Legendary Countdown Preceded the First Moon Landing Mission

By Bob Granath

A countdown first was used as part of a rocket’s launch to the Moon in the 1929 science-fiction movie “Frau im Mond” (Woman in the Moon). Ironically, a countdown led to the voyage of Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin completing the first mission to actually land humans on the Moon 40 years later. The day Apollo 11 lifted off on its extraordinary flight, July 16, 1969, hundreds of millions on every continent around the world watched and listened on live television to what became the most famous countdown.

Providing the commentary from the Launch Control Center at the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center was Jack King of the agency’s Public Affairs Office. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Boston College, he worked for the Associated Press, covering launches at Cape Canaveral. In 1960, Kennedy’s Center Director, Kurt Debus, hired King as the first NASA Public Affairs officer at the Florida launch site. In this role, he counted down most of the launches in the Gemini and Apollo Programs.

“Much of what I said that (Apollo 11 launch) day, or for any NASA liftoff for that matter, was scripted,” he said. “But, I had to be ready to explain anything unexpected that came up during the count.”

While his job was familiar, that hot, summer day 55 years ago, it was all special for King and the team in Kennedy’s Launch Control.

“This was the same group I’d been working with for six or seven years,” he said. “But, this one was different. This was the big one.”

President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to “land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth” a mere eight years earlier. More than 400,000 people in government, industry and academia worked on the Apollo Moon landing effort during the ensuing years. America had been racing its Cold War rival the Soviet Union, starting out behind, catching up and then surpassing the Russians.

The NASA-industry team was well aware of what was at stake, especially King, known as the “Voice of Apollo-Saturn Launch Control.”

“The firing command comes in at six minutes and 10 seconds,” King said. “The (TV) networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) requested that I talk it down from there.”

As the countdown approached the decisive moment, the historic magnitude of the event and the size of the audience began to weigh on the man whose voice was heard around the world.

“I’m counting down and it gets to eight seconds and ignition sequence start,” King said. “It takes eight seconds for the engines to build up to full thrust. (At the same time), I’ve got multiple voices coming into my head set – Norm Carlson, the launch vehicle test conductor, Skip Chauvin, the spacecraft test conductor, Paul Donnelly, the launch operations manager. I’m listening to these and watching the status board and all of a sudden, the voice coming into my head was mine. It said, ‘My god, were actually going to the Moon!’”

Then, King continued.

“Three, two, one, zero, all engines running. Liftoff! We have a liftoff at 32 minutes past the hour, liftoff on Apollo 11.”

In the years to come, King’s voice counting down Apollo 11 has accompanied everything from television commercials to rock songs and the start of network coverage of the Olympics.

“If I was paid for every time that countdown has been used, I’d be a wealthy man,” he once said. But NASA mission audio is public domain.

King left NASA In 1975, but returned in 1997 to join Communicants and Public Relations with United Space Alliance, NASA’s Space Program Operations contractor at Kennedy during the Space Shuttle Program. At his retirement celebration in October 2010, King was asked by those in attendance to do a countdown. He obliged with one for a Saturn V.

“Ten, nine, ignition sequence start, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero, all engines running, launch commit, liftoff,” he said.

King then added, “The ability to count from zero to 10 backwards – that good Jesuit education at work.”

When King died in 2015, Kennedy’s Center Director Bob Cabana commented on the legendary countdown.

“Jack King counted down the launch of Apollo 11 and all of us watching on television,” said Cabana, a former NASA Space Shuttle astronaut. “We will never forget his calm, reassuring demeanor. Jack was a true professional and helped us understand in common English the complexities of spaceflight.”

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