50TH ANNIVERSARY LUNAR LANDING
28 | July• 2019
first touched the moon with a silver
finger and felt the heartbeat of their
own world.
ON DUTY BEHIND THE RECEPTION
DESKat the Holiday Inn at Cocoa
Beach in Florida, Vicky Hess glanced
at the clock. It was 4.25am, almost
time to ring Room 192.
The motel lobby was crowded with
sleeping people, sprawled in chairs,
on sofas and benches.
Every available room in
Cocoa Beach had been
booked for months.
Outside, throngs tried to
sleep in their cars, which
were jammed into al-
most every square metre
of parking space and
flooded out all the way to
the towering motel sign
with its blazing lights. In
bold black letters on the
white board beneath the sign ran the
message: APOLLO 11 CREW, WE’RE
WITH YOU ALL THE WAY TO THE
MOON.
Vicki picked up the phone and
dialled Room 192. “Good morning,”
she said. “It’s 4.30am.”
The occupant of Room 192 thanked
her, put down the phone and sat
groggily on the side of the bed trying
to collect his thoughts. Wernher von
Braun was bone-tired – for two days
he had had very little sleep. But this
was Wednesday, July 16, 1969, and he
had a crowded itinerary. In exactly five
hours and two minutes, the awesome
Saturn rocket would propel a 36-sto-
rey-high space vehicle off its pad at
Cape Kennedy Space Center – and
hurl the first men out of this world to
land on the dilapidated magnificence
of another: the moon.
As he dressed, all sorts of thoughts
crowded in on von Braun.What was
the weather forecast?He turned on the
TV set (with the sound low so as not
to wake his wife, Maria).
Locally the temperature
was 25°C; winds from the
south at six km/h; visibil-
ity 16 to 25 kilometres,
with a scattered cloud
base at about 4500 me-
tres. So it looked good.
And the countdown- how was it doing? At
this moment, the most
important man at the
Kennedy Space Center
was 43-year-old Rocco Petrone, the
launch director. Second by second,
he and his cool, brilliant launch team
were taking the pulse, checking and
rechecking the delicate nervous sys-
tems of the hugeApollo 11. For two
hours now, propellants had been
flowing into the great aluminium
tanks of the ‘bird’ – 1960 tonnes of
volatile liquid oxygen and hydrogen.
The fact that he had heard nothing
from the launch director was reassur-
ing to von Braun.
When he had dressed, von Braun
picked up his ancient briefcase with
Flood-lit signs
carried messages:
“Good luck,
Armstrong,
Aldrin and Collins- Go! Go! Go!”
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES