Despite the accolades he had received from NASA, Houbolt had left the agency in 1963 to work for the consulting firm Aeronautics Research Associates. Nonetheless, in July 1969 he was invited to Mission Control by none other than Wernher von Braun, whose dearly-held Earth Orbit Rendezvous concept he had overturned. According to Houbolt, moments after the Eagle touched down on the lunar surface:
“…a wonderful thing happened. Von Braun turned to me … and says, ‘Thank you, John. It is a good idea.’”
Houbolt returned to NASA Langley in 1976 as Chief Aeronautical Scientist, in which role he published more than 120 technical papers before retiring in 1985 to become a private consultant. He died of Parkinson’s in 2014 at the age of 95.
Aside from the program alarms during descent, Apollo 11 encountered only one other issue with the LM: on re-entering the cabin, one of the astronauts’ PLSS backpacks accidentally snapped off the plunger on an ascent engine circuit breaker. Thankfully, the astronauts were able to close the breaker by simply shoving a pen into the hole, and the liftoff carried on as planned.
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