RIFLE RANGE BOY: Houston, the Eagle has landed!

Insignia of Apollo 11.

It all started as squabbles between brothers. Much like Kane and Abel, both brothers thought their respective brand of economic reforms was the way forward. One believed in freedom and liberty whilst the other insists that discipline and order bring the best in people. The world soon became divided into two blocks - the vibrant capitalists and the red communists.

Who said competition is terrible? Did it not surge to dominate over the other? Both tried to showcase their achievements; USA and USSR became the leaders of their respective sects. Industrialisation was viewed upon as the clear proof of success, and soon, the craze of space exploration became the next in-thing.

At one time, it appeared like the Russians were winning with hands down. They had managed to send Laika, the space dog to outer space in 1957. Soon they managed to send Yuri Gagarin (1961) and Valentina Tereshkova (1963, a female cosmonaut) to orbit Earth.

View of Earth aboard Apollo 8 on
Xmas eve 1968.

This made JFK, in 1962, famously put a challenge to America to land a man to on the Moon by the end of the decade. His seminal speech, given at Rice University boldly proclaimed, "We choose to go to the moon... not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." awoke a nation to singlemindedly venture into space.

With a chest heaving with hope and accomplishment, the baby boomers, after having fought a world war for a second time which killed off and incapacitated a right proportion of their men in their productive years, raised to the occasion.

Laica, Space Dog (1957)

The Herculean task was dangerous, with many technicality difficulties. So many things had to be sorted out - propulsion forces, complex mathematic calculations, life support, insulation, lunar landing and safe return of astronauts. If that was not enough, faulty electrical wiring caused a fire in Apollo 1 even before launch killing all three crewmen, put a damper on the whole Apollo project. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the Americans slowly sprang back into action. Subsequent launches sequentially took crafts to space, to orbit Earth, to navigate around the moon and finally set up a dress rehearsal before finally landing Man on the Moon on 20th July 1969.

After the launch and separation of the spacecraft from the rocket to enter the lunar orbit, the most significant challenge happened in the last thirteen minutes of Eagle's (the Lunar Module) descent onto the moon.

The computers which controlled the lunar mission were primitive. Humans were just dabbling with computers. In fact, most of the engineers involved in the endeavour were clueless of the word software in computers. The concept of digital portable general computer was alien but was installed in the spacecraft. The data of information carried in the two computers sent in Apollo rocket is comparable to present-day mobile devices. As Armstrong and Aldrin were on their descent, the fourth astronaut (i.e. the computer) gave an unknown alarm - 1202. The third astronaut was, of course, Collin who was in the mothership Columbia orbiting the moon.

Communication between Mission Control and Apollo was painfully inadequate with a lot of static.

After a moment of uncertainty, it was determined that the computer was screaming out that it had too many commands to respond. That was all. The interesting fact about the engineers assigned at the Mission Control in Houston was that their average age was just 27! Imagine these young punk deciding the safety of the astronaut and shouldering the whole of NASA's dreams.

Then it came to their attention that there were boulders on their planned landing site. Armstrong had to steer the vessel skilfully calculating the descent on the window panel - digital assistance was still primitive. Then he realised that he was running dangerously low on fuel as he found a suitable landing site. He was left with 18 seconds amount of fuel only at docking.

The drama came to a joyous ending as Armstrong announced, "Houston, the Eagle has landed!" The rest is history as Armstrong laid his foot on the lunar soil to proclaim the now immortalised statement, 'a small footprint for man, a giant step for mankind!'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07grkvh