The Pen That Saved NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is, perhaps, one of the pinnacles of human achievement. I have been particularly fascinated by the organization since I was very young; I can remember seeing shuttle launches on the news, remember seeing old grainy films of launches from old, and I especially remember the images of The Others, the people around the world who were doing the same thing... and, in the case of Sputnik, doing it better and faster. It is a small comfort, I suppose, that our greatest triumph came to be thanks to one of the most potent and terrible wars of ideology waged yet... but it is comforting that we, as a nation, were able to get behind something remarkable, even if it was for strange and petty reasons.

When disparate religious groups work together, it is called a miracle. When dreamers work together with engineers, it is called science. Or, alternately, the Holocaust. Dreams are just dreams unless you implement them; our only hope is that people with good dreams, strong dreams, dreams of a better, more successful world, are the ones who follow through with them. Regardless of the reasons, people with dreams often find themselves required to function in a capacity to which they are not accustomed in order to achieve those dreams... they are forced to compromise. NASA is one of the finest compromises our country has ever made, and I sincerely hope that the public will not lose interest in it possibly when we need it the most.

Since 1958, NASA has broken more rules and forged more new ground than any other area of human experience. That level of commitment is stunning; within eleven years, we had traveled farther than mankind had in the last five hundred thousand, and set foot on the surface of a place where no one had ever been born, nothing had ever grown, and no one (we're pretty sure) had ever touched. A recent article made me think of this:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/18/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage?

I hate those long addresses, but oh well; it is about the cosmonaut who died in the race, the sprint, as it were, to the finish line.

And that right there is the awful thing about it all. NASA operated at optimum for two reasons: the Soviets were "wrong," and John F. Kennedy died in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963. Without those two things, we would have a very different idea of space. NASA is the reason science fiction became one of the dominant forms of creative expression on this planet, from Star Trek to Armageddon, Arthur C. Clark to Isaac Asimov. The 60s was the most tumultuous era in American history, and the Space Program was a huge part of it.

BUT...

...in the end, we "won." The moon was "ours," so to speak. Hooray, our very own atmosphereless chunk of rock. With a flag. And a sweet golfing range, with no annoying ponds but about a bajillion sand traps. And once we "won," we were "done." The program continues, but it is no longer about how far we can go, expanding our abilities to traveling great distances; it is about collaborating, working together with our new "friends" to make a home away from home that hangs above our planet and has a 24-hour video feed. The vehicles we fly in are geared towards that end; no longer do we worry about how many days it will take to get to another planetary body, and we treat shuttle launches with the same kind of subdued awe that people must have felt after the "New World" was "discovered" and ships started traveling there regularly.

Whenever people criticize the Space Program, they talk about the cost. They complain that too much is spent, for too little that we can see. They usually don't mention the dozens if not hundreds of things we use every day, from cell phones to Velcro, that are indebted to NASA and the brilliant minds that have worked for it over the decades. What the future holds is very unclear; I have my own personal beliefs which emphasize my feelings about NASA, and about the pursuit of space travel in general... I don't believe we were meant to stay here, on this planet. I won't get into that now, though, that's an insanely long story... maybe another day. I also have my own beliefs about the father of NASA, Wernher von Braun, and where he got most of his ideas, but those will be for another day, too; suffice to say, he shared the same belief I just mentioned, about our reasons for exploring space.

What I want to talk about right now in this post is a story that still hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, a story of ingenuity and terror and a downright dramatic life or death situation that very nearly turned our greatest triumph into an awful tragedy of Greek proportions.

I am talking about Apollo 11.

Most people don't think of anything bad about when they think of Apollo 11; they mostly think of the immortal words Neil Armstrong spoke as he made that first step, the giddy excitement in Walter Cronkite's eyes as the moment was transmitted, the collective exclamation across the world, either of joy or of anger, as the Space Race was ended. When they think of tragedy, they think of Apollo 13, or the fire on earth that claimed the lives of "Gus" Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee two years before Apollo 11. They would be right to think of those, of course; Apollo 13 was about as close to a miracle as NASA has ever witnessed, when everything that could go wrong went wrong and yet James Lovell and his incredible crew survived, somehow.

But what people don't know is the story of Apollo 11's return. Not the landing and the exploration, which everyone saw.

The Return.

Upon re-entering the Eagle, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong removed their spacesuits. High above, Michael Collins sat in the Command Module Columbia, waiting for them to return. In the distance, the unmanned Soviet vehicle Luna 15 lay where it had crashed days ago, just before Apollo 11 was launched. The two men brought aboard almost 50 pounds of soil samples, then settled down to sleep and prepare for the return home.

When they woke up, Aldrin saw something which froze him in his tracks: somehow, some way, the circuit breaker that operated the main engine had been completely snapped off. Most likely done when the craft first landed or perhaps when they returned and were moving around in their bulky suits, the two astronauts were completely stunned at first. They radioed Houston and informed them of the situation, and although time has cleaned up the story somewhat, I imagine the first thought on their minds, Michael Collins' mind, and the minds of everyone down in Houston was:

"Oh... shit."

All in all, the Eagle remained on the surface of the moon for over 21 hours. While the men took much needed sleep, the researchers on Earth who had built the Lunar Module took apart the affected piece, broke it in the same manner, and desperately tried to think of a way to fix it in time for takeoff. Now, as the point was made during the events of Apollo 13, there is no rescue in space. It is the worst possible shipwreck imaginable; no matter how long you hold on, no matter how many HELP ME signs you make out of palm trees (or, in the case of the moon, metal rods or even just dragging your feet through the sand) no ships will just happen by (that we are aware of) and see your signal. No one will rescue you; you are on your own. Even a damaged submarine is not in as great a danger as men trapped on the moon would be. To go to the moon and celebrate such a tremendous event, only to acknowledge a mere 24 hours later that everyone up there was dead and stuck on or near the moon would not be the best way to remember the marvelous achievement we had made as a species. Even Collins couldn't have made it back alone; having three people was crucial.

So there they sat, three tiny specks in the eye of the universe, mere inches away from their home in a cosmic sense, and yet unable to reach it. Darkness came, and then went, and Buzz and Neil sat in their interplanetary diving bell and stared, long and hard, at the broken switch that had effectively sealed their fate. Oxygen was precious, and could only be recycled so long; the window of time to return to Earth was closing, as well. Down on the blue planet below, Americans celebrated and snubbed their noses at the Russians, who were already discussing plans for something called "Mir." There were fireworks, and across the world people stood outside and stared up at the moon, our closest relative and the first thing man saw besides the sun when he looked up into the sky since the beginning of our time on this planet. Societies had been born by worshipping the moon; the moon gave us weather, gave us tides, and was, in fact, instrumental in the movement of the forces on our planet that produced the very spark of life itself. And no one down below, except for two dozen very scared men in a white room full of computer monitors, knew in that moment that in order to achieve our fondest wish, we may have made a human sacrifice, and paid the ultimate price for this success.

NASA would be finished. The world would mourn the loss of these three men, just as they had been saddened by the horror of Yuri Gagarin's death. They would call the men in charge fools, psychotic enough to send brave men to their doom, simply to prove a point. There would be no more Space Program; the funding would disappear in the winds of outrage and nationwide grief. All this and more must have flashed through the minds of everyone present in Mission Control on that fateful day and night.


The story has different edges, little details to it that differ from storyteller to storyteller, but the constant detail is how unbelievably stupid it was that no one had thought to send up a spare circuit breaker. The module was, in essence, a gas can with gauges, designed by the lowest bidder to do the absolute most in the shortest amount of time. Everything that could be removed had been removed; there wasn't anything onboard that wasn't deemed absolutely necessary. Keeping the weight down had been crucial; Neil had already reminded Buzz to toss out some trinkets he'd brought along, to make certain the weight ratio was correct. But what was the point of lightening the craft if it couldn't even take off at all?!

Down on Earth, a technician, whose name is lost in the unkindness of history, was staring at the same switch, but unlike Neil and Buzz he could go home if he wanted to, kiss his wife and children, and thank god that he was not qualified to be a national hero. He stared at that switch like he could make a new one grow in its place by doing so, and then he pulled his pen out of his pocket and began to click it. You've seen this habit, I'm sure; people who are nervous or thinking hard may demonstrate a similar kind of tick or unconscious gesture, tapping their foot or licking their lips... or in the case of this gentleman, clicking their pen rapidly. Like most of the NASA dweebs of his day, he probably wore glasses and had a pocket protector, so a pen was always at hand. He twirled it, clicked it, twirled it some more...

And then, just like that, it hit him.

He held the pen before his eyes. It was a Fisher Space Pen, specifically designed for use in outer space. The astronauts each had one, specially made for them, and similar facsimiles were all over the place at NASA. I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure how it happened, but this is what I believe did: the man stared at that pen, his mind whirling, wondering if by some incredible chance... some lucky break...

...and then he looked at the end of it. A simple pen, with a retractable point.

He retracted it.

Slowly, like the Command Module moving over the rest of the Apollo craft, ready to rescue the Lunar Module from her womb, he lowered the pen towards the space where the breaker used to be. Sweat beaded on his lip, and his eyes squeezed together, terrified that this would turn out as stupidly in real life as it had already begun to seem in his head. To think that after all the work, all the hours, days, years that had gone into this program, that the first living beings on the moon would become the first dead beings on the moon...

The pen connected with the hole. It fit perfectly.

He took a deep breath. Slowly, the technician pushed the pen. It was tough, but the leverage was there. After a few seconds, it went, and the gauge clicked into place.


Apollo 11... could go home.


On the moon, Buzz Aldrin picked up his space suit, trying to think if there was anything inside, some tool that could be used to jump start the engine. He and Neil had now begun to break things down to their bare essentials; highly trained and capable of dealing with enormous pressure, they remained incredibly calm in the face of inevitable death. As Buzz moved his suit, the broken circuit breaker floated up; he had knocked it off when they reentered the module, it seemed. But finger-pointing and laying blame got them nowhere; Neil instead examined the piece, trying to see if they could reattach it somehow. But there was nothing, no glue, no gum, not even any tape, no adhesive of any kind. Outside, the surface of the moon impassively basked in the unprotected light of the sun. The window was closing; time was running out.

Suddenly, a voice came, crackling in the quiet, making both men turn. From 380,000 miles away, it looks less than two seconds for a voice from Houston to say: "We have a solution."

At first overjoyed, the two men were then stunned when they heard the answer; a pen? But their pens would be back in the command module; absolutely nothing was brought down that was unnecessary. In the rush to make everything like clockwork, they had not accounted for such a ridiculous possibility as being stranded on the moon without their pens.

Then Buzz froze. He turned his suit over, and held it up. There, pinned to the front of his suit... was his pen. Collins had put it there, half-jokingly, for luck.

Like the technician, who has faded into obscurity despite saving the lives of men we now name high schools after, Michael Collins is similarly somewhat forgotten. This father of three, who would be remembered mostly in jokes as "the man who went all the way to the moon and never set foot on it," was as much the reason that Apollo 11 did not end in unbelievable tragedy as the nameless technician on Earth. Buzz used his pen; the circuit took it in. Even with the moon's minimal gravity, the pen finally caught hold, and the main engine came on. The Eagle docked with Columbia, and the three men returned home. None of them spoke of the incident with the pen except to one man during their quarantining, and the story never circulated widely, since such a catastrophically bad situation would put a real downer on the whole beating the Russians to the moon thing. Over the years, the story has become legendary, one of the things that people whisper about when they talk about the tremendous luck and, also, tremendous bad luck that NASA has had over the years.


...And that is the story of the pen that saved NASA. There was a time when humanity stood on the edge of a razor, where men sat, lonely and scared, in a vehicle resting on an alien world, unsure they would ever get home, while far and away men flew high in planes that never landed, ready to unleash nuclear Armageddon on a fragile world... unleash them with something as flimsy as a switch. NASA is the expression of the human desire to see something beyond ourselves, to look out into the universe, to break through the hard shell at the edge of reason and everything that is known and can be known... and see what waits on the other side. Whether we want it to be or not, our destinies lie in the stars.

...And some times, even the smallest things... like a simple pen... can mean the difference between choosing to forge onward... or choosing to fall back; to never give up, no matter what...

...or accept defeat.