Neil Armstrong's death over the weekend brought back memories of the lunar landing as well as the time I met Gene Kranz, Apollo 11's launch director, when I arranged for him to speak at a user group meeting.
Neil is best known for the "... one giant leap for mankind" quote, but after reading Gene's book Failure is Not an Option, some other words spoken by Neil, what many consider to be the best test pilot ever, and his lunar module colleague, Buzz Aldrin, are equally memorable for me.
"Forty feet, picking up some dust, thirty feet, seeing a shadow ... contact light ... engine stop ... ACA out of detent."
What's memorable about these words aren't the words themselves, but the equanimity with which they were spoken by Buzz, at Neil's side in the lunar module, during a nerve-wracking landing, with a descent engine running on fumes, as if they had performed hundreds of lunar landings before, which of course they had, in practice. Buzz transitions to the descent engine shutdown checklist without a trace of emotion, during an event Gene Kranz compares to Columbus wading ashore in the new world. (Checklists would continue in the lunar module as well as at mission control, making tough "stay/no-stay" decisions at two minutes after touchdown, eight minutes, and two hours.)
"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."
There's a little more emotion here. Tranquility is a reference to the area of the Moon where they landed, the Sea of Tranquility. What's remarkable is that in all the preparations for Apollo 11, no one had ever uttered "Tranquility Base," a term conveying a confidence that did not naturally arise from the circumstances. I don't remember where I heard this back story, or whether Neil ever said how he came up with it.
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