In 1865, Jules Verne published From the Earth to the Moon, the story of an American Gun Club’s attempt to use a giant cannon to launch three humans to the moon. Verne was inspired by advanced weapon development in the United States during the Civil War, especially the Rodman cannon and its remarkable firepower.
“Once, ‘in the good old times,’ it was thought to be a pretty respectable performance if a 36-pounder, at a distance of 300 feet, pierced, by a flank shot, 36 horses and 68 men,” Verne wrote in From the Earth to the Moon. “That was only the art in its infancy. It has made some progress since. The Rodman cannon threw a ball weighing half a ton a distance of seven miles, and could have easily stretched 500 horses and 300 men.”
One hundred years later, Apollo 11 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, via the Saturn V – the tallest, heaviest and most powerful rocket ever fired – with a Command Module on top and Lunar Module safely tucked directly underneath. While the technological capabilities of 1969 greatly outstripped those of 1865, both the Rodman cannon of From the Earth to the Moon and the spacecrafts of Apollo 11 have one thing in common nonetheless, the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The artillery weapons designed by Thomas Jackson Rodman, for instance, were forged at the Fort Pitt Foundry in the Steel City, while both the hatch of the Lunar Module and the honeycomb structure of its legs – designed to absorb the shock from landing on the moon – were constructed from an aluminum alloy developed by the Pittsburgh-based Aluminum Company of America, better known as ALCOA.
In the early 1960s, meanwhile, North American Aviation in California was awarded the contract to build large sections of the Saturn V rocket, including its second stage, the Command Module, Lunar Module, and the Launch Escape Tower. In 1967, Rockwell purchased North American Aviation and renamed itself Rockwell International. Although North American Aviation was based in California, the headquarters for the new Rockwell International was in Pittsburgh.
A third company located within the confines of the Steel City designed electronic devices for the Apollo space program – Westinghouse. The video tube on the camera that captured Neil Armstrong’s momentous first step on the moon was developed by Westinghouse Electric, as were modifications to the camera that allowed it to function in the extreme temperatures of space.
Another Westinghouse subsidiary – WABCO – crafted the relay switches that enabled the Lunar Module to launch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the surface of the moon, as well as over 400 relays in the Command Module that controlled everything from the voice recorder to the guidance system.
It wasn’t just Pittsburgh industries that helped make Apollo 11 possible, however, as a number of technicians with ties to the region likewise played a role in the historic undertaking. During its Destination Moon exhibit in late 2018, the Senator John Heinz History Center spotlighted many of these individuals, placing their accomplishments alongside the overall narrative of the Apollo mission.
The list includes Stanley Lewandowski, a Carnegie Tech graduate from nearby Braddock, who was part of the team in Florida that designed and built the giant support structure for the Saturn V at Cape Canaveral, along with the massive crawler that transported the rocket to its launch pad.
Another Carnegie Tech graduate – Alex Valentine, likewise from Braddock – worked at the Mapping Science Laboratory in the Manned Space Center in Houston, Texas, that used satellite images to map the lunar surface and find the safest regions on the moon for Apollo missions to land. Those images were captured by a Lunar Orbiter satellite using a Kodak imaging system originally co-proposed by Pittsburgh electrical engineer Homer Smith.
Then there was Jack Kinzler, the head of technical services for NASA in Houston. Likewise born in Pittsburgh, the self-taught engineer was nicknamed “Mr. Fix It” because of his ability to quickly find cost-effective solutions to almost any problem. When a Russian cosmonaut flailed uncontrollably outside his capsule during the first spacewalk, it was Kinzler’s group that created a handheld cylinder unit capable of shooting short blasts of nitrogen that enabled American astronaut Ed White to effective maneuver during the first US spacewalk.
According to Charles Fishman in his 2019 book One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon, Jack Kinzler was asked for suggestions in early 1969 on how best to celebrate the Apollo 11 moon landing. “Well, they need a plaque,” Kinzler answered. “Why don’t we use some stainless steel? It’ll be long-lived. And certainly it has to have a message on it, it has to have the crew names on it, and it might have the landing site and that sort of thing.”
It was because of his suggestion that the iconic plaque attached to the ladder of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module was later created, containing the simple words, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
Impressed by this initial suggestion, Kinzler was asked if he had any other ideas. After first noting that having an American flag painted on the side of the Apollo 11 spacecraft was “a terrible way to celebrate a major event that the crew would be achieving,” he then added, “What you need is a freestanding America flag.”
Earth-bound explorers had been planting flags for centuries, so Jack Kinzler’s suggestion had historical merit. The United Nations, however, had ratified the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, which stated that the moon was “the province of all mankind.” There was thus concern that the planting of an American flag on the lunar surface could be misinterpreted by other nations. It was ultimately decided to plant the flag as a ceremonial gesture with no ulterior motives attached.
Once the decision was made, it was left to Jack Kinzler and his team to figure out how to transport the flag and keep it standing upright on the lunar surface. Kinzler took inspiration from his mother, who used to make her own drapes when he was growing up. A telescoping tube similar to those used in windows was thus designed for the flag’s deployment, with a second tube attached to keep it horizontal on the windless landscape of the moon.
Because the inside of the Lunar Module would already be packed with equipment and two astronauts, Kinzer and his group decided to mount the twin tubes to the outside ladder of the vehicle instead.
It took the efforts of over 400,000 American men and women in the 1960s to land Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, a united effort that stretched from one end of the country to the other. Pittsburgh was not alone in contributing to the success of Apollo 11 but it played a significant part in the project nonetheless. From ALCOA and Westinghouse to Rockwell International, Alex Valentine to Homer Smith, Stanley Lewandowski to Jack Kinzler, countless companies and natives from the region helped achieve what Jules Verne envisioned over 100 years earlier – the seemingly impossible journey from the Earth to the Moon.
Anthony Letizia