Buzz Aldrin sells Apollo pen that helped launch from the Moon
▼ Summary
– A dried-out felt-tip marker and a broken circuit breaker switch from Apollo 11 sold for $857,600 at Sotheby’s.
– The items were used on the first Moon landing mission, with the broken switch nearly stranding astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
– Buzz Aldrin accidentally broke the circuit breaker switch needed to ignite the ascent engine for the return to Earth.
– Aldrin used a plastic felt-tip pen to push the circuit breaker switch back in, avoiding electrocution and enabling the mission to continue.
– The pen was a Duro-brand Rocket felt-tip marker, not a metal-tipped Fisher Space Pen as often misreported.
A dried-out felt-tip marker and a broken piece of molded black plastic fetched $857,600 at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday. What might otherwise be dismissed as worthless debris commanded such a high price because of where these two objects were 57 years ago: aboard NASA’s Apollo 11 spacecraft, on humanity’s first mission to land astronauts on the Moon. More than just flown memorabilia, one item was the problem that nearly stranded Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface, and the other was the simple, ingenious solution that saved the mission.
“Houston, Tranquility. Do you have a way of showing the configuration of the engine arm circuit breaker?” Aldrin radioed to Mission Control after realizing that he or Armstrong had accidentally snapped off the top of the circuit breaker switch needed to ignite their ascent engine for the return trip to Earth. “The reason I’m asking is because the end of it appears to be broken off. I think we can push it back in again. I’m not sure we could pull it out if we pushed it in, though.”
As engineers on the ground scrambled to devise a workaround, Aldrin came up with a straightforward idea, as he later described in the letter accompanying the artifacts’ sale.
“While I could have stuck my finger in and reset the switch, there was electricity flowing through the breaker and I did not want to electrocute myself. I had a plastic felt tip pen in one of my suit pockets and it fit into the breaker opening, so I pushed the marker pen into the circuit breaker, it clicked on, and we rearmed the Engine Arm circuit,” he wrote.
“Now we could leave the lunar surface,” Aldrin said, “rendezvous with Mike Collins in the command module, and head for home. Disaster averted.”
The story of the pen and circuit breaker is well known. Aldrin has recounted it in books and talks, and for years it was included on the pamphlet packaged with every Fisher Space Pen sold, until Aldrin pointed out that as an engineer, he would never insert a metal-tipped writing instrument into a live electrical socket. The pen he used, sold on Wednesday, was a Duro-brand Rocket felt-tip marker.
(Source: Ars Technica)
