In their own words
Tears in the middle of the night
Skip Chauvin was a spacecraft test conductor for every
one of the Apollo missions, overseeing the closeout crew
Things were going so fast in those days that, all the way
through countdown, I never felt a big rush, like oh my
god, oh my god, i’m nervous and can’t do this. I suppose
in retrospect I should have been surprised that I wasn’t
all nervous and uptight. But it just rolled on. We had done
several before that, and I think we were all so anxious to
each do our parts to the best of our abilities, that none of
us seemed to be all excited.
The crazy part about it is, after liftoff, once we were sure
things were OK, I packed up my family – three kids and my
wife – and the boat and we took off south to Lake Worth
down in southern Florida. So all during that time it was
busy, busy, but when it came time for the landing itself on
the Moon, I remember it was the middle of the night and
all the family was asleep. I had the TV on and the sound
Eagle has landed,” I started crying. All by myself there
with everyone else asleep. And I started crying.
It just built up inside me I guess and it all came out at
that point. Tears were streaming down my face and I
guess I said to myself, “Oh my god we did it.’ I say ‘we’ as
a great many people that I worked with and others across
the country contributed so much in every facet of the
game. It all came together, and that is what I remember
most about the lunar landing.
Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin removes the EASEP experiment from the Lunar Module.
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