Jost: Iowan had a lot to do with first steps on the moon
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard ...”
— President John F. Kennedy, Sept. 12, 1962
Where were you on July 20, 1969, if you were anywhere at all?
That’s the question former astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin posed on social media, leading up to today’s 45th anniversary of the epic walk on the moon by Neil Armstrong and Aldrin, the first earthling boots to make tracks on the moon’s surface. “The whole world celebrated our moon landing,” Aldrin beams on an Internet video, “but we missed the whole thing because we were out of town.”
But there is no need to ask native Iowan Steve Bales where he was. Bales, as Aldrin knows, and as the late Neil Armstrong knew, played a critical role in the safe lunar landing.
Bales graduated from high school in Fremont, his father a school janitor, his mother a beautician. He first caught space-travel fever in 1956, when he watched a “Wonderful World of Disney” TV show on space exploration. Which is logical. After all, Disney’s go-to song, as warbled by Jiminy Cricket, went:
When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you
Bales went to Iowa State University and earned a degree in aerospace engineering. He landed a job at NASA in 1964, one month after graduating from Iowa State, and worked his way up to NASA guidance officer.
He was at NASA’s Mission Control in 1969 when Apollo 11, with third astronaut Michael Collins piloting the command module, circled the moon. It was time for the lunar module, with Aldrin and Armstrong aboard, to split from the command ship and power-descend to the moon for the historic landing.
As the lunar module drifted toward the moon’s surface, bad things happened. The spacecraft moved faster than it should and it approached its abort limits.
“It lasted about 13 minutes,” Bales, 71, said last week from his New Jersey home. “The entire 13 minutes passed so fast, and yet I think every flight controller on duty that day could tell you about every second of the experience. Have you ever been in a car wreck and yet can remember just about everything that happened? It was like that.”
Yet, the young Bales — he was just 26 — stayed glued to the data, kept his eyes on the control panel screen and remained cool. On his recommendation the mission was deemed still doable. Still go.
Then more trouble. In the last few minutes before touchdown, guidance computer alarms flashed. The computers seemed overloaded. Now it was an 11th-hour, 59th-minute decision. Abort or proceed?
“My first words after sorting out the problem and making a decision — took about 15 seconds, which is a lifetime during powered descent — were ‘Flight we are GO on that alarm.’ ” A co-worker had instantly heard and recognized the alarm and said the warning was passable.
Minutes later, the Eagle had landed on lunar dust and American astronauts were standing on it.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Armstrong said, climbing down the lunar module ladder.
It was a day Earth stood still. Television viewers around the world — at least those who didn’t think the whole event was a Hollywood-staged hoax — were moonstruck, transfixed by grainy, black-and-white images of man tromping on the moon.
Even normally stoic TV anchor Walter Cronkite, America’s most-trusted news uncle, was giddy. “Go, baby, go!” he shouted on air as Apollo 11 launched from Earth.
For sure, it was a different time. America, determined to catch and lap the Soviet Union in the Cold War era, hailed astronauts as rock stars. And why not? As Tom Wolfe, author of “The Right Stuff,” asked: “What is it that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan or Saturn rocket, and wait for someone to light the fuse?”
Still, rock stars don’t roll without roadies like Steve Bales, the techies behind stage.
Bales and his wife, Sandra, now run a chemical company, Lord’s Additives. He said they would attend church today and then spend a quiet Sunday at their home. He seldom thinks about that historic day on the moon, he says.
But every Iowa school should tell the story of Steve Bales, a small-town Iowan who came up big. Not just to report what he did, but to remind us of what can be done.
Next time you look to the moon, offer a salute to Steve Bales. He’s one of us, and he helped put us up there.
THE AUTHOR:
RICK JOST is a wire service editor for Gannett Co. in Des Moines. He is a former Des Moines Register business editor. Contact: rjost@registermedia.com.