http://www.saflyermag.comthe LLTV was akin to balancing a dinner
plate on a broomstick with one finger.
Armstrong was determined to master it
and put in many hours hovering around
Cape Canaveral. On one of his flights,
he was battling a crosswind when a fuel
leak caused a low fuel warning light to
illuminate. Before he could come out of
‘lunar sim mode’ and get it on the ground,
the loss of helium pressure shut down all
his control rockets. It was the only LLTV
they had and Armstrong did not want to
break it. But as the control rockets flamed
out it began sagging and rolling. He was
just 100 ft above the ground and he knew
he couldn’t let it roll more than 30 degrees.
If he did, and then fired the ejection seat,
the trajectory would not gain enough height
to deploy the parachute. More than 90
degrees of roll would fire him headfirst into
the ground.
His test pilot decision making skills
kicked in and he ejected. The LLTV had a
zero zero ejection seat and instantly the
parachute canopy was blasted open by an
explosive charge. There was no waiting for
a drogue chute to open – the main chute
opened in less than a second. As he floated
down he watched the LLTV explode on the
ground beneath him. Fortunately the very
non-lunar wind blew him past the fireball.
According to James Hansen’s
biography, an hour or so later fellow
astronaut Alan Bean returned to his desk
after lunch and found Armstrong at his own
desk simply “shuffling some papers”. Bean
didn’t believe what others had told him
about the crash so he asked Armstrong,
who replied, “I lost control and had to bail
out of the darn thing.”
NASA then wanted to eliminate LLTV
training but Armstrong was insistent that
it was needed. As it turned out, if it hadn’t
been for Armstrong’s determination to
master the simulator on the ground, he
would not have got it right on the moon.
The Eagle Lunar Lander was
approaching ‘hot and high’ as it descended
to the moon’s surface. They overshot their
chosen landing spot by four miles. There
was a crater bigger than a football field
filled with car-sized boulders ahead and
the Eagle was already fuel critical. If they
landed on a slope they would not be able to
launch back into moon orbit.
Armstrong needed to fly the Eagle
Lander over the crater and then touch down
as he had practised for 61 missions in the
LLTV. There would only be one chance.
Knowledge, feel and all his experience from
nursing the Panther with half a wing back
from North Korea, bringing the X-15 back
from overhead Los Angeles and ejecting
from the LLTV paid off. Armstrong’s fingers
caressed the manoeuvring triggers and he
attuned his senses to the rocking motion
of the craft as it balanced on its column of
rocket thrust. Then the two flight computers
overloaded and alarms filled the tiny
cockpit. Armstrong shut them out of his
mind.Fuel was critical and mission control
was panicking that they were going to run
out of fuel and fall onto the moon’s surface.
At 200 ft above the surface, Armstrong
finally was able to find a place to land.
Aldrin: “Eleven [feet per second]
forward. Coming down nicely. Two hundred
feet, four and a half [fps] down.”
Armstrong: “Gonna be right over that
crater.”
Aldrin: “Five and a half down.”
Armstrong: “I got a good spot.”
Aldrin: “One hundred and sixty feet, six
and a half down. Five and a half down, nine
forward. You’re looking good.”
As they passed 75 ft, mission control
in Houston determined the Eagle only had
60 seconds of fuel left. Armstrong says he
wasn’t terribly concerned about the low fuel
situation: “Typically in the LLTV it wasn’t
unusual to land with 15 seconds of fuel
left.” Also, he knew that even if they ran out
of fuel at 50 ft it didn’t really matter. In the
moon’s one-sixth gravity they would settle
safely onto the surface.
40 seconds later Armstrong made a
final few manoeuvres before announcing
the landing was complete. It had taken
rapier concentration, fearless nerves and
above all, Armstrong’s extraordinary flying
skills to land man on the moon.After a hair-raising docking with the
Agena, Gemini 8 managed an uneventful
re-entry to earth.- Private Pilot’s Licence
- Night rating
- Commercial Pilot’s licence
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