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Greenwich residents recall Apollo moon landing [Connecticut Post, Bridgeport](Connecticut Post (Bridgeport) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jul. 19--Forty years ago Monday, Greenwich residents joined the millions of Americans tuning in to watch an epochal moment unfold live on television: The first landing of a human being on the moon. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong descended a ladder to the moon's surface with Buzz Aldrin and, after leaving the first human footprints in history in the lunar dust, uttered those famous words: "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind." While many in town saw the iconic event on their TV screens, a lucky few who call Greenwich home today say they had the privilege of being on the front lines during the Apollo mission -- as journalists, NASA engineers and scientists. Today they, too, are recalling the exhilaration of witnessing two American astronauts become the first to touch down on the moon's Sea of Tranquility, marking the culmination of America's space race with the Soviet Union. "You know the way Boston feels when they win the pennant against the Yankees in the World Series? That's how everybody felt that day," said former First Selectman Jim Lash, adding: "It was a great moment for the country." For Lash, 65, it also was the culmination of years of work on the NASA space program, first as an engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, later, as an engineer at Boeing's labs in New Orleans. A steady orbit At MIT in the mid-1960s, Lash helped develop the computer guidance system that would later allow the cone-shaped Apollo command module to maintain a steady orbit around the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin explored the surface for 2 1/2 hours. In the late '60s, Lash also headed the Boeing team of engineers that developed a monitoring system for the Apollo's "first-stage booster" -- the large rocket at the bottom of the stack that generated the initial thrust to get the massive spacecraft off the ground during lift-off from Earth. This monitoring system allowed NASA scientists to track the conditions and performance of the booster during flight through a radio transmission device that beamed data from temperature, pressure and fuel-flow sensors mounted on the rocket's body to the aerospace command centers on Earth. Working with NASA also gave Lash the rare chance to rub elbows with a number of famous astronauts, he said. "I have some really cool pictures of me with (former astronauts) John Glenn and Alan Shepard," said Lash, adding that astronauts were more actively involved in the design and testing of the space equipment back then, and thus were more accessible to engineers like him. Today Lash, who served as first selectman from 2003-07, looks back fondly on his time with the space program. "We were doing some very interesting, very challenging things. It was a lot of fun," said Lash, who went on to work as assistant dean at Tulane University's business school before entering the venture capital business. Dawn of computers Richard Bergstresser, 75, who held the town's chief elected office from 2001-03, worked on an IBM technical support team during the 1960s that helped NASA scientists, among other clients, run a new computer system that could perform multiple calculations at once, and prioritize various calculation tasks. It was this system that NASA used as part of its preparation for the Apollo 11 launch on July 16, 1969. While viewed as "state-of-the-art" during the 1960s, these computer system were archaic by today's standards, said Bergstresser, who began working with IBM at a time when most computers filled large, air-conditioned rooms, and had far less memory than even the low-end PC's today. "Things were very primitive then," Bergstresser said. Still, computer technology would not have advanced as quickly as it did in the ensuing decades were it not for the billions of dollars that the federal government poured into improvements as part of the space program, he noted. "The space program probably jump-started the computer industry today by five or 10 years," added Lash. It also helped spur improvements in medical technologies, such as heart-rate and blood-pressure monitors, which were specially adapted during the 1960s to monitor the health of astronauts in space, Lash said. Many of the metal alloys, plastics and other materials developed during the Apollo program would later show up in an array of consumer goods, from telephones to cars, Bergstresser also noted. While others were involved as scientists, Greenwich resident Emerson Stone experienced the moon landing as a newsman. As CBS vice president in charge of radio news, Stone, now 81, was tasked with orchestrating the network's radio coverage of the moon mission -- from the launch, to the lunar landing, to the flight home. For Stone, the assignment came with an enormous sense of responsibility, he said, knowing that his coverage would define how many listeners would remember one of the most significant events in the country's history. As the lead radio producer for CBS, Stone also had to carry out the delicate task of ensuring that each member of his news team, from reporters to editors to producers, to his stable of on-call expert commentators, would all be in the right place at the right time during the 28-hour block that the network had set aside for radio coverage. "We spent months, just planning the nuts and bolts aspects -- 'Where was Tony going to be on such-and-such a day?' " 'If Smith couldn't go to this or that, would Jones be able to step in for him?'" Beyond the pressure of pulling off such a monumental assignment, there also was a genuine concern in the newsroom about the safety of the astronauts if the mission went awry, he said. To complete the flight successfully, the Apollo crew would have to travel a half-million miles, round-trip, and achieve a precise landing on the moon on its first attempt, as there was not enough fuel to make a second pass. If the first landing attempt failed, the astronauts risked being stranded on the moon with no way of returning to Earth, Stone said. "We were all on tender-hooks," he said. "They had one shot to land, and if the legs broke off (of the landing craft), or something else went wrong, there was no coming back. It could've been awful." The gravity of the astronauts' situation also put his own work as a journalist into perspective: "If something went wrong for us, sure, (the news coverage) might not look as good, but at least you wouldn't have somebody die." For Stone, one of the most memorable moments was witnessing the awesome power of the Apollo craft's rockets during take-off, seen from the safety of a radio broadcast trailer set up about a quarter-mile away from the launch site at Cape Canaveral, Fla. "During the take-off you almost felt as though you were on the flight," Stone remembered. "When the thing went up, you first got this great belch of flame and fire, and you could watch it through the window going up, up, 250 feet, 300 feet. Then suddenly, it felt like a giant hand had taken hold of our trailer and was shaking it as the shock waves came. " After that, you could only see (the space craft) on TV." To see more of the Connecticut Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.connpost.com/. Copyright (c) 2009, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |