Apollo 11: Worth Your Time

I saw the most magnificent sight of my life tonight. It moved me to tears; not tears of joy or sorrow…tears of understanding and thankfulness. I took my family to see Apollo 11 and watched the Saturn V spear the heavens in full IMAX glory through a sudden blur; I realized I was crying. Why?

One hundred and eight days before I was born, the most significant technological event of the 20th Century occurred. Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins made history with Apollo 11’s successful lunar landing. I had not yet been born…but the Apollo program has cast a shadow throughout my life.

As a boy, I often gazed at the yellowing newspapers my parents stored in my closet. They had saved the dailies from July 1969 that detailed Apollo 11’s journey. Those thick copies of the Cleveland Press and Cleveland Plain Dealer gave me my first connection to that event in history…and even then, I knew that they were slightly older than I was….and that the triumph they chronicled was incredibly significant.

When I was in grade school, we visited Walt Disney World (the Magic Kingdom was the only Orlando theme park in those days). The highlight of the trip was riding the Pirates of the Caribbean (“Two Hour Wait From This Point” still brings me a chuckle…I have shown my kids where that sign used to stand…as we walk past it to the much shorter line of today). My family also visited Cape Canaveral; that was where I saw the bleached, rusting bones of launch sites with “Abandon in Place” unceremoniously stenciled in black letters upon convenient surfaces. Even then, the cavalier desertion of Apollo’s dream seemed wrong.

I filled a lot of my youth with reading…and in addition to science fiction and adventure (Dig Allen Space Explorer Adventures were such fun I shared them with my son), I read a lot of historical and biographical material. After I graduated from college, I started studying the history of technology in earnest. I can still remember Jonathan Weaver (then my Systems Architecture professor, now my friend) screening Moon Shot (the 1994 PBS documentary) and facilitating an in-class discussion. That class (and the University of Detroit Mercy MPD program) set me on the path that has led me to my current career.

Since then, I have read histories of noteworthy engineered systems: the 747 and 777; the Genesis, Galileo, CONTOUR, and Cassini missions; the Manhattan Project; the Panama Canal; the Eiffel Tower; and countless others. Some I read for enjoyment, others I read to extract lessons learned for my students. None of them can unseat the Apollo program from its special place in my heart (except for the Antikythera Mechanism, but that is a unique relic in a class by itself).

So, as I sat there in the theater, I watched the drama of Apollo 11 unfold and saw familiar faces and technologies before me. Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, Slayton, Kranz, Lovell…and the Saturn V, Command Module, and Lunar Module (it will always be the Lunar Excursion Module to me). I saw the images of mission control (with contractor company logos emblazoned on jumpsuits) and the kaleidoscope of analog screens and telltales and felt closer than ever to the engineers, designers, and technicians than made Apollo possible. I knew the stories behind much of what I saw…and knew there were just as many stories behind the rest. That is why my eyes teared up.

Apollo is full of great stories worthy of being remembered. I have read quite a few: Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo, Rocketdyne: Powering Humans into Space, Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond, and others. I try to convey to my students that the men who made the moon landing happen had to REALLY know what they were doing. They did it with slide rules, paper, and primitive computers. 

What is our excuse for getting things wrong when we have better technology at our disposal? We now fail, not because of limited computational power or deficits in engineering theory but because we frame problems incorrectly or make easily-avoided mistakes.

As Steve Jenkins opined in his 2019 Jet Propulsion Laboratory MBSE Symposium talk, “we have a professional and ethical obligation to hunt down”…flawed and non-robust…“procedures and improve them.” I see the triumphs and failures of the past and do my best to live up to the legacy and engineering heritage that has been passed to me. I hope to add to that body of knowledge as I pass it to the next generation.

I think that the triumph of Apollo 11 and the specter of Apollo 1 should inspire and caution all practicing engineers.

Go see Apollo 11. In IMAX. You’ll be a better engineer if you pay attention to that part of the story.