But the wizards at North American Rockwell (NASA’s prime contractor for the command module) were up to the challenge. Fourteen thousand folks there, plus a skilled hodgepodge of eight thousand other companies, toiled to ensure that millions of components on the command module were in top-notch order.
Columbia was off to confront danger. Its builders would need to rely on their eight years of effort to give them confidence for a successful outcome. But it would be five hundred thousand miles before the truth of the matter would be told. Could their command module keep the crew alive?
Launch operations at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida was like its own little town. whopping seventeen thousand engineers, technicians, mechanics, contractors, and managers were needed to pull together the Apollo 11 launch. Needed to check, check, check the spacecraft: test it, stack the three rocket stages in the vehicle assembly building, or VAB, roll it out, recheck it, fuel it, and ready it for liftoff.
One of the most critical preparations for launch was the orchestration and performance of the crucial CDDT.
“The Countdown Demonstration Test, or CDDT, gives us confidence that we’re going to get there in time and everything’s going to percolate [work perfectly] together,” explained Ernie Reyes, chief of the Pre-flight Operations Branch for Apollo 11. “It’s a dress rehearsal for the countdown. The only thing we don’t do, is we don’t load the vehicle with all its fluids and juices [rocket fuel].”
Come launch day, Ernie Reyes and about five hundred others would work the consoles from the Firing Room of the Launch Control Center (LCC), the nucleus of launch operations. They would run the controls that would catapult Apollo 11 moonward bound. Five thousand others would directly support them for the actual liftoff.
It was a long, long march to that day, and the little town of KSC became a second home to quite a few folks. Many a lunch—dinners, anniversaries, birthdays—were forsaken in pursuit of Ready to Launch. On July 16, 1969, they were indeed ready. And at 9:32 A.M. . . . whoosh!