Operation Moon Rocket

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At 6:10 a.m. est, May 16, the final countdown began.

Flight directors sat tensely before their control consoles at Houston, Texas, and Cape Kennedy, Florida. Ringing the earth was a fleet of tracking ships, a net of deep-space radio antennas and a number of hovering communications satellites. Worldwide television coverage began at 7:00 a.m. est, and those who had risen early to witness the event heard the Flight Director at Mission Control Center in Houston announce: "Everything is green and go."

Eight months earlier the Apollo spacecraft had been man-tested in orbit. Six months earlier the lunar landing craft had been space-tested. Two months after that the huge Saturn 5 rocket had made its unmanned flight debut. Now the three sections of the moon-ship had been joined and were ready for their first manned orbit — the final test before the actual moon flight itself.

The three astronauts had started their day with a quick medical examination, followed by the customary steak-and-eggs breakfast. They were then driven by jeep across a bleak spit of sand and scrub called Merritt Island, out past those artifacts of an earlier space age — the launching pads of Mercury and Gemini — and past an orange grove that had somehow survived encircling technology to launching complex 39, a massive concrete platform half the size of a football field.

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