First Man - Film Review

In this post we will have a look on the new movie "First Man" about the life of Neil Armstrong .

To make a long story short, I find the movie to be false, shallow and boring. Everything good, inspiring and meaningful have been systematically filtered from the story.

If you are interested in the life Neil Armstrong, I strongly recommend that you skip "First Man" and read the book or watch this absolutely awesome BBC memorial documentary from 2012:

Let me try to explain, why I am so disappointed.

"First Man" is false and misleading

 

For good reasons, the film has sparked a lot of controversy already, particular regarding the omission of the planting of the American flag on the Moon. We already covered some of that controversy in an earlier post and Brett McCracken wrote this great piece covering the omission of Buzz Aldrin's communion on the Moon (Yes, the first food and the first drink on the Moon where the communion elements).

The film makers have distorted history by removing any trace of the perhaps two greatest cornerstones of this great adventure: The meaning, the why, the greater cause: the fight for freedom. And secondly the who were these great men (and women). The spirits of the human beings involved is completely neglected. One evident result of this is the fact that the audience is not moved emotionally once during the long movie, which really is a first for films portraying the Apollo project.

There is no sign of the excellence that so characterized machines and men, not least Neil Armstrong. No greatness. No fun, no laughter. No music (Neil Armstrong was in fact a talented musician). No meaning and yes, no religion too...

The makers of the film have clearly been twisting history in very disloyal and misleading way - throughout the movie. Only I cannot make out if this was done intentionally, by negligence or for some other reason. Let's maybe speculate about the motives in another post.

"First Man" paints a misleading image of Buzz Aldrin

 

The falsehood that made me the most sad was the abuse put on Buzz Aldrin. In particular the two scenes regarding the death of Charlie Basset and Elliot See and the Apollo 1 fire that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White, Buzz Aldrin is framed saying appallingly disrespectful and unfeeling lines, that "rightfully" get reputed by his fellow astronauts. (even by Neil Armstrong, who would actually never would have done that - he never corrected anyone in public, according to the book, that the movie allegedly is based on[1]).

Buzz Aldrin was totally dedicated to the project and was involved in virtually every type of project planning. He had definite opinions which he held onto without softening, and he was no diplomat. He was undoubtedly personally ambitious, but at the same time he was a selfless patriot who would give his life for the cause of his country and freedom. Aldrin was a Presbyterian like the Mercury astronaut, John Glenn. They were Elders in the same church and both were animated by the same energetic, active spirit. Many found him to be contentious and obstinate, but Aldrin's apparent lack of flexibility was also the result of his exceptionally high intelligence and his determination not to let personal considerations get in the way of the mission. ("Men on the Moon" by yours truly)

Buzz Aldrin would never have said or behaved anything like that.

First of all Ed White and Buzz Aldrin were best friends. They were brother in arms! They had been through fire together. At West Point together, at service in Europe together, and it was Ed white that encouraged Aldrin to apply for astronaut. The Basset's were neighbors of the Aldrin's - Joan Aldrin and Jeannie Basset were best friends. Buzz Aldrin were deeply moved and saddened by the loss of his colleagues.

Second, there is no record in the literature to hint any support, that Buzz Aldrin said anything remotely like his lines in "First Man". I have been through all Apollo astronaut biographies, and just about all books written on the project and it's just not there...  No hint at all. "I can't think of a better symbol of courage for future generations than Ed White" wrote Buzz Aldrin in his 1989 autobiography [2]. Aldrin also left an Apollo 1 patch on the moon's surface, to honor his fallen friend!

Third, the thought that anyone in those days, in those circles, would treat the death of their fellow brothers in arms in such a cold and disrespectful way as depicted in the movie is simply unthinkable. To me, it proves that the film-makers did not penetrate the minds of the people that did these great deeds. And perhaps this is really the basic problem of the film: It is shallow.

Actually with the false portrait painted of Buzz Aldrin as a villain, I am pleased that his communion on the Moon was omitted (as any other of the many many religious references in the book by the way). It would only have back-lashed the Christian religion, if the villain of the movie was the only one expressing faith.

The abuse of Buzz Aldrin is not founded in any publicly available historical evidence, but rather contradicts it.

The attempted character assassination of the great man, Korean veteran, Colonel Buzz Aldrin, who repeatedly put his behind on the line, to free the world of one tyranny, who fought to save the freedom for future generations, including that of film director Damien Chazelle and Canadian actor Ryan Gosling, is in my view the worst of the many crimes of the movie.

The meaning of it all

"First Man" leaves the audience with absolutely no clue, whatsoever, why the Americans went to Moon. On the contrary we are left with the impression that it was a pointless, stubborn waste of money. This notion is supported by the appearance of several unchallenged hecklers like Leon Bridges and the unknown congressman picking on Neil Armstrong at a reception in Washington. Meanwhile no one is defending or even explaining the point. Why did the Americans spend so much money and human sacrifice on this? We analyzed this question in an earlier post and found that it was to win the important battle of the Cold War called the Space Race. It was free man's necessary battle against tyranny, not the first and not the last battle. The fact, that this "the greatest adventure on which Man has ever embarked" was a struggle against tyranny is never hinted in the movie. So, when neither characters, nor the audience knows why the characters are acting as they are, the whole adventure appears a meaningless endeavor - a waste.

The Americans went to the Moon to beat the Soviet Union in the battle of the cold war called the Space Race. JFK's own analysis was, that America would have to fight and win the Space Race, in order to mitigate the victory of totalitarian tyranny. The Apollo project was no more a waste of money than fighting WW2 was a waste of money.

"First Man" paints a misleading image of Neil Armstrong

The opening scene shows the only confirmed flying mistake, Neil Armstrong ever made according to the book [1]. (Neil Armstrong flew more than 200 different types of planes, and James Hansen is VERY thorough, so this says a lot about the excellence of N.A.). From then on, and throughout the film, Neil Armstrong is made to look like a mediocre pilot. In fact he was anything but an mediocre pilot. I spent the rest of the movie awaiting the moment when we were to restore and reveal the true professional excellence that Armstrong possessed - but that moment never really came. Not even his performance saving the Gemini 8-mission or the LLTV bail-out lets us feel his rare greatness. This means, the audience never really understands the excellence of Neil Armstrong, and they never understand the fact, that it was not a coincidence, that he was chosen to command Apollo 11 and designated to be the first man on the Moon. Neil Armstrong was indeed chosen because he was the best of the best.

Neil Armstrong was 38 and had 22 years of highly concentrated experience, when he strapped into the commander's seat of Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong knew how to fly.

The film misses several distinctive and important sides of Neil Armstrong (and we don't know that many of those, because he was so seclusive, so they should not have left any of them out!):

• The humility of his nature. Neil had been brought up with good words like D.L. Moody’s "If I will take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself". He never raised his voice with anyone, never bragged, and it was no coincidence that the Apollo 11 patch is the only one with no astronaut names on it.
• The professional excellence. The evidence is overwhelming. Neil Armstrong was 38 and had 22 years of highly concentrated experience, when he strapped into the commander's seat of Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong knew how to fly. Let's just leave it with the words of Buzz Aldrin: "I don't think anybody can come close to touching the skills that he had." [3]
• His sense of responsibility. He did not go to war for fun. He did not become an astronaut for fun, neither by coincidence, but because he felt it was his responsibility. "If there was something that he could pass along to future generations -- I think it would be -- the conviction to do the right thing." said his son Mark Armstrong.[4] 
• Armstrong's accuracy. Everyone seems to describe him as a person that did not speak often, but when he spoke he was always right. He spoke slowly, probably to avoid errors. In "First Man" he appears just a bit slow-witted or plain dumb - at least to me - with Ryan Gosling not speaking much, but fast, like ordinary people.
• His out-of-this-world-appearance. Perhaps Norman Mailer came closest when he described Armstrong as "a presence in the room, as much spirit as man... Armstrong seemed of all the astronauts the man nearest to being saintly"[5]. Other people have said similar. Ryan Gosling comes no where near that. I doubt he is even trying. I doubt he even knows.

 

The Apollo 11 crew designed their own patch. It is no coincidence, that it is the only Apollo patch that does not include the names of the astronauts. The crew led by Neil Armstrong was truly humble.

 

"First Man" is boring

Having read James Hansen book, that the movie claims to be based on, a real page turner of some 700 pages, that made my summer of 2015 an absolutely mesmerizing tour through American history, I did NOT see a boring movie coming - no way.

You can not pack a human lifetime with more adventure and meaning than that of the great man Neil Armstrong:

• Born 1930, childhood during the great depression in the 1930's Ohio through World War 2
• Solo pilot certificate age 16
• Flying jets of aircraft carriers aged 18
• 78 Combat missions in the Korean war
• Test pilot at the Edwards Air Force base
• One of the chosen few to fly the fasted airplane ever, the incredible X-15
• Astronaut, first man to walk on the Moon
• Professor of Aerospace Engineering
• 3 children, daughter Karen died at two, divorced and remarried in the 90's. 

You can not pack a human lifetime with more adventure and meaning than that of Neil Armstrong. Future generations should be inspired and brought in awe - not whining over "wasted money" or wasting time doing emotional analysis of Neil Armstrong's alleged improper sorrow-handling. 

So, how do you make a boring movie out of that life?

First, you cut the story very short. We start at X-15 flight 3-4-8 February 1962 and close the story after the return to earth July 1969. There is no hint or reference to anything before or after this period.

Then you box the set of characters very, very tightly. We only really get an impression of Neil (though silently poker-faced throughout the film) and his wife Janet (though mostly nervous, and angry when not silent throughout the film). Other characters than Neil and Janet are portrayed only very vaguely, we don't really get to know anyone at all.

Janet Armstrong is clearly the intended hero of this story (!) and there is no sense of affection for any other characters, not for Neil Armstrong, not for anyone and certainly not for the Apollo-project.

So we are left in a very small and cold box in time and character set. Too small. It gets claustrophobic. I felt the urge to break out - wanting to know the roots, and the aims - the foundations and the meaning for the future - why did we do this and where did we come from. And I wanted to know all the incredible people that Neil and Janet connected to.

Secondly, it is a very silent movie. No one is talking most of the time, and no significant film music is applied for the sake of explaining the silence. Then from time to time the silence gets brutally disrupted with the somewhat impressive (I have to admit that) space-mission scenes, where the noise on the other hand is violently exaggerated.

So the film is a strange mix of longs scenes with quiet stone-faced people in silence and longs scenes with very loud machines. This probably connects with modern arts and the latest trends in film-making, in some intricate way. But it is beyond me, and I actually find it both annoying and boring.

Thirdly, the one dominant theme of the film is chosen to be the part of Neil Armstrong that we, and the film-makers, know almost nothing about: The personal and emotional life of Neil Armstrong. Even James Hansen [1] cannot penetrate these aspects, so claiming to be based on this book seems really to be another far stretch from Damien Chazelle.

But anyway, the tragic loss of their little daughter Karen, aged two, and Neil Armstrong's short-comings in expressing and sharing his feelings in this behalf is the turning point of the history. Neil did in fact handle the loss in a very "masculine" manner. He probably did not discuss it with anyone, and certainly not with his wife Janet. Instead he went back to work. This is a frequently recurring theme throughout the film (even when standing on the Moon!) with way too many way too long scenes of a completely poker-faced Ryan Gosling, apparently struggling internally with his feelings. That is, if he has any feelings - it is not clear. Because we never get under Ryan Goslings skin.

Some people, I know, do find these dramas of intense and dark contained internal emotional struggles interesting, but I don't, and I am not aware that anyone really gets moved anywhere good by this kind of stuff.

I left the cinema in a sad state of mind. Apparently even Hollywood is no longer able to understand and celebrate the great adventure, even when it is served them on a golden plate. What should and could so easily have been a celebration of a great man doing great things in absolute excellence, and a mighty celebration of the greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked, has instead become a dark, shallow and boring work of modern films art.

All put together it is no wonder that "First Man" is not a box office movie - at least not in Denmark. Some 800 seats out of 900 were vacant at the premier.

Yours truly were first man to enter the Cinema to see "First Man" in Copenhagen Imperial. Eventually some 100 people showed up. I recommend you to stay home and read the book or watch the BBC memorial documentary on the life of Neil Armstrong.

 "First Man" will inspire no one to do anything good, and that is such a waste of opportunity.

I hope and believe it will soon be forgotten and that some day, someone with an affection for Neil Armstrong will tell the real story of his life.

[1] James R. Hansen, First Man. The Life of Neil Armstrong, ISBN:9780743492324
[2] Buzz Aldrin, Men from Earth, ISBN: 9780553053746
[3] Buzz Aldrin in the documentary "In the Shadow of the Moon"
[4] Mark Armstrong, son, in the BBC documentary, First Man on the Moon.
[5] Norman Mailer: Moonfire, 1969

The faith of a Flight Director - Gene Kranz

Lets take a look at one of the many examples from the Apollo project, where faith was actively applied by engineers and astronauts.

Senior Flight Director Gene Kranz. He had the watch in Mission Control when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, when Apollo 13 "had a problem" and was saved, and when the Hubble telescope was  repaired and made functional.

When Apollo 11 entered lunar orbit, on the 19th of July, 1969 after 75 hours of travel to the Moon, a day of preparations commenced as the crew started up, tested and tuned all the Lunar Module’s systems. The actual landing maneuver would be carried out on Gene Kranz’s team’s watch, and he confidently left the preparations to the other teams and took the evening off.

Kranz knew how important the coming day was. No matter what the outcome, it would be the most important day of his life. He had the ultimate responsibility not only for the lives of the three astronauts but also for ensuring that some four million man-years of preparation would bear the fruit it deserved. Whether or not he could live up to this responsibility would be of crucial importance for his country, for the Cold War and for the battle for the Free World of which he was fully aware. He was certainly aware of the importance of winning the Space Race as declared by John F. Kennedy 8 years earlier.

Such a heavy burden would have been enough to terrify any normal person out of his wits, but Gene Kranz was firmly convinced that throughout his entire life God had been leading him to the task that now lay before him. He had faith that God wouldn’t have done this without also giving him the capacity to carry it out. He trusted God, and was thus comfortable with his responsibility. This is a recurring theme in his autobiography, Failure Is Not An Option (hereby strongly recommended by yours truly).

So, how did he spend this rare Saturday night off? Running over the flight plans for the millionth time? No, he went to church:

"I go to Saturday evening mass. Blessed by my mother with strong faith, during almost every mission, I find a way to get to church and pray for wise judgment and courage, and pray also for my team and the crew. Our pastor, father Eugene Cargill, knows the risks and the difficulties of our work and the need for extra guidance. He knows that tomorrow is a special day, and he says a few words about it in his sermon. After mass he talks with me briefly, finishing with a thumbs-up. Then I go home, have a great supper and a couple of beers, and Marta keeps the kids quiet when I go to bed early. I sleep well." (Gene Kranz [1])

He slept well! Can you imagine that... All that importance, all that responsibility - and he slept well!

And let us not leave Marta unsung. Marta Kranz had not only served up a great supper and kept the kids quiet the night before the landing. She had also lived for years with a man who worked 60-100 hours a week during which time she had carried, borne, and raised six children. She had maintained a good, loving home on her husband’s modest government paycheck.

If the United States hadn’t had women of Marta’s caliber whose sacrifices were surely as great as their husbands’ in return for considerably less public acclaim, the Apollo project would not have been successful. If Gene Kranz and his men had had to pick up the kids at school and kindergarten, human beings even today would not yet have walked on the Moon. Marta Kranz and the tens of thousands of women standing behind their engineers and astronauts who kept the families and the homes running are truly the Apollo project’s unsung heroes.

Gene & Marta. If the US hadn’t had women of Marta’s caliber whose sacrifices were surely as great as their husbands’ in return for considerably less public acclaim, the Apollo project would not have been successful.

The next morning Gene Kranz and his team got to work before dawn, Sunday 20 July 1969. The great moment was approaching.  He called his anxious, young team together for the final pep-talk:

"We're getting ready to make history. You know what we're about to do. From the day that we were born we were destined to be in this room this day. I've trained, I've absolute confidence in everyone in this room, but I want you to know something: No matter what happens to us this day, I will stand behind every decision that you make. However it goes, when we walk out of this room, we walk out of this room as a team." (Gene Kranz [2])

"From the day that we were born we were destined to be in this room this day." (Gene Kranz)

Gene Kranz was actively using his faith to inspire his men with confidence in Providence and the faithfulness of God: He told his men, that they were all destined by God to carry out the task before them - and implied in this, because God never deceives and never fails, that they were also given the ability. This gave them the confidence and the peace of mind they needed to perform their best.

Take a look at this 1-minute youtube-clip from the fabulous 2003-documentary "Failure is not an Option" [2]. 

I say, it takes a heart of stone, not to be moved by this.

GUIDO Steve Bales, who was only 26 at the time, says about his Flight Director’s talk, in a clearly moved tone of voice:

"I can’t even say that today without getting choked up about it. That was the best, best thing he could have said to me."[2]

Stephen Bales at just 26, had his fair share of difficult decisions during the highly dramatic Apollo 11 landing. He handled all the problems that came his way with excellence and a clearly spirited concentration. The Flight Director's outspoken faith in God's providence was contagious.

During the next half hour Bales had to bear his share of the difficult decisions on his young shoulders. Gene Kranz had found the “extra guidance” he had sought in church and was the perfect leader for his men. He was a modern day version of the good king in the great adventures, who with divine inspiration leads his knights into battle against the powers of darkness.

"I said lock the control room doors and from that moment forth, no one would enter or leave this room until we have either landed, we had aborted or we had crashed." [2]

The doors to the control room were locked. The electric power systems in the control room were placed on “battle short” (which basically meant that all electric fuses were bypassed and disabled, like when a battle ship enters a combat situation and its survival is dependent on the continued operation of the equipment, an unnecessary power failure is more to be feared than a short circuit as a result of overload and missing fuses.)

The doors were locked to the Mission Control Room, powers system were in "battle short"-mode, the men were all ready in body, brain and spirit; the rest was left to God.

Everything had been thought through and optimized during the 10 years tirelessly spent gathering space travel experience. Each and every man had gone to the men's room right before the doors were locked – on Kranz’s orders! Each and every man was ready and raring to go, urged on by Kranz. Everything that was humanly possible had been done; the rest was up to God.

In fact the landing was highly dramatic, and demanded the utmost of men and machines. There were a number of minor problems and at least three major crisis (failing communication, computer-errors and fuel shortage) which put the engineers in the Control Room – and the astronauts in space - to the ultimate test.  They passed.

Gene Kranz' and his "White team" passed the ultimate test.

---

[1] Gene Kranz, Failure is not an Option, ISBN:0743200799

[2] Failure is Not an Option. Dir. Rushmore DeNooyer and Kirk Wolfinger. Documentary. 2003.

Men on the Moon

In this post I present my book "Men on the Moon".

You can download the English version (as PDF) for free here:       Click here to download.

Don't hesitate to drop me a line, if you have any comments or interest in this project. (Please find my email-address at page two in the PDF version).

By Christmas 2018 the world started celebrating the series of 50-year anniversaries for the American voyages to the Moon during the Apollo project 1968-1972.

"Men on the Moon" tells this story, with a foreword by Apollo 16 Astronaut, Brigadier General Charlie Duke - the 10th and youngest man to walk on the Moon.

Apart from being "yet another book" on the space race and the Apollo-project, "Men on the Moon" is also a Christian book.

"Men on the Moon" builds the case for a Christian re-appropriation of this the "greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked", and is evidence of the good-natured strength that Christian-conservative values offer to mankind. 

The book got a fine 4 out of 6 stars review in the Danish Christian daily newspaper "Kristeligt Dagblad".

Men on the Moon. Published in Danish 2016.

It was evaluated by the auditors at the Danish libraries, and selected for acquisition, and is now available at the Danish libraries.

The Christian angle on the Apollo-project is a key unique element of "Men on the Moon". The book has gathered an unseen collection of testimonies of the application of Christian faith, and of events that many people describe as interventions of God.

Currently I am looking for an agent to work with the English translation for the American market. Anyone interested can look at the Book Proposal here.

As earlier mentioned, Apollo 16 astronaut, Charles M. Duke, a well-known proponent of the good word kindly obliged to write a foreword for the English edition:

What you are about to read is the true story of "the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.". These were the appropriate and strong words that President Kennedy used in 1961, when he set the goal for the American people of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth, before the end of that decade.

As astronaut and Lunar Module Pilot on the Apollo 16 mission, I was privileged to take part in that great adventure. I was one of the twelve men that actually got to walk on the Moon and - evidently - was also returned safely to the Earth, as promised by the President.

The American people fulfilled this audacious goal by the hard work, skills and strong spirits of hundreds of thousands of good people - and not least, as I sincerely believe, by the grace of the good Lord.

So, why did the President want us to go to the Moon? How did we do it? And what did God and Christian faith have to do with this anyway? This book gives a sober, read-worthy and surprising set of answers to these questions, based on the historical account of events, and the testimonies of a great variety of people connected to the Space Race and the Apollo project, many of them my good friends and former colleagues.

I hope and pray, that you will find "Men on the Moon" as intriguing and strengthening of faith as I did.

Blessings,
Charlie Duke

"My walk on the Moon lasted 3 days and it was a great adventure. But my walk with God lasts - forever!" (Charlie Duke)

"Since it is so likely that our children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker." (C. S. Lewis)

The dress rehearsal that saved Apollo 11

In this post we will look at one of the many odd coincidences that saved the success of the Apollo project: The dress rehearsal that saved the Apollo 11 moon landing.

The dress rehearsal saved the Apollo 11 landing

A few weeks before liftoff Mission Control held a dress rehearsal of the landing. The leading Flight Director Gene Kranz was in charge of the team, and he was fully confident the test would prove successful and would be an excellent confidence booster for the crew before things got serious. But Apollo 11’s Simulation Supervisor (Call-sign "SIMSUP") Dick Koos had other plans. In the midst of the simulated landing when everything was going perfectly and according to the book, he induced computer alarms 1201/1202 into the Lunar Module’s computer.

The computer system was part of navigation and thus belonged under GUIDO Steve Bales. But no one on the GUIDO team, neither Bales nor anyone on his team of specialists, had any idea what the alarm codes from the Apollo computer meant. All they could understand was that the system was overloaded, and since one of the mission rules was that a landing must not be carried out without a functioning navigation system he chose to abort the mission and carry out a successful emergency abort instead. Gene Kranz was sure he and his team had made the right decision, and passed the test. He was wrong.

Supervisor Dick Koos introduced computer error 1201/1202 at the dress rehearsal - The Mission Control team failed and the formidable premiere lay ahead!

Code 1201 and 1202 meant the computer was so overloaded that it couldn’t perform all its tasks. The team had been right so far. But how did the computer actually act when it was overloaded? There were three categories of computer tasks ranked according to their importance. A Priority 1 task was the most important, for example performing a navigation task or an engine control task. A Priority 3 task was the least important, for example updating the clock on the astronauts’ instrument panel. Alarms 1201/1202 simply meant that the computer was dropping low priority tasks whereas all critical tasks continued to be carried out, in other words, the navigation system was still basically functional.

Gene Kranz and his team were notified by SimSup that aborting the mission had been a critical error. This was hardly a morale booster, and Kranz gave Bales some homework to do: All computer alarms and their significance must henceforward be listed systematically so they could be deciphered immediately if necessary. The dress rehearsal was a failure and the formidable premiere lay ahead.

On the morning of Sunday 20 July 1969, Gene Kranz and his team got to work before dawn. The great moment was approaching. He called his anxious, young team together for the final pep-talk: "We're getting ready to make history. You know what we're about to do. From the day that we were born we were destined to be in this room this day. I've trained, I've absolute confidence in everyone in this room, but I want you to know something: No matter what happens to us this day, I will stand behind every decision that you make. However it goes, when we walk out of this room, we walk out of this room as a team." [1]

Gene Kranz was actively using his faith to inspire his men with confidence in Providence and the faithfulness of God. He believed, and he induced the faith, that they were all destined and enabled by God to carry out the task before them. This gave them the peace and confidence to perform. GUIDO Steve Bales, who was only 26 at the time, says about his Flight Director’s talk. "I can’t even say that today without getting choked up about it. That was the best, best thing he could have said to me." [1]

During the next half hour Bales had to bear his share of the difficult decisions on his young shoulders.

The landing of Apollo11 was a 30 minutes breathtaking drama. Communication problems, computer problems and fuel-shortage threatened to blow the mission. The Eagle landed with 17 seconds of fuel left.

Seven minutes prior to landing at approx. 30,000 feet above the lunar surface an alarm lit up on the astronauts’ instrument panel. The alarm was set off by the Lunar Module’s navigation system and accompanied by an automatic shutdown and re-start of the computer. The error was type 1202! Everyone in the control room was dumbfounded. Of all the thousands of possible errors here was 1202, which they had only seen once before, at the dress rehearsal when they had aborted the mission and failed the test.

7 minutes before landing - 1202 Alarm. "The significance of this is not lost on any of us"!

Gene Kranz recalls: "Duke [CAPCOM] muses aloud on the Flight Director loop, “It’s the same one we had in training.” [The precise words according to the Audio-recordings [4, go to time=24:50] were "Yeah, the same thing we had". It is not verified that it is the voice of Duke on the loop] He audibly expresses our collective feeling, almost wonderment. These were the same exact alarms that brought us to the wrong conclusion, an abort command, in the final training run when SimSup won the last round. This time we won’t be stampeded. The significance of this is not lost on any of us."[2]

The fact that the alarm code, which had only been tested once, actually occurred the following week during the actual landing, and that what the team had learned from that test was what actually saved the mission, is one of the small, odd events that occurred throughout the Apollo project, and which many believe to be miraculous.

Was it mere chance that had inspired SimSup Dick Koos, to get this exactly right for the dress rehearsal?

The error arose, by the way, because Buzz Aldrin used his intuition and deviated from the mission plan. The astronauts’ intuition was normally a powerful and important tool based on their talent and extensive experience. It was an unwritten but approved practice that out in the real world the pilots’ intuition trumped the mission plan. Astronauts could often sense things that planning hadn’t accounted for.  But this time it was almost disastrous. Aldrin chose to keep the tracking radar on that took the bearings of the Command Module. This radar was designed to stay on for a while after the separation of the two vessels in case something went wrong and an efficient emergency abort maneuver was required and the crew had to get home quickly. After a while it was supposed to be turned off manually, but Aldrin chose to let it stay on. On the spur of the moment he decided not to let go of the lifeline. This overloaded the computer and it began sending 1202 alarms, restarting, and dropping low priority tasks, as explained above.

For safety reasons Buzz Aldrin left a radar on, that should have been shut down - causing the computer to be overloaded.

This time, however, Gene Kranz and Steve Bales were not taken off guard. Armstrong and Aldrin knew nothing about the Code 1202, because the dress rehearsal had been carried out by the back-up crew. They demanded to know what the alarm meant. Kranz had CAPCOM inform them that they could just ignore it. “We are GO on that alarm” [4]. Without the dress rehearsal’s “small miracle” in all likelihood they would have aborted Apollo 11’s landing maneuver, and men would not have walked on the Moon in 1969!

"Yet it was not accomplished by human endeavor alone. It was strengthened with the spirit of God within those who accomplished it." (Simulation Supervisor Dick Koos, who orchestrated the dress rehearsal that saved the landing)

[1] Failure is Not an Option. Dir. Rushmore DeNooyer and Kirk Wolfinger. Documentary. 2003.
[2] Gene Kranz, Failure is not an Option, ISBN:0743200799
[3] Carol Mersch, The Apostles of Apollo, p. 141. ISBN:9781940222097
[4] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/A11_landing_FD_loop.mp3

See also this discussion thread: http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/001672.html