Window Cleaning - The Apollo 11 Connection

Those in our region privileged to have been a part of the Apollo 11 lunar project 40 years ago find the experience still inspires their imaginations. Harold Bauman (pictured), an attorney and Liberty village justice, worked as a project engineer responsible for testing many of the most critical components of the lunar module. During one part of the mission, Armstrong spotted a tiny doughnut-shaped object caught between one of the lunar module window's five thick plastic panes, a detail that had gotten past somebody's inspection. That somebody was Bauman, who was called up to Bethpage, Long Island to answer Armstrong's question.

"I saw my entire career flash before my eyes," Bauman said. Bauman was reminded of his father, who did back-breaking work as a window cleaner all his life so his son could go to college and be in that position talking to Armstrong on that day. "Neil, don't worry about a thing," Bauman told the astronaut, "that's just your window washer." A silence fell over the radio, followed by a chuckle, then laughter from Armstrong followed by laughter from the mission crew in Houston, who were listening in.

Barbara Tenke-Niles, who lives in Huguenot, also remembered a serious but good-natured team of engineers and astronauts who made the lunar mission possible. As secretary for the analog-digital department at Grumman, she was responsible for typing and retyping the specs for the lunar landing module, a model of which she played with on her desk from time to time, she said.
She remembered the astronauts as short. "I was taller than some of them," said Tenke-Niles who was five feet six inches. She also remembered workers punching holes in cards to be fed into a supercomputer that filled a warehouse-sized room. "This was the original start of the computer age. The printouts from these little keypunch cards could have lined the Long Island Expressway. I sit at my laptop and laugh at how easy it is now," she said.

Though the space program resulted in an explosion of technological and consumer innovations that make our lives more convenient and comfortable today, the promise of the program has lost its luster. Neil Armstrong gave this now famous observation about our planet while looking through the very window that was the subject of Bauman's "washer" joke.

"The Earth is nothing more than a spaceship carrying mankind and future generations through space, and because of that we must do every thing we possibly can to preserve this precious spacecraft," Armstrong said. The remark proved prophetic, considering our current problems with climate change, and depleting natural resources. Bauman believes it would take a national effort on par with the lunar space program to develop clean energy in time to save our planet. "That is the essence of the (Apollo 11 missions), that anything is possible, but that time is running out," Bauman said.