Otherwise, who knows what moon germs might escape. His mission on July 24, 1969, was to decontaminate Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins and their command module, Columbia, immediately after splashdown in the Pacific. Navy frogman Clancy Hatleberg was the first to welcome Apollo 11’s moonmen back to Earth. We had done what President Kennedy had asked us to do.” _ We were in the room when it happened, and the sense of completion, I guess, struck me later. “Other than the lunar module and the command module, you couldn’t get any closer to it than this. “This is, to use the ‘Hamilton’ expression, the room where it happened,” he said inside the newly restored Apollo-era Mission Control last month. He still practices law in Houston at age 76. He left NASA in 1974 and became an assistant district attorney, then joined a law firm. Gardner ended up working five more Apollo missions and also attended night law school. But he went to Mission Control anyway, joining the flag-waving, cigar-smoking crowd as Apollo 11’s astounding voyage came to an end in the Pacific. Gardner wasn’t on duty for the July 24 splashdown. But he had a job to do and there was no time for reflection.Īfter the Eagle landed and his shift ended, Gardner went to a friend’s home, where everyone gathered around a black-and-white TV that night to watch Armstrong’s “small step” and mankind’s giant leap. Looking back, Gardner wishes he’d savored the moment of touchdown more. So Gardner constantly was thinking ahead, considering how best to rejuggle the flight plan if necessary. What if, for instance, the moon landing had to be aborted? Everything downstream would need to change. His job was to stay on top of the astronauts’ timeline. Barely 26, Gardner was one of the youngest flight controllers on duty when the Eagle lunar lander settled onto the Sea of Tranquility with Armstrong and Aldrin on July 20, 1969. You might say Spencer Gardner was NASA flight director Gene Kranz’s right-hand man for Apollo 11.Īs Mission Control’s flight activities officer in Houston, Gardner occupied the console to the right of Kranz, just across the aisle. “I said, ‘Mike, I know you don’t remember me. Olkowski got a chance to meet up with Collins a decade or so ago. Now 74 and retired, he lives in League City, Texas, next door to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Soon afterward, Olkowski quit his job to go to college, then spent a career with General Telephone and Electronics Corp. “Even though we weren’t considered major players in it, we were just there to help the astronauts if they needed help, yeah, I mean it was exciting, especially now when I look back,” he said. Olkowski joined other workers a safe three miles (5 kilometers) away and watched the world’s biggest rocket thunder away on humanity’s first moon landing. With an hour remaining in the countdown, the pad was evacuated by everyone except the Apollo 11 crew. He was a skinny 24-year-old from Cocoa Beach, but stood 6-foot-3 (1.9 meters) and jumped at the chance to be on an emergency team since he was already out there keeping tabs on the cameras. Olkowski’s regular job was working with the pad’s closed-circuit TV system. Neither bunker was ever needed and later abandoned. The dungeon had strap-in chairs, two-way radio and enough food to ride out a cataclysmic event. The rubber-padded, shock-absorbing room led to a domed, blast-proof chamber 40 feet (12 meters) under Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. NASA figured the astronauts, impeded by their cumbersome white spacesuits, could use extra help getting from a burning, leaking or even exploding rocket, all the way down to the so-called rubber room. His job was to help Collins - should the unlikely need arise before liftoff - escape from the Saturn V rocket, descend 32 stories in a high-speed elevator and then slide down a 200-foot (61-meter) tube into a bunker deep beneath the pad.Īrmstrong and Aldrin had their own guardian angels, according to Olkowski, space center workers who, like himself, had volunteered for the potentially dangerous assignment.
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