Steve Bales

Steve Bales (born October 7, 1942) is a former NASA engineer and flight controller. He is best known for his role during the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

Bales was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, and grew up in the nearby town of Fremont. His father was a school janitor and his mother was a beautician. From a young age he had an interest in space and at the age of thirteen he was deeply affected by a Wonderful World of Disney television show that discussed the future of space travel. "This show," he said later, "probably more than anything else, influenced me to study aerospace engineering. And this wasn't the ordinary thing to do for a boy raised in a small Iowa farming community."

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 and worked his first mission as a flight controller on Gemini 10 when he was only twenty-three.

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 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.

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