Magnificent Desolation by Buzz Aldrin Read Free Book Online

blue lunar overshoe from the metal dish of the footpad to take the first step onto the powdery gray surface of the moon. He kept his right foot on the footpad until he could tell how the surface might respond to his weight. He paused briefly, and proclaimed those now famous, well thought-out words: “That’s one small step for … man, one giant leap for mankind.” He later said that he intended to say “one small step for a man …” but the “a” got lost in transmission. It didn’t matter; the world got the message, and it was good.
    At first Neil was tethered to the ladder, because no one knew for sure if the surface would be like quicksand, literally sucking a person down into a quagmire of dust. “The surface is fine and powdery,” Neil said. “I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see thefootprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.” Neil let go of the ladder and put both feet on the moon. He quickly found that it was solid below the immediate layer of dust, and it was relatively easy to walk around on the surface.
    One of Neil’s first actions after he made those initial steps was to grab some samples of rocks and soil and place them in his thigh pocket. These were our contingency samples in case we had to leave in a hurry and had no time to gather other samples of the lunar surface, or were otherwise unable to complete our full EVA as scheduled. If something went wrong, at least we would have some samples of the moon that we could bring back. Meanwhile, I used the tether strap rigged up as a pulley system to lower the specially designed 70-millimeter Hasselblad camera to Neil.
    After Neil had been on the surface for about twenty minutes, it was time for me to join him. It was my turn to ease out of the hatch and back down the ladder. Neil stood on the surface taking photos of my progress and offered watchful comments much like a rock climber relaying helpful hints from below as I commenced my rappel. I arched my back to clear the bulkhead, and continued to the edge of the porch to position my feet on the ladder. I remembered that the checklist said, “Do not leave the hatch wide open.” For some reason we never completely figured out, the checklist instructed me to partially close the hatch.
    My gloved hand on the hatch door, I attempted a touch of humor to ease the tense moment. “Okay, now I want to back up and partially close the hatch,” I said, “making sure not to lock it on my way out.”
    Watching me from the surface, Neil cracked up laughing. “A particularly good thought,” he quipped.
    We had just discovered what would happen if that door was shut, with a very small amount of oxygen inside. With no handle on the outside to unlatch the hatch after returning from our EVA, it would take only a trace of cabin pressure to make it nearly impossible to open. We certainly did not want to lock ourselves out by allowing the hatch to seal shut due to a variance in the external pressure on the moon.
    “That’s our home for the next couple of hours, and we want to takegood care of it,” I said. “Okay. I’m on the top step … It’s a very simple matter to hop down from one step to the next.” As I descended the ladder, I began to get my bearings, making sure that I knew how to operate in lunar gravity and that I wouldn’t roll over with my heavy backpack, and fall off the ladder. There was a distance of about three feet between the bottom rung of the ladder and the surface, so I jumped down from the ladder to the footpad.
    Our procedure was that at the bottom of the ladder, we would jump back up again just to be sure we could comfortably make that first step when we returned from our moonwalking EVA. From within the
Eagle
looking outside the window, I had watched Neil when he checked getting back up