“I can’t get no satisfaction / I can’t get no satisfaction,” the scratchy car radio played above the rioters’ voices.

       Rolling Stones were the only delight my ears got to have those days, especially as the blazing heat of July radiated against my skin, my loneliness getting worse and worse.

       More Traffic? The summer was full of  people always protesting about their goddam rights; when will the neatniks in the government just give them what they want already? Ever since Nixon was elected, they’d been so focused on so many other things, not focusing on what they needed to do.

       That oddly reminds me of the Old President; though a diligent guy, what a hardcore man he was.  I still remember the astounding speech he gave just a few months before he was assassinated. The speech established the goal everyone at mission control, including me, everyone at NASA, and everyone in America was working for, putting a man on the moon to win the space race.

        Man, all these people causing traffic, and at this rate, I was going to be legitimately late to work.  Once I got out of my car, I felt like I was baking in an oven. Once I managed to walk to the front entrance, I slid my keycard and entered the building. 

        It felt like all four-hundred thousand people working on Apollo were running and dashing through the white, tiled floor, trying to get to where they were supposed to be without being late, so I weaved through the masses of people, trying to get to mission control. When I walked into the room of neatniks (my depressed co-workers), my boss, “Gene” Kranz, one of the most astounding people in NASA and the leader of flight control (I’m still surprised he wasn’t burnt out yet from his rock-hard job), was pretty furious that I was pretty late.

       “Boy,  get to work,” Gene snapped.

       “Alright, Alright, I am, I am,” I snapped back.

       Once everyone began to get completely focused on working, Gene interrupted us, and then he began to drop a dime on everyone at mission control that no white man would ever forget. 

       “Boys, our former President told us seven years ago that we must get a man on the moon or else the ‘Red Army’ will leave America in shambles; it may have seemed like this day would never come, but yet here we are, that day being tomorrow.

        “The Eagle is proven to be one of our best rockets ever. It will still have to make the treacherous journey to the moon, but then it will have to come back home with our three foremost, most diligent white men we trained to become America’s heroes.” After that everyone was psyched and riveted, but just in his orderly fashion, he told us to acknowledge it and get back to work almost instantaneously.

       As the elongating hours passed, I thought profoundly about the mission that we didn’t have time to fail; we did not have the guts nor the dignity to lose more men for the sake of winning a war. The failure two years ago made me realize that we weren’t doing it just to defeat the “Red Army” but to redeem the people of America with the freedom and glory they deserved.

       I suddenly realized that it was already six o clock; I didn’t realize the time had passed so quickly.  Everyone had left what seemed early, but I was the one who had to rush to get out early before the protesters came back, and traffic became too mondo.  As soon as I got into my car, I grievously realized it was too late; the protesters had not left at all since work started, and I realized I would not be getting home anytime soon.

       Once I got inside my house I was ferociously hungry after the long day, so I opened my fridge, and though plain and dry, at least I had my monotonous McD’s quarter pounder in my fridge. And so I got to sleep, thinking of the day that was ahead of me.

       When I woke up, I still couldn’t accept going to work on a Sunday at four in the pitch black morning.  As the night sky glimmered across my window, I drowsily got up, combed my dark brown hairdo and put on my plaid, buttoned t-shirt, situated my tie, and began preparing myself mentally for the upcoming mission ahead.

       Once I got into my elegant, brand-new Chevrolet Impala, I started driving to Cape Kennedy, but while driving I noticed the roads, even though it was five in the morning, were somehow still massively packed full of people going in for the Eagle’s launch.

       When I got to the headquarters of Cape Kennedy everyone was in their seats, getting ready for the notorious launch that America needed. Gene was on a call with Margaret Hamilton, the leading pioneer of AGC, making sure the computer was able to execute the mission properly and the computer could handle the needs of the rocket, directing where it needed to go. 

       Eight o’clock, the clock above me read.  It was almost time for the Eagle to launch, but preps weren’t done just yet.

       We got to this point... Everyone at NASA had been working from November of the past year to July of this year to prep the rocket, all while dealing with the Cold War and racial injustices in America, but with that, it was time.  The astronauts waved to the six hundred fifty million people watching and had one last time to connect with America before what seemed like a virtuous dream, but they really were going to the moon.

       “Nine twenty-two; T-minus ten minutes until launch,”  a robotic voice said above the echo of the walls around me.

       My blood was rushing, and my veins were about to pop, but I knew everyone had been feeling just the same, except for Gene. He kept his cool and let the minutes play out.

       One minute before launch we had comms with Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. “Is the crew ready for launch in one minute?” Gene exclaimed to Armstrong.

       “Crews ready for anything that's about to happen right now,” Armstrong replied.

       “T-minus thirty seconds before launch.” The pressure was about to break the ceiling; America was waiting for its moment.

       “T-minus ten seconds for the blast sequence.” I could hear the crowd cheering as the final ten remained.

       The moment was here as the crowd and everyone in the building cheered, “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…” Blast off had been reached; it was a moment for the eyes. A huge orange beam glared past the sunrise, and the smoke puffed miles and miles past its radius; the journey had just started.

       The treacherous journey had just begun for us here at NASA, but we still needed to deal with the problems ahead; we continued calmly, this time to the moon.

       “Error 1202,” the computer had announced with glaring red lights, and people were starting to panic and worry the mission was going to fail.

       MIT had called about AGC; it was having problems with a data overload that it could handle. If this failed the mission would fail, and no one would be able to communicate with the astronauts ever again.

       “Refresh and continue the course,” Gene exclaimed, calmly and without flinching, to the other flight directors and MIT.

       He was not taking any chances with the errors coming up, and he wasn’t going to let the mission go to waste, so we continued getting closer and closer to the moon.

       Once the moon was in sight and the trajectory was heading toward the optimal landing spot we wanted, all we had to do was land the Eagle. The landing was in sight. Now all Gene had to do was give comms to Collins to lower the module.

       “Lower lunar module now, Collins,” Gene stated to Collins in a quite serious tone.

       “Lowering designated landing point for lunar module now,” Collins had replied in the same tone.  The module was making its descent to the moon, getting closer and closer, everyone crossing fingers.

       At three seventeen pm, the lunar module set its feet down on the lunar surface, and it was done.   From blaring, roaring, and booming everywhere,  it all fell quiet …

       “Opening door for lunar walkthrough,” Commander Armstrong had remarked.

       There we sat in awe as Armstrong jumped out of the module and announced in a scratchy voice,"...one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

       Everyone cheered and applauded, the crowd going wild as we reached past the sky into space. A significant milestone we had reached in mere hours, and so I thought…

       “I guess those preps were worthwhile, Gene,” I had exclaimed.

       “I guess they were, Mr. Smith, I guess they were,” Gene asserted.

-Siddarth S.