View from the Press Site aside the Launch Control Center
Photo: Dan Beaumont Space Museum
Fifty-five years ago today, I saw Apollo 11 as she lifted off from Cape Kennedy and on her way to the moon. There are still a lot of us that were present that morning here on the Space Coast, and like a lot of those folks, the memory is as vivid today as it was in July, 1969.
The day was typical Florida morning coastal weather: hot and humid, with a bit of a sea breeze to only slightly temper the sun that bore its way through the sky and onto sizzling skin. The crowd around me flapped whatever papers or fans they had as they waited nervously for the launch, whose time was marked by a huge clock counting backward. My mother and I had been at Cape Kennedy since long before dawn, and we were seated among VIPs, including the vice president, movie stars, politicians, and the well-to-do that NASA thought were important. I was not important; I was just a lucky kid. We were incredibly privileged because my Dad was working the launch and had friends over at Headquarters who did him the favor of giving us the best view of the roughly one million civilians gathered in my small hometown (Cocoa Beach) to see the rocket off. To arrive in time for the launch, we left home at 3 AM.
Needless to say, I was on my best behavior. My very best behavior indeed.
Slowly, the clock ticked its way to ten seconds. Time stretched, and every one of those seconds felt like ten more. Inevitably, the time disappeared as mission control voices calmly announced milestones on the launch checklist. The dulcet tones of Jack King, the voice of NASA explained everything in enough detail that everyone could understand. Me, even though I was seven, had heard these things before from previous launches I’d seen (eventually, I saw every single Saturn V launch, in person) and I was familiar — in a child’s way — of what would come next.
The tension built continuously, and the crowd hushed and stared in the same direction. At around nine seconds left, a flash of light, brighter than even the bright sunshine. Smoke blasted out on either side of the towering rocket. Then, zero, the launch pad’s support fell, and she lifted slowly in silence. Loudspeakers transmitted the air-to-ground chatter between the astronauts and controllers, but in person, the sound took about 18 seconds to reach those of us watching. It was a fiery quiet.
For those of you who’ve seen the Space Shuttle launch, you saw the sports car of rockets. They leaped off of the ground and ran away into space like ocelots. Saturn V rockets were very different. Twice as large and with much more power, they slowly lifted from the ground on a pillar of fire tens of stories high. Consider that a Saturn V is taller than downtown Orlando’s biggest building and with the same girth, and you may get an idea of the size of the best only 20,000 feet from our eyes. And that beast was belching out fire.
The Saturn V seemed angry as it clawed inch by inch off the ground. Then, amid screams of “Go baby, GO!” from the crowd around us, the sound arrived in a deafening crash. At first, it was like a clap of thunder from a storm just about to arrive. Instead of fading, however, the roar only increased in intensity, but not only in volume.
People gasped as the ground began to vibrate and shake, as windows and the stands they were standing on rattled, adding to the already nearly deafening sound. Still, we all craned our necks and watched the firebird tear its hole in the sky as it left the surly bonds of earth behind. We could barely hear the loudspeakers — if we could hear it all over the roar — kept telling us all was well as we silently prayed for the men aboard. Those men spoke occasionally, let us know that they were fine, which was fine with us watching from below. We were with them in spirit. In retrospect, so was the rest of the world, but for those of us there, it was intense and it was personal.
People gasped as the ground began to vibrate and shake, as windows and the stands they were standing on rattled, adding to the already nearly deafening sound. Still, we all craned our necks and watched the firebird tear its hole in the sky as it left the surly bonds of earth behind. We could barely hear the loudspeakers — if we could hear it all over the roar — kept telling us all was well as we silently prayed for the men aboard. Those men spoke occasionally, let us know that they were fine, which was fine with us watching from below. We were with them in spirit. In retrospect, so was the rest of the world, but for those of us there, it was intense and it was personal. After a few minutes, it was over. Apollo 11 was in orbit, and we were all in awe. People had built that thing! Men had flown that thing! We were on our way home. That trip, one that was normally about half an hour, took nearly four as over a million people all did the same. Traffic was insane, and even worse than what we’d see twelve years later for the first Space Shuttle launch.
“I’d like to raise a toast,” my father would say every July in mock seriousness, “to the other 400,000 people who kept the secret one more year.”
You should have heard the sarcasm in his voice. That alone made this toast hilarious.
Some idiots say that we never pulled off this feat, that it was impossible for us to go to the moon. Wrong. We did go, and some extremely intelligent people worked tirelessly to make it happen. Had they been there that day in Florida, I think their foolish opinions would be very different. That launch was awe-inspiring, proving what a nation like America could do when it decided to do so. And to the people who were working at the Cape and everywhere else at NASA that day, I’d like to tip a glass in their direction and raise a toast in thanks to what they did.
Today, documentaries and books usually only discuss the astronauts aboard the rocket, along with a very few key engineers and scientists in charge of Project Apollo. Still, in fact, this moment was the pinnacle of many years of work by hundreds of thousands of people. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins may have been the only heroes in the media, but hundreds of thousands of people worked, sacrificed, and contributed to the effort. Those people should never be forgotten. Their efforts and hard work mattered just as much to the overall effort. It was not merely a handful of people, it was an entire nation that put in the effort. I tip my hat to them.
As a kid, my heroes were my father Armand, who was working this launch as the Pad Chief in charge of fire and pad safety until launch — and that job included rescuing them in case of an emergency; my uncle Jerry, who worked on the IBM computer system that was the brain of the Saturn V, and my uncle George, who was a project manager for Boeing’s S-1-C in Huntsville, which was the first stage of the Apollo 11 now flying into space above me.
I’m very glad we’re planning to go back to the moon. Apollo and all humanity have spent only about 80 hours walking on it, meaning we’ve just barely scratched the surface. Let’s go and spend a lot more time to see what’s there.
Note: This article first appeared in TalkofTitusville.com. It was written by FMN’s Charles Boyer.
Did you enjoy reading this article? Subscribe FREE to FloridaMediaNow.com here.
