109:20:58 Armstrong: Okay. Can you pull the door open a little more?

109:21:00 Aldrin: All right.

109:21:03 Armstrong: Okay. (Pause)

109:21:07 Aldrin: Did you get the MESA out?

109:21:09 Armstrong: I'm going to pull it now. (Pause)

[The circuit breakers are push-pull buttons. To activate the TV, Buzz will push the TV circuit breaker 'in'. This is also called putting the circuit breaker in the "closed' position, as opposed to pulling it out to the 'open' position.]

[Flight wants to be sure the TV camera is ready so they can monitor Neil's climb down the LM ladder. At 109:21:22, McCandless told Buzz they were "standing by for your TV," but didn't specifically mention the circuit breaker, probably hoping that Buzz would take the hint.]

109:21:42 McCandless: Neil, this is Houston. Loud and clear. Break. Break. Buzz, this is Houston. Radio check, and verify TV circuit breaker in.

109:21:54 Aldrin: Roger, TV circuit breaker's in. And read you loud and clear.

109:22:00 McCandless: Roger. (Pause)

Restored Video with 16-mm Film

[Mark Gray, Spacecraft Films, uploaded the restored video to YouTube in four part in April 2013. Part 1 starts here and is shown alongside the synched 16-mm film]. Click to view in new, pop-up window. 109:22:06 McCandless: And we're getting a picture on the TV. 109:22:09 Aldrin: You got a good picture, huh? 109:22:11 McCandless: There's a great deal of contrast in it; and currently it's upside-down on our monitor, but we can make out a fair amount of detail. [As discussed below, only the feed from Goldstone, which is what was being viewed in Houston and by television viewers outside Australia, is "upside down" during this first segment. The Goddard recording of the HSK feed linked above is properly oriented.] [Armstrong - "We wanted to make sure the picture was adequate so that we didn't have to take the time to unpack that (S-band) antenna and unfold it. It was pretty good size. I'd say it's maybe eight feet across."] [This was the S-Band antenna that was deployed on 12 and 14. On Apollo 11, it was stowed in LM Quad I to the right of the ladder. Journal Contributor Bill Wood writes, "The plan was to only ask for deployment of the erectable S-band antenna if the signal through the LM high-gain antenna was not good enough. The decision to carry the dish was made several months before the mission when there was concern that it might not be possible to handle the EVA through the Goldstone DSS-14 antenna due to a conflict with an on-going DSN (Deep Space Network) mission. However, that proved not to be a limitation. Of course, if the EVA occurred over Spain or if either DSS-14 nor Parkes was available, the erectable dish would have been used. Neil Armstrong was aware of this and made a point to check the received TV quality so he would know whether or not he would need to unstow the dish."] [Bill Wood calls attention to the following material from Chariots for Apollo by Courtney G Brooks, James M. Grimwood, Lloyd S. Swenson: "One item of worldwide public impact - television - raised no issues whatsoever on this flight. Slayton even urged the need for some kind of erectable antenna. The crewmen could not, after all, be expected to wait patiently in the lander until the earth moved Goldstone, California, and its 64-meter radar dish into line with the spacecraft - before they climbed out onto the surface. There was also some question whether the Goldstone facility would be available, since it was needed for a Mariner flyby of Mars in July. At a management council meeting in March, the prospect of doing without the big California dish, as well as a similar one at Parkes, Australia, forced agreement on a contingency plan for a portable antenna. Eventually, both Goldstone and Parkes were free to cover Apollo 11, but proper alignment with Goldstone was still a problem. Low decided to delay the lunar module's descent by one revolution to make sure 'that we will have Goldstone coverage.' If the launch was delayed and if Parkes was better situated to pick up the signals, the relay would travel from the lunar module to Parkes, to Sydney by microwave, across the Pacific Ocean via synchronous satellite Intelsat III, to the control center in Houston, to the television networks, and thence to television sets throughout most of the world. Goldstone would shorten that route."] ["Some Apollo managers were worrying about the quality of the pictures they could expect. Looking at a photograph of a simulation, Phillips observed to Low that the first step onto the lunar surface might be in the shadows. And the light might be too bright in the stowage area, as the astronauts unloaded the experiments package. Phillips asked Low to see about this, since 'sharing with the world our historical first steps onto the moon warrants our efforts to maximize this return.' Low did not believe the results would be as bad as Phillips feared, but Houston set up scale models under various lighting conditions to make sure of good coverage of the crewman as he descended to the lunar surface. Before he left Houston, Paul Haney had suggested that the surface camera be set up to photograph the liftoff from the moon. The idea was exciting, but it was too late to arrange it for Apollo 11. It would have to wait for a future mission."] [Returning to the 1991 mission review, I then asked Neil about the relative priority of the TV.] [Armstrong - "I was fully prepared to deploy the antenna, and I practiced with it a bunch of times so I wouldn't call it low priority. But we were glad that we didn't have to take the time to do that."] [The reason that the picture is upside down is that the camera was mounted upside down on the MESA (as can be seen in a training image). Each of the tracking stations had the capability of inverting the image so it would look normal. This was done by throwing a switch from the 'normal' position - used when the camera was on its tripod away from the LM and was, therefore, rightside up - to the 'inverted' position - used when the camera was upside down on the MESA. As John Sarkissian relates below, the Goldstone switch hadn't been set to 'inverted'. The HSK feed linked above is correctly oriented because the HSK switch was in the proper position.] 109:22:28 Aldrin: Okay. Will you verify the position - the opening - I ought to have on the (16 mm movie) camera? Flight Director's Loop Flight: FAO (Flight Activity Officer) [Flight expects an answer to come from FAO. McCandless passes the answer to Buzz at 109:23:25] 109:22:34 McCandless: Stand by. (Long Pause) [The story of the Apollo 11 TV signal is well told in Hamish Lindsay's excellent book, Tracking Apollo to the Moon. See, also, accounts of the contributions made by NASA's Honeysuckle Creek receiving station and by the Parkes Radio Observatory, Australia, compiled by Colin Mackellar and John Sarkissian, respectively.] [Briefly, when Buzz closed the TV circuit breaker at 109:22 (02:54 GMT), the Moon was at an azimuth/elevation of 76/28 at Honeysuckle and 226/36 at Goldstone, so good signals were being received at both stations. As planned, the Goldstone signal was used initially. However, because the signal quality at Honeysuckle proved to be superior, a switch was made and the Honeysuckle signal was used until the moon rose high enough at Parkes that its big dish (64 meter diameter versus only 26 meters at Honeysuckle) could get a good signal. The Goldstone audio signal was used throughout the EVA.] [The times when switching from one signal source to another can be determined by the presence of various, steady white spots present in the TV images. See the accompanying discussion. Note that a spot that is an unwitting part of the Goldstone signal does not appear in the restored video, not having survived the restoration process.] [A comparison of photographs of the Apollo 11 Lunar Television as seen at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek, and Houston has been provided by Colin Mackellar.] [Immediately after McCandless responded to Buzz at 109:22:34, the TV image switches to the proper orientation, with the Goldstone spot now above center in the pre-restoration clip.] [John Sarkissian writes in 2003: "The toggle switch on the Honeysuckle and Goldstone scan-converters was initially set to the 'normal' position. The Parkes scan-converter - which was being operated by Dick Holl, a Bendix Field Engineering Corp. engineer who helped design the scan-converters - had his toggle switch correctly set to the 'inverted' position as the broadcast began. A few seconds after the broadcast began, Ed von Renouard at HSK (Honeysuckle Creek) realised that the picture at HSK was upside-down and quickly threw the switch on the HSK scan-converter into the correct, 'inverted' position to put the picture the right way up. Goldstone, presumably because their picture was going out live, didn't correct their switch setting until instructed to do so by Houston TV."] ["Ed von Renouard was the Honeysuckle Creek Video Technician who operated the HSK scan-converter. Both he and the HSK scan-converter were located in a room deep within the HSK complex. Dick Holl and the Parkes scan-converter were at the OTC (Australia's Overseas Telecommunications Commission) Paddington terminal located on Oxford Street, Paddington (Sydney)."] 109:22:48 McCandless: Okay. Neil, we can see you (on the TV) coming down the ladder now. (Pause) [Those listening to the audio track may have noticed a high-pitched beep at the start and end of each of Bruce's transmissions. Markus Mehring and Bill Wood have provided a discussion of these Quindar Tones.] 109:22:59 Armstrong: Okay. I just checked getting back up to that first step, Buzz. It's...The strut isn't collapsed too far, but it's adequate to get back up. 109:23:10 McCandless: Roger. We copy. 109:23:11 Armstrong: Takes a pretty good little jump (to get back up to the first rung). (Pause) [Neil jumps down to the footpad again, keeping a two-handed grip on the ladder as he does so. There is no motion of the 16-mm camera evident when he lands on the footpad.] [The interior of each of the primary struts contains a piston and a compressible honeycomb structure, as shown in the accompanying diagram. As indicated in the diagram and drawing of the landing gear, full compression of the honeycomb structure in a hard landing would have shortened the primary strut by 32 inches ( 81 cm). Journal Contributor Harald Kucharek notes that, as can be seen on pages 81, 119, and others in Scott Sullivan's Virtual LM, the bottom of the ladder was attached to the primary strut just above the point where the lower part of the strut could slide into the upper part. Consequently, full compression of the primary strut would have left the bottom rung of the ladder just above the footpad. However, there was never any significant compression ( "stroking" ) of any of the struts in any of the landings, so the astronauts had to contend with a jump of slightly more than 32 inches. Fortunately, one-sixth gravity made it relatively easy. All you needed to do was give a little push with the legs and, with your hands on the outside rail, guide yourself up.] [Armstrong, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "The work and effort required to go up and down the ladder and in through the hatch are not objectionable enough that they need to be worried about. Going up the ladder and going through the hatch are not high-workload items. They are items that require some caution and practice...there weren't any temperature effects noted in the egress or ladder. Nothing felt hot or cold or had any temperature effects at all that I was aware of."] 109:23:25 McCandless: Buzz, this is Houston. F/2 (and)... 109:23:28 Armstrong: Okay, I'm at the...(Listens) 109:23:29 McCandless: ...1/160th second for shadow photography on the sequence camera. 109:23:35 Aldrin: Okay. [The ladder is mounted on the west strut and is, therefore, in the LM's shadow. The recorded image is fairly dark. Journal Contributor Markus Mehring notes that, as a result of the information from Bruce, Buzz changes settings on the DAC and the recorded scene brightens, "just in time to catch Neil and his historic step off the footpad."] [At the time we hear Neil say 'only depressed' in the following, NASA switches to the Honeysuckle Creek TV signal. The Goldstone spot disappears in the pre-restoration video.] 109:23:38 Armstrong: I'm at the foot of the ladder. The LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It's almost like a powder. (The) ground mass is very fine. (Pause) [Just before Neil's next transmission, as a result of Buzz's changes to the 16-mm camera settings and Neil's position on the footpad, the film record shows the LEC attached to the front of Neil's suit. We can see reflections in the LMP's window of what appear to be parts of Buzz's suit as he changes the camera settings and monitors Neil's activities. Ken Glover has grabbed a frame from the 16-mm film.] 109:24:12 Armstrong: Okay. I'm going to step off the LM now. (Long Pause) [Neil has his right hand on the ladder and will step down with his left foot, leaving his right foot on the footpad. As he reaches down with his foot, the 16-mm film indicates that there isn't much slack in the LEC. (See a full discussion linked here. ) In the TV record, the LEC is just barely visible against the black sky.] [The audio clip provided by John Stoll for the preceeding section regretably ends with "for (a) man" and the next clip begins with "one giant leap". Ken Glover has merged the two clips. Listeners will hear a slight change in the audio across this artificial gap. There are many other audio recordings of this historic moment that are continuous during this segment, including the audio on the video clip.] 109:24:23 Armstrong: That's one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind. (Long Pause) [At the time of the mission, the world heard Neil say "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind". As Andrew Chaikin details in A Man on the Moon, after the mission, Neil said that he had intended to say 'one small step for a man' and believed that he had done so. However, he also agreed that the 'a' didn't seem to be audible in the recordings. The important point is that the world had no problem understanding his meaning. However, over the decades, people interested in details of the mission - including your editor - have listened repeatedly to the recordings, without hearing any convincing evidence of the 'a'. In 2006, with a great deal of attendant media attention, journalist/ entrepreneur Peter Shann Ford claimed to have located the 'a' in the waveform of Neil's transmission. Subsequently, more rigorous analyses of the transmission were undertaken by people with professional experience with audio waveforms and, most importantly, audio spectrograms. None of these analyses support Ford's conclusion. The transcription used above honors Neil's intent.] [The raw NASA transcript give the start of this transmission as 109:24:48, which is clearly inconsistent with what has gone before. The Apollo 11 Mission Report gives "initial contact" as 109:24:15 or 02:56:15 GMT/UTC on 21 July 1969. Later in the mission, NASA tells the press that the first step came at 109:24:20. An examination of the restored video indicates that, to the extent that the audio and video tracks are properly synched, Neil puts his left foot firmly on the surface five seconds after the start of his transmission "I'm going to step off the LM now." and six seconds before he starts to say "That's one small step." In June 2011, Journal Contributor Heiko Küffen used the audio track that accompanies the restored video to revise times between 109:20:56 and 109:27:29. Except for the time of "That's one small step" and the transmission that follows - "Yes, the surface is fine and powdery" - there are no differences greater than 2 seconds between Heiko's analysis and the times then given in the ALSJ. I have repeated Heiko's analysis and confirm his results to within 2 seconds. In particular, Heiko gets 109:24:14 for "I'm going to step off the LM now." and I get 109:24:12. The difference is unimportant when compared with other uncertainties. My analysis is based on the time of hatch opening (given as 109:07:33 in the Mission report), which seems to be relatively certain.] [Based on the times of transmissions prior to 109:24:12, Neil started to say "I'm going to step" at 109:24:12, stepped firmly on the surface at 109:24:17, and started "That's one small step" at 109:24:23. Readers interested in the exact timing of events in these transcripts should note that there are notable inconsistencies in the times given in the original NASA transcripts. Clearly, over longer intervals, times in the original transcripts are only suggestive. Discontinuous jumps in the original transcripts occur at notable mission events and elsewhere, probably at the end of tapes or tape segments used by individual transcribers. Over intervals of several minutes, the best audio clips can be used to get relative accuracies of 2-3 seconds.] [After examining the soil disturbance around his left boot, Neil moves his right hand lower on the ladder and steps down with his right foot.] 109:24:48 Armstrong: Yes, the surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles. [In discussions about this paragraph, Andrew Chaikin suggested the transcription above for the first sentence. This replaced my original transcription, which was "(Garbled) the surface is fine and powdery."] [At the end of this transmission, Neil lets go of the ladder for the first time.] 109:25:30 McCandless: Neil, this is Houston. We're copying. (Long Pause) [Neil turns to his right and faces the spacecraft, we get a reasonable view of the LEC against the bright lunar surface in the background, as shown in TV frames captured by Andrew Chaikin.] [Neil gets both hands on parts of the spacecraft and appears to do some slight knee bends. Next, he lets go of the LM and backs away; but stays close.] 109:25:46 Armstrong: Ah ... There seems to be no difficulty in moving around - as we suspected. It's even perhaps easier than the simulations of one-sixth g that we performed in the various simulations on the ground. It's absolutely no trouble to walk around. (Pause) [During this brief pause, Neil appears to take the LEC off the snap hook.] 109:26:16 Armstrong: Okay. The descent engine did not leave a crater of any size. It has about one foot clearance on the ground. We're essentially on a very level place here. I can see some evidence of rays emanating from the descent engine, but a very insignificant amount. (Pause) [In 1968, soil mechanics data from the five successful Surveyor missions was used to model cratering that might be expected from the descent engine exhaust plume. As mentioned on page 125 in the Final Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Operations Plan, the modeling indicated that "anticipated lunar soil erosion resulting from LM DPS (exhaust) impingement on the lunar surface will not begin until the LM is about 10 feet above the lunar surface and that it will not be extensive." Page 44 in the Ops Plan indicates that, while Neil waited for Buzz to join him on the surface, he would look for DPS effects on the surface: (1) Crater and (2) Radial Erosion.] [John Saxon, Operations Manager at Honeysuckle Creek (HSK) during Apollo, has provided an image taken off the monitor at Honeysuckle Creek at about 109:26:35. Saxon writes in May 2003, "I've scanned the attached at 300 dpi, resized/resampled to slightly smaller and saved jpg at min (100 percent quality) compression - other than that I have not attempted to clean up or sharpen, etc."] [Saxon and Journal Contributor Colin Mackellar have provided a collection of 17 images taken off the HSK monitor. The images are of much higher quality than what was seen by the global television audience.] [Just before Neil's next transmission, NASA switches to the Goldstone signal. The image is negative in the original recordings. In the prerestoration clip, the Goldstone spot is rather faint, at about the same distance below the top of the frame as the second ladder rung from the top.] 109:26:54 Armstrong: Okay, Buzz, we ready to bring down the (70 mm Hasselblad) camera?

[Armstrong - "I remember that we devised, during the training program, the LEC and the camera mount. There may have been others, but those are the two that I recall. The camera mount was something I suggested. I recall that. It was a bracket that went on the front of the RCU to hold the Hasselblads. It had always been intended that we just, you know, carry a camera like you normally carry a camera, maybe with a strap."]

[Aldrin - "With the bracket, one could conceivably take the camera down that way, rather than in the transfer bag."]

[I noted that it probably would have been impossible to get through the hatch wearing a camera. All of the crews chose to send their cameras out in the Equipment Transfer Bag (ETB).]

[Armstrong - "That would have been tight. I don't know."]

[Journal Contributor Frank O'Brien notes that the hatch is 32 inches square. Excluding the OPS, the PLSS is about 26 inches tall and 9.5 inches deep at its base. Neil's photo of Buzz saluting the flag, AS11-40-5874, allows us to estimate that the distance from the back of the PLSS to the front of the RCU is about 26 inches. When mounted on the RCU bracket, the camera adds another 8 inches, giving a total of 34 inches, 2 inches more than the size of the hatch opening.]

[Returning to the missions review, I then asked Neil and Buzz about the pre-flight decision to take only one Hasselblad camera out on the EVA.]

[Aldrin - "Pretty cheap tourists."]

[Armstrong - "We had two (in the cabin), but we just used one (outside)."]

[Aldrin - "We left one on the surface, because I remember the gnashing of teeth about leaving a valuable Hasselblad on the surface. And that was to save weight."]

[Armstrong - "My recollection is that we had something - and I was thinking it was a camera, but maybe it was just a film pack - that we could go back up to get if we needed. We didn't plan to, but if we had an emergency, we could go back up the ladder and retrieve this other."]

[See the discussion following 109:39:43.]

[Journal Contributor Markus Mehring, from a 13 December 2000 e-mail message - "The second Hasselblad was not a lunar surface camera. It had a black exterior, designed to suppress stray reflections, and not the silver protective cover added to the EVA cameras for thermal protection. The second Apollo 11 LM camera was for intravehicular use only and, had it been necessary to use it during the EVA, the photographic record of Apollo 11 would have been seriously compromised."

["Because the IVA camera was heat-sensitive, it could only be used in shadow. If the astronaut carrying it wanted to use it outside the LM shadow, he would have to be sure to keep his own shadow on the camera - an awkward situation - and could not have taken either up-Sun or cross-Sun photos. The fact that the IVA camera had no reseau plate would have meant that photogrammetry would not have been possible at all and that there would have been no means of checking the negatives for physical distortion during processing or storage."]

["The Apollo Hasselblads were very durable - as a result of the flight-rating process - but I don't think that the black exterior of the IVA camera would have withstood prolonged, direct exposure to sunlight in a vacuum. The IVA camera would have been of only marginal use as an EVA back-up. Considering this, I think it was an extremely risky decision to fly just one EVA Hasselblad. We know that one of the Apollo 12 EVA cameras became unusable during the second EVA and, to a lesser extent, camera problems were also experienced on Apollos 15 and 17. Therefore, hindsight suggests that the decision to fly only one EVA camera meant that there was actually a non-negligible chance of having only partial documentation of the first lunar EVA."]

[Journal Contributor Ulli Lotzmann notes that the lunar surface Hasselblad was equipped with a 60-mm Zeiss Biogon lens while the IVA Hasselblad had an 80-mm Zeiss Planar lens.]

[Mehring - "If you have a look at the photographs that Neil and Buzz took out the LM windows during the mission and, also, the pictures they took inside the LM (such as AS11-37- 5528), you'll notice that quite a number of them do not have reseau crosses in them. These were taken with the black, IVA camera. Only the cameras designed for EVAs - the silver ones - had a reseau plate, simply because the need to make photogrammetric measurements only existed for surface photographs. You can use this as an ID helper for 70mm photographs throughout the rest of the missions: if a picture has reseau crosses, it's from a silver EVA-Hasselblad; if it hasn't, it's from a black IVA-cam. Note that this is not related to magazines, since the magazines fit on either body, A particular magazine could contain both photos with and photos without reseau crosses if the magazine was used on two cameras."]

["Finally, on a cultural note, the black color of the Hasselblads made for NASA was the primary reason why 'black' suddenly became a favored 'professional look', hence almost every commercially available camera was released in black during the subsequent decades. Only recently have the companies begun to be a more creative, producing cameras with metal exteriors of different kinds, and colorful plastics. This is probably one of the lesser known results of the early manned US-spaceflight program!]