Man's first landing on the moon almost stayed on the moon forever

On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 successfully landed on the moon for the first time with three American astronauts on board. But what is little known is that this world-famous moon landing operation was not smooth sailing, but was full of dangers, and even almost destroyed by disaster. The most amazing thing is that when the astronauts finished their 2-hour moonwalk, they found that the engine switch of the lunar module was damaged, and they would stay on the moon forever. Fortunately, the astronauts successfully resolved the crisis with a ballpoint pen and "escaped" from the moon.

Fuel leak escape plan useless before takeoff

The first crisis came before the spacecraft took off. On July 16, 1969, four hours before takeoff, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Bass Aldrin and Mike Collins were eating their last meal before launch. But what they didn't know was that at the moment on the launch pad, the Saturn 5 rocket had a fuel leak, and technicians were scrambling to troubleshoot it. At that time, the rocket was loaded with 1 million gallons of liquid hydrogen fuel, and a single Mars would destroy the rocket and all the crew.

The three astronauts were unaware of the dangerous fact of the fuel leak. The astronauts were told that if the fuel leak caused the engine to fail during ignition, their cockpits would be ejected to safety away from the rocket. At the time, astronaut Aldrin said: "I think there is a 90 percent chance that we will survive, we will have a lot of danger, but also a lot of opportunities to interrupt the mission." Yet surprisingly, in the memo seen by NASA officials, there is no escape plan. The memo states that the launch interruption system takes two seconds to activate the escape system after detecting a catastrophic failure. If the rocket's engine stalls early in the launch, the arrow will disintegrate within half a second, and the astronauts cannot be rescued at all! Astronauts don't know anything about it.

The leak was finally resolved at 1:32 pm and the spacecraft took off.

UFO follows spaceship, mysterious flash appears in floating cabin

In the 48 hours after the rocket took off, the spacecraft flew safely without any accidents. But on the third day, a strange phenomenon occurred. Aldrin and Collins said they saw what appeared to be a UFO floating with the spacecraft about 6,000 miles outside the spacecraft, but it was clearly not the rocket capsule that the spacecraft abandoned. "It's really troubling," Aldrin said. "There's something outside the spacecraft that's close enough to be observed. Collins can see it through the telescope, and it's L-shaped."

At the same time, mysterious flashes appeared inside the spacecraft. Aldrin recalled: "All of a sudden I saw a flash of light. I was taken aback and thought something might have entered the spacecraft. I asked both of them and Neil said he had seen it, and it was hundreds of times." The flashes are worrying. In airless space, anything that penetrates a spacecraft can be catastrophic. Aldrin reported the situation to the control center, and the astronauts were told that those were high-velocity, heavy particles that could penetrate the spacecraft and even the human body. Only long-term exposure to such particles can cause damage to the human body. Apollo 11 continued to fly under constant bombardment of heavy particles.

Strangely, when the pilot woke up from a sleep, the mysterious object behind the spacecraft had disappeared.

You can pierce the bulkhead with your hands. The computer crashes at critical moments

After the spacecraft entered orbit around the moon, the astronauts began to prepare for the most dangerous part of the trip. Apollo 11 circled 80 miles above the moon. Armstrong and Aldrin entered the Eagle lunar module, while Collins remained in the main control module. To save weight, the bulkhead of the lunar module is very thin, so astronauts need to be quite careful. Apollo 11 director Gene Kranz said: "If you poke hard with your finger, you can even pierce the bulkhead! It's only the thickness of 2 layers of aluminum."

A problem arose. At the critical moment when the spacecraft landed on the moon, the computer on the spacecraft suddenly crashed and kept displaying BigInt. "No matter how we adjusted, the computer kept issuing warnings," Aldrin recalled. It turned out that the information provided by the landing radar exceeded the carrying capacity of the spacecraft's computer, and too much information entered the computer. The accident stunned the astronauts in the lunar module. Fortunately, they finally solved the problem.

The engine fuel is seriously short of 15 seconds to complete the landing

The moon landing continued, but the engines were severely short of fuel. Astronauts must land on the moon within 15 seconds, but in previous training, astronauts usually took at least 10 minutes to land. The two decided to land immediately, and eventually the engine stalled and the lunar module landed safely. Many people in the ground control center were so nervous that their faces turned blue.

Getting ready to start the moonwalk, the hatch won't open

Aldrin and Armstrong immediately put on their spacesuits and were ready to start a history-making moonwalk. The whole world was waiting for Armstrong to come down, but they couldn't do it. Unbeknownst to many, the moment the astronauts walked out of the hatch was delayed - they couldn't open the hatch! The two suddenly fell into fear. Aldrin said: "We didn't realize that the pressure in the cabin would be greatly reduced. Normally, when we open the valve, we shouldn't let all the air out in order to adjust the pressure, but this time we did. We wanted to open the hatch below, but it couldn't be opened."

A desperate Aldrin made one last attempt, and the hatch miraculously opened. Armstrong set foot on the moon and then delivered his famous "One Small Step for Man, One Big Step for Man" speech. Fifteen minutes later, Aldrin also left the lunar module, making sure he didn't make a simple but fatal mistake. "I left the hatch open and couldn't let it lock, and it would be very difficult to open the hatch from the outside," he said.

Nearly laid to rest on the moon, ballpoint pen saves astronauts

A classified document kept for more than three decades shows that President Nixon was so concerned about the possibility of astronauts being stranded on the moon that he prepared a backup speech. It said: "It is fate that these peaceful explorers of the moon will rest on the moon forever." But what is unknown is that his "backup eulogy" almost became a reality.

After a two-hour moonwalk, astronauts found a shocking object in the moon's dust - a broken end of a circuit switch. It turned out that in the small lunar module, the spacesuit scratched off a very critical circuit switch to start the engine. Without the switch, they would really "stay on the moon forever"! Finally, Aldrin found a ballpoint pen in the lunar module, he successfully connected the circuit with the pen, and then started the lunar module to leave the moon. Aldrin said he still has the ballpoint pen that saved their lives.