Steve Bales
Former NASA engineer and flight controller. He is best known for his role during the Apollo 11 lunar landing. Bales was born on 7 Oct. 1942 in Ottumwa, Iowa, and grew up in the nearby town of Fremont. He graduated from Iowa State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering and was hired by NASA in December, 1964. At NASA he was assigned to work in the Flight Dynamics branch as a guidance officer, a flight controller responsible for determining the location of the spacecraft in space and monitoring the guidance systems on board. He was a backup controller for Gemini 3 and Gemini 4 but worked his first mission as a flight controller on Gemini 10 when he was still only twenty-three.
Steve Bales is best known for having been guidance officer (or GUIDO) during the Apollo 11 lunar landing when he had the responsibility of dealing with several problems that could have ended the mission. While monitoring the lunar module\'s position and velocity he came close to calling an abort when it became clear a navigational error had occurred. The spacecraft was moving at 20 feet per second (6 m/s) faster than it should have been and was halfway to its abort limits. However Bales continued to watch the data and the situation remained stable. Bales\' decision as GUIDO to go ahead with the landing was appropriate and Apollo 11 landed safely. When President Richard Nixon awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the three Apollo 11 astronauts, Steve Bales was also honored by being chosen to accept a NASA Group Achievement Award on behalf of the entire mission operations team. Nixon said at the time, \"This is the young man, when the computers seemed to be confused and when he could have said Stop, or when he could have said Wait, said, Go.\" Bales had a long subsequent career at NASA and eventually became Deputy Director of Operations at Johnson Space Center. In 1996 he left the space agency and took a position at Amspec Chemical in New Jersey.
