The Moment That Made Neil Armstrong’s Heart Rate Spike
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Then an alarm blared; the Eagle’s computers were overloaded with signals. Mission Control told Armstrong to ignore it and keep going. Armstrong could see enough of the jagged terrain through his window to know that they had overshot their target by four miles. They needed a smooth, flat place to land, and the Eagle was now headed toward a crater filled with boulders instead. It was time to shut off the autopilot. Armstrong took control of the Eagle, and manually scooted the module away from the crater. The module was still airborne when the low-fuel light started flashing. (Another propulsion system would launch the astronauts back off the moon.)
Armstrong later said he wasn’t worried about the fuel. They were close enough then that if the engine cut off, the moon’s gentle gravity, one-sixth that of Earth’s, would let them coast safely down. But the descent must have been some adrenaline rush to push the lunar commander’s heart rate to 150. Armstrong’s pulse began to climb after he turned off the autopilot and took the controls in his gloved grip. The fate of the mission was, quite literally, in his hands. Tens of thousands of engineers had helped get him here, but this last bit was up to him. That kind of responsibility would quicken anyone’s pulse.
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Then an alarm blared; the Eagle’s computers were overloaded with signals. Mission Control told Armstrong to ignore it and keep going. Armstrong could see enough of the jagged terrain through his window to know that they had overshot their target by four miles. They needed a smooth, flat place to land, and the Eagle was now headed toward a crater filled with boulders instead. It was time to shut off the autopilot. Armstrong took control of the Eagle, and manually scooted the module away from the crater. The module was still airborne when the low-fuel light started flashing. (Another propulsion system would launch the astronauts back off the moon.)
Armstrong later said he wasn’t worried about the fuel. They were close enough then that if the engine cut off, the moon’s gentle gravity, one-sixth that of Earth’s, would let them coast safely down. But the descent must have been some adrenaline rush to push the lunar commander’s heart rate to 150. Armstrong’s pulse began to climb after he turned off the autopilot and took the controls in his gloved grip. The fate of the mission was, quite literally, in his hands. Tens of thousands of engineers had helped get him here, but this last bit was up to him. That kind of responsibility would quicken anyone’s pulse.
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