Apollo 14: All or Nothing (Part 3)

What's happening: Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, and Stuart Roosa have just started Apollo 14 and are just now starting to head to the Moon. A crucial piece in the puzzle is for the Command Module to dock with the Lunar Module. Stuart Roosa has tried again and again to dock, but no joy. Finally he tries one more time, and Shepard tells him to juice it. 

Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa juiced it, like his commander had told him. The entire crew-indeed, all of Mission Control--was anxiously waiting, urging that docking mechanism with all of their might to dock and latch. Click! The capture light glowed, and three jubilant spacemen shouted for joy. They had a hard dock! They could land on the Moon!

But Mission Control wasn't so sure. What if Shepard and Mitchell performed a great lunar mission, but couldn't join up with Roosa? Then a risky, never-before-done procedure would have to be executed: the spacecraft would have to be flown in tandem while Shepard and Mitchell transferred everything by spacewalking. Very risky, but Shepard and Mitchell knew they could do it. Finally, Mission Control cleared the crew for their lunar landing mission. Apollo 14 kept heading for the Moon.

Shepard and Mitchell in Antares.

As they neared their destination, Shepard and Mitchell took some time to check out their Lunar Module which would take them to the surface. It looked perfect and ready to go. When the spacecraft were separated, Mission Control needed some way of keeping track of each spacecraft. So came about the invention of call signs. Shepard and Mitchell called their Lunar Module Antares, while Stu Roosa christened his Command Module Kitty Hawk.

Finally it was time to separate. Kitty Hawk and Antares backed away from each other, and Antares started landing preparations for landing. One of the preparations that Antares went through was a lunar landing simulation, right when it was orbiting the Moon. This way, the crew and Mission Control could see if there were any problems with the LM's computer systems, and there would be a little time to get those problems ironed out.

Shepard started the lunar landing simulation. But no sooner than he had done that than the problems began. In the simulation, the abort signal kicked in. Did that like two times! What to do? Shepard, Mitchell, and indeed all of Mission Control knew they were smack dab doing the right thing, and that Antares was in the right place. Mission Control called Don Eyles, an M.I.T. computer whiz who had written the LM computer programs. He listened to Mission Control tell its problems, and then wrote a program that would make the LM ignore the abort signal. No sooner had he finished, than the program was sent up to Antares. Mission Control gave the spacecraft a GO for landings.

Shepard and Mitchell started descending even closer to the lunar surface. Then the landing radar wasn't coming on. They were over 20,000 ft off the Moon and if the landing radar didn't activate you didn't land. You aborted. Alan Shepard was not going to abort! Steadily Antares dropped closer and closer. By the tone in Shepard's voice, everyone knew he was going to land with or without the radar.

Both Shepard and Mitchell knew the rules. Right now, both of them were doing a terrific job of forgetting the rules! At 13,000 ft. the abort procedures would have to be initiated. At 13,000 ft. the landing radar came on! Antares continued the descent, and the crew guided it to a perfect landing at Fra Mauro. When Mitchell asked Shepard if he would've landed without his radar, Shepard just laughed. "You'll never know, Ed. You'll never know."

Shepard on the lunar surface with the rickshaw-type cart.

Epiloge: The Apollo 14 moonwalks were in some was successful and in some ways not. Many useful experiments were deployed and Shepard and Mitchell gathered some of the oldest moon rocks ever collected with the help of a rickshaw-type cart. They tried walking to the top of Cone Crater, but were unable to complete their trek because of time and oxygen limits. Shepard further endeared himself to America by becoming the first man to golf on the Moon! Shepard claimed that one of his shots went for "miles and miles and miles!"


After their lunar stay, Shepard and Mitchell ascended and successfully docked with Stu Roosa in Kitty Hawk. Three days later, they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Because of how successful Apollo 14 was, the remaining Apollo flights were not cut, and much information was learned about the moon. Truly, Apollo 14 is a vastly important, often-forgotten chapter of space history. 


~Photobug


P.S. If you would like to learn more about Apollo 14, I highly recommend Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon, co-authored by Shepard himself. NASA also has some great pictures and a video summery of the flight, which is well-worth your time. 


Series concluded