No Dream Is Too High - Buzz Aldrin Page 0,36

have a drink, which led to several drinks. Meanwhile, little did I know that Gemini 9 had developed a problem in the “Angry Alligator,” a crucial part of the vehicle’s docking mechanism necessary for it to complete its mission.

When I heard that the crew was in trouble, I hurried back to Mission Control. I walked into the control room and found everyone anxious and on edge, trying desperately to come up with a solution.

I knew there were wire cutters on board Gemini 9, so I made a suggestion that one of the astronauts do a space walk outside the spacecraft and use the wire cutters to cut the cables to release the Angry Alligator and get it to unlock. I knew that time was of the essence and that the system worked on hydraulics, so if the cable could be released, it might be a quick solution. Unfortunately, perhaps because of my semi-inebriated condition, my suggestion didn’t make much sense to my superiors.

When the problem was finally solved, Deke Slayton, one of the original NASA astronauts and now director of flight crew operations, expressed his fury with me. “Buzz, your irresponsible suggestion really irritated me,” Deke said.

Bob Gilruth, the program director, echoed Deke’s sentiments. “I’m thinking of taking you off the program,” Bob railed. Bob was not merely threatening to kick me off the Gemini program; he was talking about kicking me completely out of the space program. This was a big deal and could have derailed my entire career and changed the course of my life.

Deke and Bob thought that I was being reckless in regard to the lives of my fellow astronauts. I really wasn’t. I was trying to be helpful. I was searching my mind for a quick solution, and the option I presented made perfectly good sense to me.

Fortunately, Neil Armstrong stood up for me and suggested that I was merely trying to think outside the box to get the Alligator to unlock, and my superiors forgave me … after I apologized about a million times.

Sometimes, you have to be big enough to admit when you are wrong—even if you really aren’t. What difference does it make who is right or wrong if you allow your conflict to drive a wedge between you and your peers, or you and your loved ones?

I’M FREQUENTLY ASKED, “Buzz, what was the scariest thing you experienced in space?” I have a ready answer, because it reminds me of another mistake I made that could have been costly.

After blasting off the Moon, our next challenge was to successfully rendezvous the Eagle with Mike Collins and the Columbia command module that we hoped would return us to Earth. Our rendezvous plan was not a straight shot off the lunar surface to intersect the Columbia. Instead, Neil and I orbited the Moon for a couple of hours, and during our second orbit of the Moon, the Columbia came into sight. We had practiced docking one spacecraft to another in simulations, and U.S. astronauts had successfully performed the procedure as early as the Gemini program, so we had a well-established plan.

But as Neil and I approached the Columbia to initiate the connecting/docking procedures, although I knew our flight checklist said one thing, I had a spur-of-the-moment idea to dock in a slightly different manner, in a way that I thought might make docking the two spacecraft much easier. Rather than guiding the Eagle into a straight-ahead approach with the Columbia, I suggested to Neil that we use a rolling-and-pitching approach different from the direct horizontal line we had anticipated and practiced.

Neil agreed, and nobody at Mission Control raised any objections, so we initiated the unrehearsed procedures. As it turned out, the rolling-and-pitching approach was not a good thing to do, because it caused the platform to become locked, and we were not able to use the Eagle’s primary thrusters, the main means of guidance, to control the spacecraft through its final few feet to dock with the Columbia.

Can you imagine that? After successfully landing on the Moon and spending a few hours exploring its surface, then successfully launching off the Moon and rendezvousing with our ride home, we nearly blew the whole deal because of my last-minute idea to break away from tried-and-tested procedures.

I had suggested to my commander that we do things differently, and that was my mistake. It was his mistake to assume that I knew what I was talking about! So we both made mistakes—brought about by me!

We recovered using the