Tim Josephson, sitting in his Washington office and watching the small TV on his desk, found he needed a conscious effort to keep breathing. Keep it bland, calm, unexceptionable. This will do, Muldoon.
In turn, the five astronauts spoke briefly about the work of the day — in the Telescope Mount, on the biomed machines, working on troublesome Moonlab equipment.
Interest in the previous telecasts from this mission — save for the original “handshake” — had been minimal. None of the major channels had carried live coverage, and the astronauts’ families had been forced to come into JSC to follow what was happening up there.
But all that changed as soon as the NERVA blew, and people grew morbidly fascinated anew by the spectacle of humans risking their fragile lives out there in space. It’s our biggest TV audience since Apollo 13, Josephson thought. Don’t foul it up, Joe.
…We’re a long way from home, and it’s hard not to be aware of it. If the Earth was the size of a basketball, say, then the Skylabs would be little toys orbiting an inch or two from the surface. But the Moon would be the size of a baseball, all of twenty feet away, and that’s where we are right now.
Our purpose is to do science out here. You may know we’re on an inclined orbit, so we’re seeing a lot more of the Moon than was possible during the old Apollo landing days. We’re carrying a whole range of cameras, both high-resolution and synoptic, and we have a laser altimeter and other nonimaging sensors, all of which has allowed us to map the whole surface of the Moon at a variety of scales.
And we’ve made some neat discoveries. For instance we’ve found a huge new impact crater on the far side of the Moon, fifteen hundred miles across — that’s nearly a quarter of the Moon’s circumference. I’m told that the Moon is turning out to be a much more interesting place than it was thought to be, even when Neil and I first walked on the surface.
In fact, just at the moment we’re sailing over the Sea of Tranquillity itself. If you look at the disk of the Moon from the Earth, that’s just to the right of center. So you can look up at us and see where we are, right now. And in our big telescopes, I can sometimes make out the glint of our abandoned LM descent stage.
Now, for all the people back on Earth at this difficult time, the crew of Moonlab has a message we would like to send to you.
Oh, Christ, Josephson thought. That sounds bad. What now?
Adam Bleeker drifted out of his seat toward the camera. He took the camera, his outstretched hand foreshortened to grotesque proportions, and swiveled it so that it was pointing out of the wardroom’s window. The image settled down; it was low quality and a little blurred, but Josephson could clearly see the blue crescent Earth, rising above the unraveling, monochrome desolation of the Moon.
The next voice was Phil Stone’s.
“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
“The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
“When other helpers fail and comforts fee,
“Help of the helpless, o abide with me…”
Stone’s voice, made harsh by the radio link, was clipped, brisk, almost efficient. Next came the heavily accented tones of Solovyov, high and nervous.
“Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day,
“Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
“Change and decay in all around I see,
“O thou who changest not, abide with me…”
What in hell is Muldoon doing? When the Apollo 8 astronauts had done a Bible reading from lunar orbit, NASA had actually been sued by an atheist, for violating constitutional prohibitions against the establishment of religion. The Soviets have banned religion altogether! — and now here’s a cosmonaut reading out some old hymn from an American space station. My God. What a mess.
And yet — and yet…
Adam Bleeker read, simply and confidently.
“I need thy presence every passing hour;
“What but thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
“Who like thyself my guide and stay can be?
“Through cloud and sunshine, o abide with me…”
And yet there was something beyond Josephson’s calculation. The old, simple words seemed electric, alive with meaning; it was impossible to forget who these men were, what they had achieved, where they were.
Vladimir Viktorenko’s gruff, heavy English took over.
“I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless;
“Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
“Where is death’s sting? where, grave, thy victory?
“I triumph still, if thou abide with me…
Joe Muldoon read the last verse.
“Hold thou thy Cross before my closing eyes;
“Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;
“Heaven’s morning breaks, and Earth’s vain shadows flee;
“In life, in death, o Lord, abide with me.”
And from the crews of Apollo and Soyuz, we close with good night, good luck, and God bless all of you.
The image of Earth faded out.
Tim Josephson found his eyes welling over with tears. He bent over his paperwork, embarrassed, glad he was alone.
Monday, December 15, 1980
Bert Seger set up camp at Hangar “O” at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The hangar had been loaned to NASA by the USAF as a site to run the checking-out of the Apollo-N Command Module, since it had been recovered and brought to the Cape.
The Command Module itself was a victim, rather than a cause, of the accident, of course. But nevertheless the CM was the only portion of the Apollo-N stack that the investigators were going to be able to get their hands on, and it was expected that it would contain a lot of clues about how the accident had come about. So the spacecraft was going to have to be disassembled piece by piece.
When he first got to Hangar “O” Seger found things moving slowly. Nobody had touched anything in the interior of Apollo — except for the medical team on the recovery ship, who, in their radiationproof protective clothing, had removed the suited bodies of the astronauts — and the investigating teams at Canaveral were in a paralysis of indecision on how to proceed, for fear of fouling up this highly public operation.
So Seger made some calls, and looked up some old records, and radioed up to Muldoon a recommendation on how to proceed. Muldoon, still on his way home from the Moon, agreed.
The first task was to put together a cantilevered Lucite platform, hinged so that it could fit inside the hatch of the Command Module and then be unfolded to cover the interior of the craft. That way the investigators, hampered by radiationproof gear, could crawl on hands and knees around the interior, looking and photographing and disassembling, but without touching anything they didn’t need to.
Next Seger initiated the disciplines he wanted in the disassembly process itself.
For example he watched as a crew checklist — doused by seawater, pathetic and battered — was lifted out of the spacecraft. The disassembly team had prepared a TPS, a Test Preparation Sheet, for this, and every other action in the disassembly. The TPS detailed the physical action required, the part number of the checklist, its location. Before the checklist was touched the presiding engineer read out an instruction from the TPS. A Rockwell quality inspector moved into place to see, and a NASA inspector got ready. A photographer was called over. A Rockwell technician got carefully into the craft and then, using the specified procedure, took the checklist from its Velcro holder. The technician had to record the effort it took to get the checklist free, and any other anomalous observations he made.