Happy Apollo 11 Launch Day to all who celebrate!
A little vignette from CMP Michael Collins:
It’s a clear day, we can see that, and we are told that it’s hot already with little breeze—a scorcher in the making. Last night the Saturn V looked very graceful, suspended by a cross fire of searchlights which made it sparkle like a delicate opal and silver necklace against the black sky.
Today it is a machine again, solid and businesslike, and big. Over three times as tall as a Gemini-Titan, taller than a football field set on end, as tall as the largest redwood, it is truly a monster. It is parked next to a huge steel scaffold known as the launch umbilical tower, which is designed to hold the rocket and nurture it until the final second. The two partners make quite a contrast, the rocket sleek and poised and full of promise, the tower old, gnarled, ungainly, and going nowhere.
We park at the base of the tower and clamber out. The first elevator is waiting for us with its doors already open. Something seems wrong, and suddenly I realize what it is. The place is deserted! Every other time I have been to the launch pad it has been a beehive of activity, with workmen shouting at each other, equipment being hoisted by crane, and all the other vital signs common to a big construction site. Now it seems as if some dread epidemic has killed all but those protected by pressure suits, except there are no corpses and Joe Schmitt still looks healthy. Perhaps it is simply a case of the air-raid siren having sounded and left the city deserted.
As the four of us ascend, I feel that more than the elevator door has clanged shut behind me. I recall that there are one million visitors here to watch the launch, but I feel closer to the moon than to them. This elevator ride, this first vertical nudge, has marked the beginning of Apollo 11, for we cannot touch the earth any longer. I am treated to one more view, however, one last bit of schizophrenia as I stand on a narrow walkway 320 feet up, ready to board Columbia.
On my left is an unimpeded view of the beach below, unmarred by human totems; on my right the most colossal pile of machinery ever assembled. If I cover my right eye, I see the Florida of Ponce de Leon, and beyond it the sea which is mother to us all. I am the original man. If I cover my left eye, I see civilization and technology and the United States of America and a frightening array of wires and metal. I am but one adolescent in an army which has received its marching orders. Neil has entered the spacecraft, and I am next.
Good luck and godspeed...
