Moonshot: The Inside Story of Mankind's Greatest Adventure Read Online Free PDF

(foreground) is Chris Kraft, fourth is George Low and fifth is Bob Gilruth.

President Nixon welcomes the astronauts aboard the USS Hornet. The crew are already confined to the Mobile Quarantine Facility, MQF).

Inside the quarantine facility.

New York City welcomes the three astronauts, in a shower of ticker tape.

Chapter 12
THE EAGLE HAS WINGS
Groggy after a difficult night's sleep, Michael Collins wondered whether the insistent voice in his ear could possibly be talking to him.
Mission Control: 'Apollo 11, Apollo 11. Good morning from the black team.'
Collins: 'You guys wake up early.'

On the morning of Sunday 20 July, Collins was woken 93 hours and 32 minutes into the mission, at 6.04am. The fifth day of the flight promised to be the most demanding, and none of the crew had slept well. 'The pressure was beginning to build at this point,' 1 Neil later said. After preparing the LM, the two spacecraft would undock. Neil and Buzz would then make the first of two burns, putting them in an elliptical orbit with a lowest point above the Moon of 8.3 miles. At this point, the crew would begin a second burn that would carry them down to the surface. For the moment, the men were just about to begin their tenth orbit around the Moon, and there were just two minutes to go before radio contact was lost.
Mission Control: '11, Houston. Looks like the command module's in good shape. Black team has been watching it real closely for you.'
Collins: 'We sure appreciate that. Because I sure haven't.'
As they passed around the far side Buzz entered the lower equipment bay and began to prepare for the landing that would take place in nine hours' time. He and Neil would remain in their pressure-suits throughout their time aboard Eagle , which meant that once again they would have to put on the urine and fecal collection devices. After doing this, Buzz pulled on a set of long johns that contained hundreds of thin plastic tubes. These allowed the underwear to be cooled by water during the arduous work on the surface. He then floated into the LM, making room for Neil to begin the same process, while Mike prepared breakfast.

In Houston, Mission Control's black team were coming to the end of their shift, and nearly two hours after they had woken the crew they began handing over to the white team of Gene Kranz. Carrying a plastic bag, Kranz walked into the Mission Operations Control Room and greeted his controllers as he slowly threaded his way towards his seat. By his own admission he was the most emotional of all the flight directors, and was keenly aware of the historical significance of what he and his men were hoping to do. 2 He hadn't slept well either. Leaving his bag at the flight director's console, Kranz headed out of the MOCR to pass the time of day with the engineers and contractors in the spacecraft analysis room. After chatting to Grumman's Tom Kelly and the president of North American Rockwell, by 8am he had returned to his console. From his bag, Kranz retrieved his white and silver waistcoat. Once he'd slipped it on he was ready to take over.

Aboard Columbia , breakfast was taking longer than usual. Tired, busy and preoccupied by the events ahead of them, the men fell out of their mealtime routine. Normally they helped each other prepare the many breakfast bags and packages, but with bits and pieces of their bulky spacesuits taking up precious room it had become difficult to move about. 'The rhythm got slightly out of whack,' Buzz remembered, 'and once we finally got it going properly we all three bemoaned the fact that the simple act of eating was something there was no training for.' 3 After the meal, Buzz – still only wearing his long johns – returned to the LM to begin preparing Eagle for flight, a five-hour process. While Aldrin worked through his checklist, Michael helped Neil into his pressure-suit, doing up the inaccessible crotch-to-shoulder zip and checking everything was as it should be. Meanwhile, Mission Control