Man’s First Off-World Step Thrilled Millions on Earth

Near the equator of the moon--for all eternity or until a passing piece of space junk scores a bull’s-eye--stands a strange platform swaddled in gold foil, a monument to the most daring of the 20th century’s scientific expeditions.

Around it, footprints are etched in the talcum-like dust, also as permanent as anything in the violent, changing universe can be. The prints are the unmistakable evidence that two men from Earth walked there, the first humans to step on soil beyond their own planet.

It has been 30 years since Neil Armstrong and Edwin A. Aldrin climbed gingerly from their Apollo 11 moon-lander to the rock-strewn surface of the Sea of Tranquillity.

“That’s one small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind,” said Armstrong, the first man on the moon. But the first “a” didn’t make it to a billion people watching on television back on Earth. Purists have argued about the difference in meaning ever since.

“Beautiful, beautiful,” said Aldrin when he followed Armstrong 18 minutes later. “Magnificent desolation.”

What made that first landing, on July 20, 1969, such a big event--one of those moments that no one then alive would ever forget? For Americans, it provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War, from strife in the Middle East, from the startling news just two days earlier that a young woman had drowned in a car driven off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The rest of the world celebrated along with America. More than 100 world leaders sent congratulations.

It also marked America’s victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, a 184-pound ball whose insistent beeps sent shock waves around the world. An embarrassed United States didn’t launch its first satellite until four months later and remained behind in the spectaculars that followed: First human space flight, first human to orbit the Earth, first spacewalk.

But beyond that was this: Throughout recorded history, humans had wondered about alien worlds, especially the one biggest and nearest with the unchanging face. The moon was celebrated in poetry and song, in folklore and love stories, in mysteries and nursery rhymes. Even the ancients knew that it controls the ocean’s tides as it makes its 27.3-day circuit around Earth, and they made it the basis for man’s calendars. It is reflected in language with words such as lunatic and moonshine. Now, two men, each with an American flag on his left sleeve, were standing on it.

It is difficult today after a generation of uneventful ventures in space, manned and unmanned, to recreate the excitement that accompanied the flight of Apollo 11.

Armstrong released a TV camera as he stepped out of the ship, and the world watched as two men dressed like Pillsbury doughboys loped around the bleak surface, exulting in the lightness of their one-sixth gravity. They picked up rocks, the booty they had come for, and planted an American flag stiffened into waving position because there is no air or wind on the moon to ruffle it.

They spoke from the moon to their president, Richard M. Nixon. “This certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made,” he said.

They stopped by one of the four legs of their lander and read from the small metal plaque attached to it: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969. A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

A third astronaut, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia 60 miles overhead as Armstrong and Aldrin landed. His back seat to history was confirmed then and there.

When Houston sent word that Mission Control was full of smiling faces, Armstrong responded with “there are two of them up here.” Collins chimed in with “and don’t forget one in the command module.”

Collins wrote later about seeing their target up close: “The moon I have known all my life, that two-dimensional, small disk in the sky, has gone away somewhere to be replaced by the most awesome sphere I have ever seen. To begin with, it is huge, completely filling our window. Second, it is three-dimensional.”

The intricate plan for the flight worked nearly flawlessly, although they had only 15 seconds of fuel left after dodging surface boulders on arrival. The spindly-legged LM--astronaut-speak for lunar lander--was plucked from their spent Saturn 5 rocket on the three-day, 241,000-mile trip to the moon. Nicknamed “Eagle,” it was a two-piece contraption, lumpy with no need for streamlining, with a descent stage at the bottom and an ascent stage on top. The bottom stage served twin purposes: It lowered the astronauts gently to the surface and became the launch platform when it was time to go.

Apollo 11 was set in motion on May 25, 1961, when John F. Kennedy asked a joint session of Congress to approve $1.8 billion in spending for space, the military and civil defense, and to build up the country’s image. Remarkably, the United States at that time had only one manned flight experience--the 15-minute suborbital hop by Alan Shepard just 20 days before. And in those early days more rockets were blowing up than making it into space.

“I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth,” Kennedy said. “No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

And indeed it was. By the time Apollo 11 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on July 16, 1969, the United States had spent $24 billion on space and lost three astronauts in a fire during a rehearsal on the launch pad. There were six more moon flights to follow (including the ill-fated Apollo 13, which didn’t land), but after the last, in 1972, there was no more official appetite for manned explorations.

Ten years ago, in the celebratory glow of the 20th Apollo 11 anniversary, President Bush proposed a commitment to go back to the moon--”this time to stay”--and on to Mars by 2019. The idea went nowhere. A budget expert said it would cost $400 billion. The New York Times called a moon return “a failure of imagination and fresh thought.” Bush seldom mentioned it again, and NASA quickly forgot it.

To seal the end of their rivalry, the Soviets and the United States staged a joint mission, Apollo-Soyuz in 1975, and shook hands high above the Earth. And 30 years after the first moon landing--42 years after Sputnik--the two countries are the mainstays of an international partnership building a space station. The United States flies Russians on its space shuttle, and the Russians have been hosts to a succession of long-stay astronauts on their Mir space station.

Apollo 11 was the last mission for the three astronauts.

Collins said once that he had few regrets in his lifeguard role waiting for Armstrong and Aldrin to return to the mother ship. “Clearly it was not the best seat,” he said. “But there were three seats for 3 billion people. I was lucky to occupy one of those.”

The two moonwalkers ventured no farther than 275 yards from the spaceship and spent only 2 hours 15 minutes walking on the moon. After 21 hours 36 minutes on the lunar surface, the ascent stage blasted off, leaving only the foil-wrapped structure of their lander.

It remains as mute evidence, along with the footprints, that on Sunday, July 20, 1969, man first landed on the moon and walked its dusty surface.

Harry F. Rosenthal, now retired, covered nearly 50 manned space flights for the Associated Press, including Apollo 11.