1202 ALARM

 We repeat our post on the Apollo 11 Moon landing, 56 years ago today, because our post was so exceptionally well written. 

 The fascinating part of the historic Apollo 11 landing on the moon (50 years ago today) is the handling of the 1202 and 1201 alarms during the decent of the Eagle to the lunar surface.

Some Apollo-nerd stuff that you only get here: 

The Eagle's computer had three programs to run from the time it undocked to landing. The first was P63: which controlled Eagle from undocking while it was still in orbit to powered descent. P63 controlled the attitude (pitch and yaw) of Eagle and ran the burn which took Eagle out of orbit and into a controlled descent to the lunar surface. PDI (powered-descent initiation) occurred about 500 kilometers east of the landing site and 12 minutes to landing. The first go-no-go from Houston after the go-no-go for undocking was for PDI. When the Eagle is three minutes from landing and 7K/M from the site, the computer ran P64. The P64 program pitched the Eagle forward and gave Armstrong a view of the lunar surface so he could check for landmarks. At this point the computer is telling the astronauts and Houston where it intends to land. If you listen to the raw landing tapes, the guidance officer in Houston is indicating that they are headed for a spot longer down-range than anticipated. 

When the Eagle is 600 meters (2000 feet) from the landing site, Armstrong activates P66 in which he and the computer share the throttle while Armstrong alone controls the descent. 
Somewhere along the way a switch was flipped powering on the rendezvous radar that was supposed to be off. The rendezvous radar began feeding more information to the computer than it was designed to handle at exactly the wrong time- during the dangerous descent phase. How Armstrong and NASA handled this critical error is the stuff legends are made of.

35,000 Feet Above The Lunar Surface And The First 1202 Alarm
As PDI begins, Houston immediately loses signal and data from Eagle, prompting a call to Collins in Colombia to tell Aldrin to re-aim an antenna. Meanwhile Neil Armstrong has several issues to contend with, including no communication with the men who are supposed to guide him. 

As the Eagle descended Armstrong began to realize that the guidance computer was taking him farther down range then it was supposed to and was putting the Eagle into a crater. The Eagle has two guidance systems: PGNS (pings) is the main system, and AGS is the back-up. Both Houston and Aldrin  are monitoring both systems and comparing their data to see if it matches as the Eagle descends towards history. 

As  P63 turns the Eagle around so that now it's Engine is facing the lunar surface, the landing radar and other radar (that's supposed to be off) both lock on to the lunar surface. The computer is overloaded with data, and now come the words that almost ended the mission: "1202...1202 alarm."  Eagle is 33,500 feet above the surface of the moon. 

In the simulator, Armstrong and Aldrin had practiced with several different scenarios, including the loss of various functions of the Eagle, including wrong indicators, loss of communication, and the like. But in the thousands of hours of training, they had never encountered a 1202 alarm.

MEANWHILE ON THE GROUND IN HOUSTON

Here is what happened on the ground in Houston, and their success showed why NASA was able to achieve the extraordinary moon landing:

Gene Kranz was the flight director, later responsible for the saying "failure is not an option" in regard to Appolo 13.  Kranz was the one who made the final decision to allow the Eagle to land. 
Jack Garman was an engineer and part of the team working on the computers and the landing guidance system of the Eagle. At a meeting several weeks before the landing, Kranz told Garman to write down every possible alarm and the response to the alarm.
Steve Bales was the guidance officer who was one of the men responsible to answer Kranz during various "Go-No-Go" calls when Houston had to tell Armstrong if he could continue to land.
Astronaut Charlie Duke was "cap-com" the man responsible for speaking directly to Aldrin and Armstrong. 

Several seconds after the 1202 alarm, Armstrong having heard nothing from Houston, asked "give us a reading on that 1202 alarm."  When you listen to Armstrong, there is some uncertainty in his voice. He is about 30,000 feet above the surface of the moon and less than seven and half minutes from landing. He is looking for a place to land, watching his fuel, working on the high-gain antenna issue (the Eagle had been intermittently losing communication with Mission Control), and now an alarm that may scrub the landing is going off and Armstrong does not recognize it.  

Meanwhile in Houston, when the alarm went off, Kranz was looking towards his guidance officer Bales, or anyone else who knew what the alarm was. Nobody knew. There were blank stares all around as Krantz's landing team started scrambling though massive three-ring binders looking for what a 1202 alarm was. Eventually Krantz asked Bales, and Bales called over to a back room where there were dozens of engineers One of them- Jack Garman - knew what the alarm meant.  

Apollo 11's computer's were rudimentary. The landing radars started giving the computer more data than it could handle. When this occurred, the computer had a line of programing to tell it to prioritize its work and to trigger a 1202 alarm to let Houston and the Eagle know what it was doing. Essentially the computer was rebooting without shutting down. If the computer had shut down, Kranz would have ordered an abort. 

Garman reasoned that as long as the alarm didn't continually repeat, which would mean the computer was in a non-recoverable loop, that they were "go" on the alarm. Garman told Bales. Bales told Kranz. Kranz told Duke and Duke told Armstrong. 

There was another 1202 alarm and then a 1201 alarm at 27,000 feet above the surface. Aldrin tells Houston about why he thinks the alarm is occurring. Meanwhile Garman quickly told Bales that the 1201 alarm was the same type of alarm as the 1202 and that they were "go" on that. 

Armstrong never doubted what Duke was telling him. Kranz had faith in Bales, and Bales knew Garman knew the landing computer software better than anyone. 

5200 FEET ABOVE THE LUNAR SURFACE

At about 9 minutes into the landing, and 5200 feet about the lunar surface, the computer switches to P64 and the program pitches Eagle over so that the attitude of the Eagle is more upright, and it begins to descend in the same attitude that it will have upon landing. Armstrong is now looking at the surface so he can find a place to land.  Kranz quickly runs through a "go-no-go" for landing, and Retro (the controller monitoring the engines) FIDO (flight dynamics),  ECOM (electrical, environmental and consumables), Guidance, and the flight surgeon, all give Kranz an enthusiastic "GO!" for landing, which Charlie Duke as Cap-Com relays to Aldrin and Armstrong. 

 3000 FEET ABOVE THE LUNAR SURFACE

At 3,000 feet they get another 1201 alarm, but they are quickly told they are "go on that alarm" and the descent continues. In another minute, at 1300 feet, they get another 1202 alarm, but they are still go to land. 

 At 600 feet the P64 program is steering the Eagle toward a sea of boulders and craters. Armstrong decides to switch to the P66 program and manually take control of Eagle.  Perhaps the greatest pilot in the world in 1969 is piloting the Eagle in our quest to land on the Moon.  Armstrong begins to use thrusters to navigate the Eagle past a large crater while looking for a flat area to set the Eagle down, all while monitoring an ever-dwindling fuel supply and a host of other issues. 

 300 FEET ABOVE THE LUNAR SURFACE

The Eagle is 300 feet from the surface when Aldrin tells Armstrong that he is "pegged at horizontal velocity",  meaning they are going forward at the top speed on the indicator. At 250 feet Armstrong is now slowing the forward velocity. He sees a landmark he recognizes: "Little West Crater", and he pilots Eagle just past it where he sees a relatively smooth surface to land. The forward velocity has slowed from 50 feet/second to 19 feet/second. At 175 feet they have 94 seconds to land, or they will get a "fuel-bingo" call from Houston and will have to abort. 

 The Eagle had one chance to land on the moon. If the landing was aborted, they would activate the ascent engine, fly back to Michael Collins in Colombia, and headed back to earth having failed in their attempt to land. There were no second chances on this flight. 

 At 100 feet they have 75 seconds of fuel left.  Armstrong is now demonstrating why he was chosen for this mission- he is at the top of his game and pulling off the greatest landing in the history of aviation- and one of the most difficult and dangerous to boot. The man has met the moment.  Thousands of hours of training are paying off for the Apollo 11 landing team. 

 60 SECONDS

At 75 feet the Eagle's velocity has slowed to six feet forward/per second. At 60 feet, Charlie Duke in Houston calls out "sixty seconds": they have one minute of fuel left to land. 

 At 20 feet Charlie Duke calls out "thirty seconds". There is almost no fuel left to land. 

With seventeen seconds of fuel remaining Aldrin calls out "contact light": a 1.5-meter probe below Eagle has touched the surface and humans have landed on the moon.  

 The team worked. The system worked, and Armstrong landed the Eagle with 17 seconds of fuel remaining. 

ON THE MOON

The first words spoken by a human being on another celestial body belong to Buzz Aldrin: "Contact light. Ok. Engine stop. ACA out of descent. Mode control both auto descent engine command override off. Engine arm off. 413 is in." 

Hardly memorable or historic words, but before Armstrong tells the world that from Tranquility Base "The Eagle has landed",  Aldrin had a checklist he needed to run through to make sure the descent engines were shut down and the abort-ascent engine couldn't be accidentally triggered. 

Charlie Duke responds "we copy you down Eagle".

Armstrong says "The Eagle has landed" and Duke responds that there were a bunch of guys about to turn blue but were breathing again. This is in response to the fact that with less than 30 seconds of fuel, the Eagle had not landed and everyone in mission control was holding their breath. 

A half a million people worked on some part of the Apollo program. But on July 20, 1969, it was Kranz, Steve Bales, and Jack Garman who gave the go ahead to Armstrong and Aldrin to continue the landing in the face of 1202 and 1201 alarms.

Brave and historic actions indeed.  And it is, in our humble opinion, humanity's finest hour. It reminds us that if we try together, we as a species can do great things. 

Happy Apollo 11 Moon Landing Day.  We are go on that 1202 Alarm. 

 

THE START OF OUR FINEST HOUR

UPDATE. We asked and you delivered.  As of Wednesday morning the Go Fund me account for Greg Gonzalez raised over $50,000.00  Thank you.  We criticize a lot,  but the people who work in the REGJB and the Miami criminal law community are the best in the nation. Thank you for caring about a great man who needed our support.  

July 16, 1969 was the culmination of a decade of work that would result in America's finest hour four days later.  The 1960's, and 1969, and Apollo was a time when petty people didn't cancel government programs because some other president started the process. Kennedy started the quest for the moon, Johnson continued it, and Nixon made sure NASA had the funds to carry the ball over the goal line. 

It was a time when science mattered and was respected. When the laws of physics governed whether a rocket carrying Americans could get into space, leave earth orbit, transit space, enter lunar orbit, land on the moon, and then do it all in reverse and return safely. Prayer didn't get Aldrin and Armstrong to the Moon, science and hard work did, along with tens of thousands of government workers who did not have to fear being fired for doing their jobs. 

The moon landing is the ultimate intersection of government support and capitalism. Only the United States of America had the entrepreneurial spirit to produce men and women who could design a plan to land two people on the moon and return them safely.  Fifty-six years later, we are still the only nation on earth to do so. It was a time when competence, science, and intelligence mattered. How times have changed. Sadly. 

But enjoy the liftoff. And you can best expect our nerdy 1202 Alarm post on July 20. 

1202 ALARM ( REPEAT)

We repeat our post on the Apollo 11 Moon landing, 55 years ago todabecause our post was so exceptionally well written. 

 The fascinating part of the historic Apollo 11 landing on the moon (50 years ago today) is the handling of the 1202 and 1201 alarms during the decent of the Eagle to the lunar surface.

Some Apollo-nerd stuff that you only get here: The Eagle's computer had three programs to run from the time it undocked to landing. The first was P63: which controlled Eagle from undocking while it was still in orbit to powered-descent. P63 controlled the attitude (pitch and yaw) of Eagle and ran the burn which took Eagle out of orbit and into a controlled descent to the lunar surface. PDI (powered-descent initiation) occurred about 500 kilometers east of the landing site and 12 minutes to landing. The first go-no-go from Houston after the go-no-go for undocking was for PDI. When the Eagle is three minutes from landing and 7K/M from the site, the computer ran P64. The P64 program pitched the Eagle forward and gave Armstrong a view of the lunar surface so he could check for landmarks. At this point the computer is telling the astronauts and Houston where it intends to land. If you listen to the raw landing tapes, the guidance officer in Houston is indicating that they are headed for a spot longer down-range than anticipated. 

When the Eagle is 600 meters from the landing site, Armstrong activates P66 in which he and the computer share the throttle while Armstrong alone controls the descent. 
Somewhere along the way a switch was flipped powering on the rendezvous radar that was supposed to be off. The rendezvous radar began feeding more information to the computer than it was designed to handle at exactly the wrong time- during the dangerous descent phase. How Armstrong and NASA handled this critical error is the stuff legends are made of.

As PDI begins, Houston immediately loses signal and data from Eagle, prompting a call to Collins in Colombia to tell Aldrin to re-aim an antenna. Meanwhile Neil Armstrong has several issues to contend with, including no communication with the men who are supposed to guide him. 

As the Eagle descended Armstrong began to realize that the guidance computer was taking him farther down range then it was supposed to and was putting the Eagle into a crater. The Eagle has two guidance systems: PGNS (pings) is the main system, and AGS is the back-up. Both Houston and Aldrin  are monitoring both systems and comparing their data to see if it matches as the Eagle descends towards history. 

As  P63 turns the Eagle around so that now it's Engine is facing the lunar surface, the landing radar and other radar (that's supposed to be off) both lock on to the lunar surface. The computer is overloaded with data, and now come the words that almost ended the mission: "1202...1202 alarm."  Eagle is 33,500 feet above the surface of the moon. 

In the simulator Armstrong and Aldrin had practiced with several different scenarios, including the loss of various functions of the Eagle, wrong indicators, loss of communication, and the like. But in the thousands of hours of training, they had never encountered a 1202 alarm.

Here is what happened on the ground in Houston and their success showed why NASA was able to achieve the extraordinary moon landing:

Gene Kranz was the flight director, later responsible for the saying "failure is not an option". Kranz was the one who made the final decision to allow the Eagle to land. 
Jack Garman was an engineer and part of the team working on the computers and the landing guidance system of the Eagle. At a meeting several weeks before the landing, Kranz told Garman to write down every possible alarm and the response to the alarm.
Steve Bales was the guidance officer who was one of the men responsible to answer Kranz during various "Go-No-Go" calls when Houston had to tell Armstrong if he could continue to land.
Astronaut Charlie Duke was "cap-com" the man responsible for speaking directly to Aldrin and Armstrong. 

Several seconds after the 1202 alarm, Armstrong having heard nothing from Houston, asked "give us a reading on that 1202 alarm."  When you listen to Armstrong, there is some uncertainty in his voice. He is about 30,000 feet above the surface of the moon and less than seven and half minutes from landing. He is looking for a place to land, watching his fuel, working on the high-gain antenna issue, and now an alarm that he does not recognize is going off which may cause the mission to be aborted. 

Meanwhile in Houston, when the alarm went off, Kranz was looking towards his guidance officer Bales or anyone else who knew what the alarm was. Nobody knew. There were blank stares all around as Krantz's landing team started scrambling though massive three-ring binders looking for what a 1202 alarm was. Eventually Krantz asked Bales and Bales called over to a back room where there were dozens of engineers One of them- Jack Garman - knew what the alarm meant.  

Apollo 11's computer's were rudimentary. The landing radars started giving the computer more data than it could handle. When this occurred the computer had a line of programing to tell it to prioritize its work and to trigger a 1202 alarm to let Houston and the Eagle know what it was doing. Essentially the computer was rebooting without shutting down. If the computer had shut down, Kranz would have ordered an abort. 

Garman reasoned that as long as the alarm didn't continually repeat, which would mean the computer was in a non-recoverable loop, that they were "go" on the alarm. Garman told Bales. Bales told Kranz. Kranz told Duke and Duke told Armstrong. 

There was another 1202 alarm and then a 1201 alarm at 27,000 feet above the surface. Aldrin tells Houston about why he thinks the alarm is occurring. Meanwhile Garman quickly told Bales that the 1201 alarm was the same type of alarm as the 1202 and that they were "go" on that. 

Armstrong never doubted what Duke was telling him. Kranz had faith in Bales and Bales knew Garman knew the landing computer software better than anyone. 

At about 9 minutes into the landing, and 5200 feet about the surface the computer switches to P64 and the program pitches Eagle over so that the attitude of the Eagle is more upright, and it begins to descend in the same attitude that it will have upon landing. Armstrong is now looking at the surface so he can find a place to land.  Kranz quickly runs through a "go-no-go" for landing and Retro (the controller monitoring the engines) FIDO (flight dynamics),  ECOM (electrical, environmental and consumables), Guidance  and the flight surgeon all give Kranz and enthusiastic "GO!" for landing which Charlie Duke relays to Aldrin and Armstrong. 

At 3,000 feet they get another 1201 alarm, but they are quickly told they are "go on that alarm" and the descent continues. In another minute, at 1300 feet they get another 1202 alarm, but they are still go to land. 

 At 600 feet the P64 program is steering the Eagle toward a sea of boulders and craters. Armstrong decides to switch to the P66 program and manually take control of Eagle. He began to use the thrusters to navigate the Eagle past a large crater and then looked for a relatively flat area to set his craft down on, all the while monitoring an ever-dwindling fuel supply and a host of other issues. 

The Eagle is 300 feet from the surface when Aldrin tells Armstrong that he is "pegged at horizontal velocity",  meaning they are going forward at the top speed on the indicator. At 250 feet Armstrong is now slowing the forward velocity. He sees a landmark he recognizes: "Little West Crater", and he pilots Eagle just past it where he sees a relatively smooth surface to land. The forward velocity has slowed from 50 feet/second to 19 feet/second. At 175 feet they have 94 seconds to land, or they will get a "fuel-bingo" call from Houston and will have to abort. 

The Eagle had one chance to land on the moon. If the landing was aborted, they would activate the ascent engine, fly back to Michael Collins in Colombia, and headed back to earth having failed in their attempt to land. There were no second chances on this flight. 

At 100 feet they have 75 seconds of fuel left.  Armstrong is now demonstrating why he was chosen for this mission- he is at the top of his game and pulling off the greatest landing in the history of aviation- and one of the most difficult and dangerous to boot. The man has met the moment.  Thousands of hours of training are paying off for the Apollo 11 landing team. 

At 75 feet the Eagle's velocity has slowed to six feet forward/per second. At 60 feet, Charlie Duke in Houston calls out "sixty seconds": they have a minute of fuel left to land. 

At 20 feet Charlie Duke calls out "thirty seconds". There is almost no fuel left to land. 

With seventeen seconds of fuel remaining Aldrin calls out "contact light": a 1.5-meter probe below Eagle has touched the surface and humans have landed on the moon.  

The team worked. The system worked, and Armstrong landed the Eagle with 17 seconds of fuel remaining. 

The first words spoken by a human being on another celestial body belong to Buzz Aldrin: "Contact light. Ok. Engine stop. ACA out of descent. Mode control both auto descent engine command override off. Engine arm off. 413 is in." 

Hardly memorable or historic words, but before Armstrong tells the world that from Tranquility Base "The Eagle has landed",  Aldrin had a checklist he needed to run through to make sure the descent engines were shut down and the abort-ascent engine couldn't be accidentally triggered. 

Charlie Duke responds "we copy you down Eagle".

Armstrong says "The Eagle has landed" and Duke responds that there were a bunch of guys about to turn blue but were breathing again. This is in response to the fact that with less than 30 seconds of fuel, the Eagle had not landed and everyone in mission control was holding their breath. 

A half a million people worked on some part of the Apollo program. But on July 20, 1969, it was Kranz, Steve Bales, and Jack Garman who gave the go ahead to Armstrong and Aldrin to continue the landing in the face of 1202 and 1201 alarms.

Brave and historic actions indeed.  And it is, in our humble opinion, humanity's finest hour. It reminds us that if we try together, we as a species can do great things. 

Happy Apollo 11 Moon Landing Day. 

OUR GREATEST JOURNEY

 54 years ago, on July 16, 1969, Mankind (to use the lingo of the time) began its greatest journey.  Apollo 11, with three Americans on board, lifted up from Cape Kennedy in Florida to land two Americans on another celestial body- the moon.

The Apollo program, and the moon landing, was our greatest journey, and arguably our greatest hour. Perhaps America and the world recached the apex of humanity's achievement in July 1969. 

What has happened since we landed on the moon? 

We have been to war multiple times; experienced genocide on multiple continents in numerous countries; we have brought our planet to the edge of an ecological disaster, while a significant number of Americans have accepted the lies and propaganda that global warming is fake. We have rioted in our streets, shot at each other in the name of justice, and watch countless children shot and murdered simply because they went to school that morning. 

We have none of the can-do spirit that united a nation behind the dream and leadership of a young president who was murdered in office. One can only now think that if the prevailing attitudes of politics existed in the 1960s, then the opposing political party would have done all it could do to stop the moon landing, just so a martyred president and his party could not claim credit for the accomplishment. 

We do not live in a time when people believe they are Americans first, and then a member of their political party second. We live in a time when many people fervently believe that they would rather see the nation fail, then allow a political opponent succeed.  And so we suffer with children being murdered and the world overheating. 

And yet...

We are made of better stuff. We still have in our collective genes the ability of overcoming anything against any odds.  We did it during Washington's winter camp at Valley Forge; we did it at the battle of Belleau Wood in France in June, 1918; We did it in the battle of Midway in 1942, in the  Ardennes Forest in December 1944 and at Iwo Jima in February and March 1945. Americans, sometimes just a few, stood up to danger and tyranny and turned the tide. 

  We created computers, and silicon chips and Silicon Valley.  We digitized our collective knowledge and, in some ways, our collective consciousness. We fought AIDS down to a manageable medical condition, and later created the COVID vaccines that corralled the virus. 

Maybe July 1969 was humanity's finest hour. 

And maybe it wasn't. Maybe when the story of our small blue planet is written with a conclusion, maybe July 1969 is just one of many wonderous moments. We choose to believe that there are many more to come. 

But for today, let's remember this moment and rejoice that we could do this. That three brave men, with a nation behind them, could travel to the moon and that two of them could land on another celestial body and proudly declare "We Came In Peace For All Mankind". 

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

 Originally posted on July 19, 2019, the 50 year anniversary of what may be the high water mark of humanity and all we can accomplish, there is value in remembering how great we can be:

The fascinating part of the historic Apollo 11 landing on the moon (50 years ago today) is the handling of the 1202 and 1201 alarms during the decent of the Eagle to the lunar surface.

P63: Some Apollo-nerd stuff that you only get here: The Eagle's computer had three programs to run from the time it undocked to landing. The first was P63: which controlled Eagle from undocking while it was still in orbit,  to powered-descent -the landing. P63 controlled the attitude (pitch and yaw) of Eagle and ran the burn of the engine which took Eagle out of orbit and into a controlled descent to the lunar surface. PDI (powered-descent initiation) occurred about 500 kilometers east of the landing site and 12 minutes to landing. The first go-no-go from Houston after the go-no-go for undocking was for PDI. 

P64: When the Eagle was three minutes from landing and 7 kilometers from the site, the computer ran P64. The P64 program pitched the Eagle forward and gave Armstrong a view of the lunar surface so he could check for landmarks. At this point the computer is telling the astronauts and Houston where it intends to land. If you listen to the raw landing tapes, the guidance officer in Houston is indicating that they are headed for a spot longer down-range than anticipated. 

P66: When the Eagle is 600 meters from the landing site, Armstrong activates P66 in which he and the computer share the throttle while Armstrong alone controls the pitch and yaw. 
Somewhere along the way a switch was flipped powering on the rendezvous radar that was supposed to be off. The rendezvous radar began feeding more information to the computer than it was designed to handle at exactly the wrong time- during the dangerous descent phase. How Armstrong and NASA handled this critical error is the stuff legends are made of.

As PDI begins, Houston immediately loses signal and data from Eagle, prompting a call to Collins in Colombia to tell Aldrin to re-aim an antenna. Meanwhile Neil Armstrong has several issues to contend with, including no communication with the men who are supposed to guide him. 

As the Eagle descended Armstrong began to realize that the guidance computer was taking him farther down range then it was supposed to and was putting the Eagle into a crater. The Eagle has two guidance systems: PGNS (pings) is the main system, and AGS is the back-up. Both Houston and Aldrin  are monitoring both systems and comparing their data to see if it matches as the Eagle descends towards history and the Moon. 

As  P63 turns the Eagle around so that now it's Engine is facing the lunar surface, the landing radar and other radar (that's supposed to be off) both lock on to the lunar surface. The computer is overloaded with data, and now come the words that almost ended the mission: "1202...1202 alarm."  Eagle is 33,500 feet above the surface of the moon. 

In the simulator   Armstrong and Aldrin had practiced with several different scenarios, including the loss of various functions of the Eagle, wrong indicators, loss of communication, and the like. But in the thousands of hours of training, they had never encountered a 1202 alarm.

Here is what happened on the ground in Houston and their success showed why NASA was able to achieve the extraordinary moon landing:

Gene Kranz was the flight director, later responsible for the saying "failure is not an option". Kranz was the one who made the final decision to allow the Eagle to land. 
Jack Garman was an engineer and part of the team working on the computers and the landing guidance system of the Eagle. At a meeting several weeks before the landing,  Kranz told Garman to write down every possible alarm and the response to the alarm.
Steve Bales was the guidance officer who was one of the men responsible to answer Kranz during various "Go-No-Go" calls when Houston had to tell Armstrong if he could continue to land.
Astronaut Charlie Duke was "cap-com" the man responsible for speaking directly to Aldrin and Armstrong. 

Several seconds after the 1202 alarm, Armstrong having heard nothing from Houston, asked "give us a reading on that 1202 alarm."  When you listen to Armstrong, there is some uncertainty in his voice. He is about 30,000 feet above the surface of the moon and less than seven and half minutes from landing. He is looking for a place to land, watching his fuel, working on the high-gain antenna issue, and now an alarm that he does not recognize is going off which may cause the mission to be aborted. 

Meanwhile in Houston, when the alarm went off, Kranz was looking towards his guidance officer Bales or anyone else who knew what the alarm was. Nobody knew. There were blank stares all around as Krantz's landing team started scrambling though massive three-ring binders looking for what a 1202 alarm was. Eventually Krantz asked Bales and Bales called over to a back room where there were dozen of engineers One of them- Jack Garman - knew what the alarm meant.  

Apollo 11's computer's were rudimentary. The landing radars started giving the computer more data then it could handle. When this occurred the computer had a line of programing to tell it to prioritize its work and to trigger a 1202 alarm to let Houston and the Eagle know what it was doing. Essentially the computer was rebooting without shutting down. If the computer had shut down, Kranz would have ordered an abort. 

Garman reasoned that as long as the alarm didn't continually repeat, which would mean the computer was in a non-recoverable loop, that they were "go" on the alarm. Garman told Bales. Bales told Kranz. Kranz told Duke and Duke told Armstrong. 

There was another 1202 alarm and then a 1201 alarm at 27,000 feet above the surface. Aldrin tells Houston about why he thinks the alarm is occurring. Meanwhile,  Garman quickly told Bales that the 1201 alarm was the same type of alarm as the 1202 and that they were "go" on that. 

Armstrong never doubted what Duke was telling him. Kranz had faith in Bales and Bales knew Garman knew the landing computer software better than anyone. 

At about 9 minutes into the landing, and 5200 feet about the surface the computer switched to P64 and the program pitches Eagle over so that the attitude of the Eagle is more upright and it begins to descend in the same attitude that it will have upon landing. Armstrong is now looking at the surface so he can find a place to land.  Kranz quickly runs through a "go-no-go" for landing and Retro (the controller monitoring the engines), FIDO (flight dynamics), ECOM (electrical, environmental and consumables), Guidance, and the flight surgeon all give Kranz an enthusiastic "GO!" for landing which Charlie Duke relays to Aldrin and Armstrong. At 3,000 feet they get another 1201 alarm, but they are quickly told they are "go on that alarm" and the descent continues. In another minute, at 1300 feet they get another 1202 alarm, but they are still go to land. 

 At 600 feet the P64 program is steering the Eagle toward a sea of boulders and craters. Armstrong decided to switch to the P66 program and manually take control of Eagle. He began to use the thrusters to navigate the Eagle past a large crater and then looked for a relatively flat area to set his craft down on, all the while monitoring an ever dwindling fuel supply and a host of other issues. They are 300 feet from the surface and Aldrin tells Armstrong  that he is "pegged at horizontal velocity" meaning they are going forward at the top speed on the indicator. At 250 feet Armstrong is now slowing the forward velocity. He sees a landmark he recognizes: "Little West Crater" and he pilots Eagle just past it where he sees a relatively smooth surface to land. The forward velocity has slowed from 50 feet/second to 19 feet/second. At 175 feet they have 94 seconds to land or they will get a "fuel-bingo" call from Houston and will have to abort. 

The Eagle had one chance to land on the moon. If the landing was aborted, they activated the ascent engine, flew back to Michael Collins in Colombia, and headed back to earth having failed in their attempt to land. There were no second chances on this flight. 

At 100 feet they have 75 seconds to land. Armstrong is demonstrating why he was chosen for this mission- he is at the top of his game and pulling off the greatest landing in the history of aviation- and one of the most difficult and dangerous to boot. At 75 feet their velocity has slowed to six feet forward/second. At 60 feet Charlie Duke calls out "sixty seconds": they have a minute of fuel left to land. At 20 feet Charlie Duke calls out "thirty seconds". There is almost no fuel left to land. 

With seventeen seconds of fuel remaining Aldrin calls out "contact light": a 1.5 meter probe below Eagle has touched the surface.  

The team worked. The system worked, and Armstrong landed the Eagle with 17 seconds of fuel remaining. 

The first words spoken by a human being on another celestial body belonged to Buzz Aldrin: "Contact light. Ok. Engine stop. ACA out of descent. Mode control both auto descent engine command override off. Engine arm off. 413 is in." 

Hardly memorable or historic words, but before Armstrong tells the world that from Tranquility Base "The Eagle has landed" Aldrin had a checklist he needed to run through to make sure the descent engines were shut down and the abort-ascent  engine couldn't be accidentally triggered. 

Charlie Duke responds "we copy you down Eagle".
Armstrong says "The Eagle has landed" and Duke responds that there were a bunch of guys about to turn blue but were breathing again. This is in response to the fact that with less than 30 seconds of fuel, the Eagle had not landed and everyone in mission control was holding their breath. 

A half a million people worked on some part of the Apollo program. But on July 20, 1969, it was Kranz, Steve Bales, and Jack Garman who gave the go ahead to Armstrong and Aldrin to continue the landing in the face of 1202 and 1201 alarms.

In these days of seemingly unsolvable problems- wars, global warming, plastic choking the ocean, no reservations at the Pickle Ball court for weeks,  the Apollo program and the (mostly men) of Apollo 11 remind is we as human beings can do great great things if we all work together for a common goal. 

(Although the 9 am Saturday spot on the Pickle Ball court is booked solid through the end of the year).

SHUT COURTS DOWN 2.0

It is now too dangerous for clerks, lawyers, JAs, corrections officers, bailiffs, and Judges to leave their homes and go to court. It is time to shut it down again. We realize two things: First, a courtroom needs to be open in criminal court, juvenile court, and domestic court to handle bond hearings in state court  and first appearances in Federal Court. Second, what we are advocating is easier blogged than done. 
The challenges facing Chief Judges Moore, Soto, Sayfie, Bailey, et. al, are staggering. But every contact inside a courthouse is a dangerous contact. Support staff have gotten ill. We have received reports of certain staff in certain courthouses congregating without masks, inside. No good can come of this. It is time to shut all but the very basic court operations until the positive test rate in Miami-Dade gets below 5 percent.
JULY 20 1969 
On this date in 1969 we landed on the Moon. Humans reached to the stars that humanity has stared at with awe and wonder since people  first walked the earth. We traveled to another celestial body and landed on it and returned. 
We have often pondered if that would be the people of earth's high water mark. Would this be our shinning accomplishment? The best we would ever do? 

The landing was fraught with drama. 1201 and 1202 alarms that were not immediately recognized or handled in simulations occurred as the Eagle plunged towards the lunar surface. The landing computer was bringing the Eagle into a field of boulders.  But the best pilot in the solar system was in command. Neil Armstrong had trained for this moment his whole life. The stress of the situation was not going to affect him. He rose to the occasion and took over from the computer and piloted the Eagle to safety. Humanity rose to the occasion and Armstrong, NASA and the USA showed the world what we could do when we put our mind to something. 

It is no accident a country that celebrates individualism could invent the technology that made Apollo 11 possible. 

It is no accident that the United States produced a Neil Armstrong. 

It is no accident that NASA had produced men like Gene Kranz Jack Garman, and Steve Bales,  who saved the landing when the unexpected `1201and 1202 alarms occurred. Kranz as flight director had final authority to order Armstrong to abort the landing. Weeks before the landing Kranz ordered his specialists to review every possible alarm. Twenty-four year old flight specialist Jack Garman made a handwritten list of all alarms and causes. Bales was the guidance officer. When the alarm occurred Kranz wanted Bales to give him a go/abort on the alarm. Garman quickly pieced together that the alarm was a computer memory overload and was not fatal to the mission. He told Bales they were a go and Bales trusted Garman. Bales told Kranz they were a go and Kranz trusted Bales. Kranz told Armstrong and Aldrin they were a go on the alarm and the two men trusted their team in NASA and they went on to land the Eagle on the Moon. 

This country produced Armstrong and Aldrin and Kranz and Bales and Garman and ten thousand other men and women who made the lunar landings possible. 

At this very moment ten thousand or more Americans are working to save humanity. They are studying a virus and discovering treatments and developing a vaccine. 

We can only hope that we did not hit our high water mark fifty-one years ago today. That someday in the near future we will celebrate  new names-unspoken today- who will be the team of men and women that defeat this virus and scourge. We have done it before. And we are not done yet and we will not be defeated. 


PS Wear your mask. It works. Study after study shows that all it takes is a mask to stop people from spreading the virus.  In a recent study two people who cut hair in Missouri became infected. While they were asymptomatic they wore masks as did there customers- over 130 people who came into close contact with an infected person wearing a mask. Contact tracing showed that NO ONE became infected. Here is the CDC study.  MASKS WORK. 

OUR GREATEST DAY

The history of the United States is filled with great days. Lincoln at Gettysburg; Eisenhower and D-Day. VE day. VJ day. The invention of the Polio Vaccine by Dr. Salk. 

But perhaps in the history of Human-Kind, July 20, 1969, will stand out as the greatest day of humanity. Led by the United States, and two courageous men. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. We landed and walked on the moon. 

Stop for a moment and consider that again. Humanity, who once gazed across the seas and pondered what was on the other side, left Earth and landed on another Planet (yes the moon isn't a planet, but you get what we mean). We started off walking across the plains of Africa, crossing the ice bridge into North America. We conquered mountain ranges and deserts and oceans, and caves and the bottom of the sea. 

And then we turned our gaze to the heavens. 

It's hard to remember what a leader can do when s/he inspires instead of attacks. When s/he unites instead of divides. 
But that's what occurred in May, 1961,  when President Kennedy challenged a nation to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. 
We did it. 
It was our greatest accomplishment. Our greatest day. America's greatest day. Humanity's greatest day. Because we came for all mankind. 

So here is the landing, with all the drama of the 1201 and 1202 alarms. And listen closely as they are landing,  to the "60" second and then "30 second" calls. That's mission control telling Armstrong how much fuel he had left and it's why after the Eagle landed CapCom responded with "you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue here." They were holding their breath praying that Apollo 11 didn't run out of fuel. 

This is the MC loop so you can hear the comments between the men at Mission Control and Apollo 11. 
Astronaut Charlie Duke, who later walked on the moon during Apollo 16 is Capcom for the landing. He is the only one talking to the Eagle. 
The legendary Gene Kranz, who also was the hero for Apollo 13, was the flight director for the landing. You will hear him talking in the loop to his controllers. 
Here are some key moments: 

 6:10:  they were given "GO" to continued PD (powered descent). 
7:29: The 1202 alarm and by 7:50 MC had determined they were 12:02 alarm. 
10:58 the historic "GO/NO GO" for landing. 
11:06: Kranz tells Capcom they are GO for landing. 
11:08: Duke tells Eagle they are GO for landing. 
11:20: Within a second after acknowledging they are GO for landing Armstrong notes a 1201 alarm.
12:20:  There is an "attitude hold" as Armstrong at around 500 feet from the surface is actively looking for a landing spot. He is now manually piloting Eagle. 
12:25: Kranz tells his team that the only call-outs will be remaining fuel. From this point forward you hear Aldrin calling out the speed and altitude as Armstrong looks to land the Eagle. 

When people talk about American Exceptionalism, this is what they should be talking about. Kranz has enough faith in his men to let them do what they are trained to do. Armstrong is arguably the best pilot in the world, and all the training is now paying off as he is flying around large boulders, looking for a place to land, with just two minutes of fuel. Aldrin is cool as can be, giving Armstrong  velocity and altitude and rate of descent. This is teamwork at its finest. 

13:35: First fuel call: "low level".
13:47: 5% of fuel. 
13:57 60 seconds of fuel. Listen how cool Kranz is as he relays this information. 
13:59: Duke, with a little more urgency in his voice tells Eagle they have 60 seconds of fuel remaining. 
14:16: They are soooo close. Aldrin notes that they are "kicking up some dust". 
14:21: A controller tells Kranz they have 30 seconds of fuel.
14:28: Duke tells Eagle they have 30 seconds of fuel left. 
14:37 Aldrin calls out "Contact light!". The probe of the lander has touched the surface of the moon. The men now quickly go through their landing checklist. It's fascinating to hear. 
14:59: From Tranquility Base, perhaps the most historic words ever spoke in the history of the English Language "The Eagle Has Landed." And Duke responds about a "bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again." 
15:50: Kranz is still all business while everyone around him is going crazy and he calls for a T1 "Stay/No Stay". 

This is historic footage. Watch and listen to it all. It's worth it. 
This is American Exceptionalism. Not some nonsense about trade tariffs and who pays more for NATO. This is the real stuff Americans are made of. And we shall return. 

YOU'RE GO ON THAT 1202 ALARM

If you're a space nerd, like we are, then you are very familiar with the 1201 and 1202 alarms that Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Pilot Dr. Buzz Aldrin encountered about 5200 feet above the Lunar surface on July 20, 1969. 

Apollo is what makes America great. We are the only country to make Humankind's greatest leap from our planet to the stars. And if we can do that, then there isn't anything- pollution, global warming, disease, hunger, poverty, traffic on U.S 1 in the mornings- that we cannot solve. America doesn't need to be great again. We've always been great. 

5200 feet above the moon, Neil Armstrong, seeing only large boulders and enormous craters in his landing path, took controls of The Eagle. A team of American scientists and engineers had his back. Thousands of hours of simulations and planning for everything that could go wrong came into play. Loss of signal from Houston? Back up-plans in place. Loss of landing engine- abort button firing ascent engine was ready to go. Every possible contingency had been planned for and simulated. 

Except a 1202 alarm. And of course, that's what occurred. 

Here's how it all went down 48 years ago this past week in July, and why two American heroes- one whose name is known to all of humanity, and one whose name is not, saved the day and allowed us to land on the moon. 

The Dramatis Personae  are Astronaut Charlie Duke-  Cap-Com at Houston- the astronaut who was communicating with the Eagle. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in the Eagle with Michael Collins orbiting above the moon in Colombia. And a twenty-four year old unknown engineer named Jack Garman. Times are in mission elapsed time. Much of the discussion is the loss of communications between Houston and the Eagle, with Houston telling Collins on Colombia how to move various antennae to help Houston acquire the Eagle. So at 04 06 28 22 (read 4 days, 6 hours, 28 min and 22 seconds into the mission) Houston tells Colombia that the Eagle is "GO FOR PDI" and that they've lost communication with the Eagle. PDI is Powered Descent Initiation- the command for Armstrong to fire his descent engine and drop the Eagle out of Lunar orbit. Collins tells the Eagle they are go for PDI. 

04 06 34 24 Eagle: descent looks good. 

04 06 36 18- Eagle:  Our position checks downrage shows us to be a little long. (Armstrong is noticing that their computer is taking them on a descent path that will be beyond their anticipated landing area. At this moment he is just monitoring the situation.) 

04 06 37 18 Houston: Eagle, Houston, you are GO to continue powered descent. 

Now, the first problem occurs...

04 06 38 26 Eagle: PROGRAM ALARM...it's a 1202

Twenty two seconds later, an eternity as the Eagle is plummeting towards the lunar surface-  totally unfamiliar with that alarm and having never trained for it or seen it or handled it in a simulation, Armstrong and Aldrin  ask Houston for a status report on the alarm: 
04 06 38 48 Eagle: Give us a reading on the 1202 Program Alarm. 

04 06 38 53 Houston: We got...We're GO on that Alarm. 

What happened in those twenty-two seconds that saved the moon landing? Everything. 

Enter Jack Garman, a twenty-four year old engineer who saved Apollo 11.  Garman was hired at age 21 by NASA and worked with the MIT team that built the guidance systems.  Legendary Flight Director Gene Kranz, famous for his "failure is not an option" credo, had instructed Garman during training to write down every possible error code with the computer guidance systems, which Garman did. 
A complicated set of facts explains why the alarm occurred. Basically the on-board radar and the on-board guidance computer were powered at the same moment and didn't go into an aligned phase which caused the computer to divert about 15% of its resources dealing with about 12,800 interrupt requests per second- which in turn caused the guidance computer to run behind on its other tasks. When the backup exceeded limits, the computer issued an alarm which essentially said it was running behind. 

Garman recognized the problem and told Steve Bales, who was Guidance Officer that the computer could be relied upon if the alarms weren't continuous. Bales now had to decide if he could trust Garman, which he did and gave the GO to Krantz. As Flight Director, Gene Krantz then had to decide if he could trust Bales- his guidance officer- which he did. And twenty-two seconds after the 1202 alarm Krantz gave the GO to continue which Charlie Duke communicated to Armstrong and Aldrin. 

Garman was later given an award by NASA. Bales, his boss recalled: "Jack had memorized these things (alarm codes) and said 'that's okay' even before I could even remember which group it was in. His quick reactions and in-depth knowledge led others on his team to nickname him 'Gar-Flash' ". 

Jack Garman, a true American Hero, worked at NASA until 2000 and died in 2016. His name is not often mentioned in the history of the Moon Landing, but there would never have been a landing on the moon in July, 1969 without Jack Garman. 

Having received a GO on the 1202 and subsequent 1201 alarms, Armstrong takes control of the Eagle and now, running low on fuel, looks for a place to land. 

04 06 42 10 Houston: Eagle, Houston, you're GO for landing. 

04 06 42 17 Eagle: Understand. GO for landing. 3000 feet. PROGRAM ALARM ...1201

They get a similar alarm  but Houston is now ready  and eight seconds later gives the Eagle the GO on that alarm:
04 06 42 25 Houston: Roger. 1201 Alarm. We're GO. Same type. We're GO. 

Fast forward about a minute and half, and now the second emergency is beginning to occur, and only the skill of the greatest pilot in the world at that moment- Neil Armstrong- could save the space program. 100 feet off the lunar surface, and still hunting for a clean landing spot, Houston tells Armstrong he has only 60 seconds of fuel left:

04 06 44 45 Eagle: 100 feet, 3 1/2 down, 9 forward. 

04 06 45 02 Houston: 60 seconds. (This is Charlie Duke telling The Eagle they have only a minute of fuel left and if they don't land it they have to abort).

04 06 45 21 Eagle:  (this is Aldrin calling out the altitude and movement while Armstrong concentrates on landing the Eagle)  30 Feet, 2 1/2 down, faint shadow. 

04 06 45 31 Houston: 30 seconds

Thirty feet off the ground- 30 seconds of fuel. One problem never before faced in the history of humanity:  trying to land on another planet and running out of fuel (relax- we know that the moon is technically not a planet, but you get the idea). 

One Problem. One American Hero. Nine seconds later- Problem solved. 

04 06 45 34 Eagle:  CONTACT LIGHT...Okay. ENGINE STOP. .. ACA out of DESCENT...MODE CONTROL both to AUTO. DESCENT ENGINE COMMAND OVERRIDE OFF. ENGINE ARM- OFF. 

Armstrong and Aldrin had a check list to run through to power down their craft so that they didn't mistakenly take off before they were ready to. Charlie Duke in Houston is anxious...

04 06 45 57 Houston: We copy you down, Eagle. 

And now, perhaps, the greatest words in the history of humanity, announcing our greatest achievement as a human race: 

04 06 45 59 Eagle: Houston, Tranquility Base here...

04 06 46 04 Eagle: THE EAGLE HAS LANDED!

If you've ever wondered about Charlie Duke's strange reply to Armstrong and Aldrin in which he congratulates them and tells them that they had "a bunch of guys about to turn blue down here" it's Duke's reference to the drama of the landing, the Eagle only having thirty seconds of fuel, and everyone holding their breath. 

It's a uniquely American comment during  A uniquely American moment.  A combination of training, expertise, camaraderie and humor all wrapped up in arguably the moment of the greatest achievement of humanity (excepting of course the current launch of Pokemon Go 2.0).  

It's why America was and is great and doesn't need some bloated, ignorant buffoon to tell us we need to be great again.  

From Occupied America, which was great and is great and will soon be great again once we expel this virus of incompetence and deceit in our midst, Fight The Power!

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

UPDATE: SCOTT SAUL IS A GREAT TRIAL LAWYER. ETHICAL. HONEST AND ALL AROUND GOOD GUY.
In the comments section of the last post, someone mentioned a disbarred lawyer with a first name of "saul". Other people began commenting about "Saul" being unethical and dishonest. In this day of Google, those comments could unfairly reflect on Scott Saul. We have fixed the issue as follows: 1- we removed the comments about "Saul", but not the comment with his full name. 2- With this update, it should- Google wise- knock the other comments out in any search, especially since we have deleted them.

We do our best to make sure innocent people don't get caught in the google shrapnel of dishonest comments (unlike the JAA blog which does not moderate comments). So hopefully this helps Scott Saul, who, as any judge or lawyer in Dade-Broward-West Palm, wherever, will tell you is an excellent, thorough, honest, talented, and all around great lawyer.


If you know what a "1201 alarm" and "1202 alarm" are then you, like us, think that 45 years ago on July 16, 1969, we as the human race neared the pinnacle of achievement when we blasted off from earth on an adventure that would end  four days later (July 20, 1969) with us landing two men on the moon.  What we did as the human race, and what the United States did, is truly remarkable, especially when considering 1969 technology. One man of vision, President Kennedy, challenged our country, and we responded with the greatest achievement in this history of this nation and the world. 

Watch the video. At about 30 seconds, the first of three 1201 and 1202 alarms occur. The alarm, which was the computer saying that it had too much to do and was going to start disregarding less important tasks and reboot, could have resulted in an abort. Despite the tens of thousands of hours of training, Armstrong and Aldrin  had a 1201 and 1202 alarm thrown at them only once  during any of the hundreds of simulated moon landings in the simulator- on the last day of training. 





Consider that the average age of the men in mission control was 26. 
And one of those 26 year olds was a man named Steve Bales. Bales recalled the alarms from the final SIM, and because the mission control team had trained so superbly, Bales who otherwise was not in the "go/no-go loop" stepped in, and knew immediately that in the parlance of NASA that they were still "go on that alarm." Bales communicated the "go" to Charlie Duke, the Capcom guy- the guy at NASA speaking to Aldrin and Armstrong, and Armstrong took manual control of the LEM while the computer rebooted. 

Then comes the real drama. At 3:45 of the video you quickly hear Duke say "30 seconds" which is the amount of fuel left. 30 seconds. A world away. Armstrong flying the LEM vertically by the seat of his pants over a big crater, burning fuel, the computer furiously re-booting, and as Duke famously an laconically  drawled once the Eagle had landed: "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue down here" because they were all holding their breath. 

Amazing drama. A way too cool former Naval Aviator bringing his craft down with a few seconds of fuel left before disaster,  on ....the MOON! 

Humans were on the moon. Just stop and think how remarkable that was and is. And  if we can do that, what can't we do? We can cure any disease, fix any problem, reverse global warming, stop losing rain forests, and have world peace. We can do anything (except quicken the lines into the REGJB) because we put men on the moon. This was the world we grew up in. 

What a day. What an achievement. The best we are as a country and as a race of humans on this small blue and green planet. 

See You in Court. 

BLAST OFF