Johnstown native played role in lunar journey

By ARLENE JOHNS

At 10:56 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969, Robert E. Moser was doing what most Americans were doing when that first giant step was taken on the moon.

“I remember sitting at home the night when Neil Armstrong made his exit from the landing vehicle,” Moser said.

“My son was 10 years old then and we got him out of bed so he could watch it. That was something very spectacular to see on TV – that kind of blurry image of him being able to come out of the landing vehicle and walk.”

What set the Johnstown native apart from millions of others glued to their televisions that night was that while most were witnessing history, Moser played a part in making it.

Now 80, Moser resides in Satellite Beach, Fla., about 30 miles from Cape Canaveral – where he worked for NASA as test planning manager for the Apollo program.

He described his job during the historic flight as that of a coordinator.

“We had 18 different contractors to pull together,” Moser said. “I remember during a tour once, Wernher von Braun (pre-eminent rocket pioneer) described me as the conductor of an orchestra. I always remembered that.”



Johnstown roots

Moser was born in Johnstown in 1928 and lived at 106 Leila St. in Southmont. His father was a former Clinton Street jeweler and watchmaker.

He attended Southmont school through grade 6 and graduated from high school in Daytona Beach, Fla. He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1950 from Vanderbilt University and went to work doing aircraft design for Westinghouse.

In 1953, Moser was drafted as a private into the U.S. Army, where his background led to an assignment with the von Braun team in Huntsville, Ala.

“That’s where I got into the missile business,” he said.

Moser worked with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency on Redstone missiles and served as test conductor for the launches of Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite; Pioneer, the first lunar probe; and Freedom 7, the first manned flight with Alan Shepherd.

He was with NASA from it’s inception in 1959.

For a time, his wife, a mathematician, worked with the Vanguard program – set up by President Eisenhower to put a spacecraft into orbit.

Vanguard was in competition with the program Moser worked on, so talk of work was limited in the Moser household.

“She did not even know when we launched,” Moser said.

“But if I didn’t come home for dinner,” he said, “she was suspicious.”

‘That was the job’

As test conductor, Moser was at times required to “scrub” a scheduled launch.

Moser downplayed the importance of his role.

“That was the job,” he said modestly, and said decisions to proceed with launches were team efforts.

Moser acknowledged the stress of the job.

“I think it’s something you learn to live with and operate with,” he said. “Things are going to go wrong and even if they don’t go wrong you have a sense of responsibility. You have to be there and know what your job is.”

Moser talked of the impact the deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts had on the team.

The tragedy led to changes in design and had hit Moser personally.

“I knew them very well,” he said.

The scientists learned from each bad experience.

“Every disaster or failure or malfunction has to be explained,” he said. “That’s knowledge.”

Moser recalled one near miss.

“We found out that you couldn’t launch very close to a lighting storm,” he said.

“Had power knocked out (during a manned mission) and it had to be restarted during flight.

“They were a sharp crew,” he said. “Although I can’t remember which one it was.”

Moser had retired when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, but he saw the disaster unfold.

“I was watching from the front driveway,” he said.

“When I saw what was going on, I knew – long before they announced that it had exploded.”

Man on the moon

Moser said the idea of a man walking on the moon “kind of evolved. Our first thoughts were being able to get someone into orbit. Then the next step was being able to get to the moon.”

He said the launch of Apollo 11 was “not too spectacular.” 

“It wasn’t different than the ones we’d had before.

“Of course this one was when we were attempting the full mission of going to the moon, landing on the moon and returning.”

Moser watched the launch from his location in the firing room until responsibility shifted to Mission Control in Houston.

Although some may not have been convinced the mission would succeed, Moser had no doubts.

“That vehicle had so much power and capability,” he said.

“We fired 17 of them and every one was launched within the millisecond that it had to be launched.”

Future of space ‘limitless’

Moser left NASA in 1981 after 30 years of service. These days, he keeps busy with his work with the Lions Club. He and his wife have one son.

He said the future of space exploration is “limitless.”

“It’s based on the boundaries of human endurance,” he said.

“You have to go to some of the comic book theories – ‘Star Trek’ or whatever. They used their imagination and it comes true.

“I never dreamed as a kid reading ‘Dick Tracy’ ... He always had that watch he talked into and that’s pretty much where we are today.”

Although some would say putting a man on the moon was mankind’s biggest accomplishment, Moser did not go that far.

“Not the biggest, but it was one of those important firsts,” he said. “The first always counts. The second doesn’t mean as much.

“I’ve been so lucky because I was very much involved in the first manned flight, our first satellite, the Apollo program, our first orbiting. It’s the ‘firsts’ that you remember.

“There’s going to be many more firsts,” he said. “They’re out there.”

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