Of a Fire on the Moon (9780553390629) by Mailer Norman

Author:Mailer, Norman [Mailer, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-553-39062-9
Publisher: Random House Digital
Published: 2014-06-03T04:00:00+00:00

VI

Long before, almost two and a half days before, not a half hour after the third stage had completed its five and a half minute burn and pushed Apollo 11 up to its highest speed, the final separation took place between this last of the launch vehicle and the as-yet unfired spacecraft.

The Command and Service Module, two objects which when isolated together looked like nothing so much as a tin can with a cone on its nose and a motor at its rear, these two objects in combination about thirty-five feet long and thirteen feet wide, now separated themselves from the SLA or Service Lunar-Module Adapter. The SLA was attached to the S-IVB or third stage and in turn these last two objects, S-IVB and SLA, also might have looked like a tin can with a tin funnel attached, for the S-IVB was a cylinder with a motor at its rear, and the SLA was composed of four closed curved aluminum panels, much like the petals of a bud, designed to be sprung free a fraction of a second after an explosive wire blew the joining between the CSM and the SLA just as the small rocket thrusters of the Service Module gave a small push away. On the instant, the four aluminum petals, each twenty-one feet long, and each wide enough to encircle a quarter of the Lem, blew off in four separate directions to go scaling through space and reveal what the SLA had contained—the folded legs, the head, thorax, and sac of a complex mechanical craft or creature which had the look of a particularly nasty insect. It was the astronauts’ first glimpse in space of the Lunar Module or Lem. And the Command and Service Module containing them promptly backed away from this sight of the leg-folded Lunar Module mounted on the end of the spent third stage, and at a rate of less than a foot per second, such slow speed offered it by a judicious use of its thrusters, the CSM withdrew about seventy feet, and then did at the end a complete back somersault to point in the opposite direction. The turnaround had taken about two seconds. The nose or probe of the Command Module had now reversed to point toward a small cavern in the Lem called the drogue, named doubtless for its resemblance in shape to one of those conical canvas sea anchors which are set out on lines during storms at sea. Now the CSM chugged forward slowly on its thrusters, moving relative to the Lem (still attached to the S-IVB) about as fast as a tugboat at maneuvering speed, although absolutely through space at a velocity somewhere over twenty-seven thousand feet a second. As the CSM moved, it proceeded by the use of other thrusters to go through a sixty-degree roll in order to align certain catches on its probe with the drogue. Then, at about one foot per second it closed the gap between probe and drogue. At the edge of rendezvous the speed was reduced to some fractions of an inch per second.

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