Here is the fascinating story about how much fuel the lunar lander or “the Eagle,” recounted by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 mission’s lunar module pilot.
They had 15 seconds of fuel left, according to Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon.
Time for the “Eagle” was running out…
We were running out of time. The Apollo 11, the “Eagle,” lunar module was on its famous descent to the lunar surface. A crater-pocked surface on 20 July 1969 when a fuel light flashed on.
It was still 100ft, 3meter above the ground, and it was not what the astronauts wanted. The Eagle’s tank was almost dry.
An interview regarding the important first landing on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 mission’s lunar module pilot, explains how he held his tongue when the warning light appeared and, NASA’s capsule Communicator Charlie Duke, came on the line from Houston to notify Neil Armstrong and Buzz they had just 60 seconds left to make it down.
Neil had taken command of the Eagle,
Aldrin recalls thinking -“OK. One hundred feet. Sixty seconds. We’d better ease down,” though he thought better of telling Neil to get a move on.
“But I don’t want to disturb Neil by saying: ‘Hurry up, hurry up!'” Buzz said.
Neil had plenty on his mind. From an elevation of about 500 ft, he had taken command of the Eagle, or the lunar module and was carefully guiding the craft down.
Nobody knew how the lunar module would handle. And there in front of the descending spacecraft approached a large crater that would have spelled disaster for the two astronauts and the mission.
The lunar module dropped 90 ft!
Neil and Buzz had already had to battle with program alarms going off in the lunar module, which themselves could have forced the Moon landing mission to abort.
The computer problem was eventually resolved, leading to a “go” from Houston. But as Buzz concedes: “it tended to distract a little bit.”
The lunar module dropped 90 ft over the next 30 seconds, leaving the two astronauts a further half-minute of fuel to steer the final 10 ft to the Moon’s surface.
In an earlier interview with Aldrin, Buzz said it was only at that late stage that he felt more confident about the landing. “I figured, ah, we got it made.”
Apollo 11: the contest for the first footprint on the lunar surface
It was an achievement that succeeded by the finest of margins. And according to Buzz Aldrin – “We touched down, and I think the estimate, not because somebody put a dipstick in the fuel to see how much was left, but it was calculations and information on board, we probably had about 15 seconds of fuel left.”
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The new book ‘How We Got to the Moon’ will reveal a stunning look at Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon.