Neil Armstrong: "Houston, uh...Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed."

Those were the first chilling words from Neil Armstrong. Later would come his more famous, "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

As a young Air Force officer, I was lucky enough to meet Neil Armstrong. He gave a lecture to a group of junior officers from all four branches of the military about the role of "calm courage" in leadership. In essence, he said, courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the strength and determination to overcome it. Preparation, study and practice are the foundation for courage. "Fearlessness", he said, was "short ‘for foolish ego’". He said “My greatest achievement was not walking on the moon, but rather landing on the moon.” Then he told the story.  Here's the NASA video and audio recording of the 15-minute descent of Armstrong and Aldrin, landing the Eagle.

He took us through a minute-by-minute tour of this recording, describing the background and details of what was happening and what he was thinking about-- "There were all sorts of things going wrong, not according to plan, but the public never really knew anything about it, especially at the time." As best my memory can recall, here’s the story that he told:

At 7:45 you’ll hear the crew say, “Program Alarm” then “”1202” which was the specific alarm code. That’s the beginning of multiple alarms and confusion.

At 8:06, you’ll hear Armstrong impatiently insist, after no feedback from Mission Control, “Give us a reading on the 1202 program alarm.”

At 8:12, Mission Control, “Roger, we’re go on that alarm.” But, they weren’t 100% confident, as was revealed later.

I’m not sure when, but at some point in the above, Armstrong took over manual flight control. At 9:38, he tries to go back into auto control and it seems to hold.

At 11:38 you’ll hear Aldrin call out a “Program Alarm” and “1201”. That was the beginning of another series of similar alarms and confusion about the status of the flight control computer, notably the descent radar system. The crew and Mission Control had never seen these types of alarms in the simulator; they were scrambling to decide whether to abort the landing or not. As I recall him telling the story, the descent radar was placed in the wrong mode, which overloaded the flight control computer and caused the LEM to overshoot the primary landing zone by several miles and burn more fuel than planned. Neil Armstrong again took over manual flight control and was having a hard time finding a place to land, fearful that they would land on the edge of a crater or boulder and the LEM would tip over. So, imagine this… Armstrong manually flying, with Aldrin peering out the window for a clear spot and providing “eyeball” callouts of altitude and drift. 

At 14:20, you’ll hear someone in the background at Mission Control callout "60 seconds" and at 14:50, "30 seconds". That's Mission Control warning the crew that they had only 30 seconds of fuel left in the LEM propulsion system. Armstrong soon landed and they quickly went through their engine shut down procedures… with only 14 seconds of fuel remaining. They were supposed to land with at least one minute of fuel remaining, to ensure that they could safely return to the orbiting Command Module, Columbia. 

After landing and shutting down engines, Armstrong utters his famous words, "Houston, uh...Tranquility base here.  The Eagle has landed." Mission Control then says "Roger, Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You gotta bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot." Then Armstrong replies, “Thank YOU” which always makes me chuckle to hear. In Armstrong’s thanks, you sense his acknowledgement of Mission Control’s role, plus his genuine Ohio, midwestern small town courtesy, as if he’s having dinner at someone’s house…not having just landed on the moon.

Apollo 11 was one of humanity's greatest achievements. It brought the world together at a time in the 1960s when the world seemed like it was coming apart. But Apollo 11 was also a hair-width away from one of humanity's greatest tragedies. Imagine how we would have felt if the Eagle had landed, but without enough fuel to takeoff and return to the Command Module. Two astronauts would have died a very slow and gruesome death, and we would have never looked up at the moon the same way, again. Neil Armstrong's calm, cool, courage, along with Aldrin’s teamwork, and calm heads in Mission Control, were the difference in that hair-width boundary.

For whatever reason, the impact of this story didn't hit me until later, when I worked for TRW. I was lucky enough to sit in on another related lecture, in honor of the Apollo 11 25th anniversary, and listen to some of the TRW engineers who were in Mission Control for Apollo 11. They designed and built the descent engines for the Lunar Module ("LEM"). They knew the untold story of the near disaster that I heard from Armstrong, years before. 

Armstrong was not comfortable with the attention he garnered from what is still the greatest adventure of humankind.  He could have been the total opposite...the most arrogant man in the world, yet he was humbled.  I wish we had more corporate and political leadership who were uncomfortable in those roles-- the reluctant leaders, pushed into their role, not pushing others out of the way to get there.

We had our share of trouble in the 60s and 70s, when Apollo brought the world together.  Even with those problems, I think there was always an underlying sense of confidence in ourselves—in America-- and from the rest of the world that the US could eventually overcome any challenge. We need to get that attitude back.  We need to earn it back.

Update to this blog: A dear friend, Susan Pollack, found a detailed write-up about this story that you can read here: Apollo 11's Scariest Moments: Perils of the 1st Manned Moon Landing.