Footprints in the Dust The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 Edited by Colin Burgess Foreword by Richard F. Gordon

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Contents List of Illustrations

xi

Foreword

xv

Acknowledgments

xxiii

Rice University Address by President John F. Kennedy

xxvii

Prologue Realization of a Dream of Ages colin burgess 1. The Whole World Was Watching rick houston

1 7

2. The Eagle and the Bear dominic phelan

43

3. Rendezvous on the Ocean of Storms john yousk ausk as

78

4. Apollo 13, We Have a Solution stephen cass

116

5. Altered Directions colin burgess

150

6. Science, and a Little Golf philip baker

166

7. A Whole New Focus colin burgess

197

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8. On a Roll at Hadley geoffrey bowman

228

9. Worth the Wait simon a. vaughan

271

10. One More Time melvin croft

302

11. Beyond the Moon colin burgess

335

12. The Last Apollo geoffrey bowman

357

Epilogue Souvenirs of Small Steps robert pearlman

402

Appendix Apollo-Saturn Missions

431

References

437

Contributors

449

Index

453

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Footprints in the Dust The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 Edited by Colin Burgess Foreword by Richard F. Gordon

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Illustrations

1. President John F. Kennedy at Rice University, 12 September 1962. . . . . . . . . . . xxviii 2. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong plant

the U.S. flag in the lunar soil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3. Thomas D. Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

4. Laurenc Svitok . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

5. Sid Houston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

6. Apollo 11 postflight parade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38

7. Alexei Leonov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

8. Full-scale lk lander training mock-up . . . . . . . . . . .65

9. Kretchet moon suit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

10. n1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

11. Crew of Apollo 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81

12. Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and Al Bean

with their matching Corvettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

13. Pete Conrad makes contact with

the Surveyor 3 probe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

14. Crew of Apollo 12 with Chris and Debra

Pennington, summer 1999 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

15. Al Bean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

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Footprints in the Dust The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 Edited by Colin Burgess Foreword by Richard F. Gordon

16. Crew of Apollo 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

17. Cutaway diagram of the Service Module . . . . . . . . 119

18. Jack Swigert holds a jury-rigged contraption. . . . . . 139

19. The full extent of the damage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

20. Jubilation erupts in the Mission

Operations Control Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

21. Crew of Soyuz 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

22. Viktor Gorbatko, Anatoli Filipchenko,

and Vladislav Volkov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

23. Crew of Soyuz 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

24. Crew of Soyuz 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

25. Ed Mitchell and Alan Shepard, September 1970

178

26. Mission training at ksc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180

27. Stu Roosa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

28. Alan Shepard on the surface of the moon . . . . . . . . 187

29. Crew of Soyuz 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .201

30. Crew of Soyuz 11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .210

31. Crew of Apollo 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .236

32. lm Falcon with Mount Hadley Delta . . . . . . . . . . .245

33. Damage to the engine bell

of Falcon’s descent stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

34. Dave Scott alongside the lrv at Station 2 . . . . . . . .250

35. Geoffrey Bowman and Jim Irwin, 1986 . . . . . . . . 268

36. Crew of Apollo 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .273

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Footprints in the Dust The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 Edited by Colin Burgess Foreword by Richard F. Gordon

37. Loading of lrv-2 into the Lunar Module

Orion, 12 November 1971 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .287

38. csm Casper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290

39. John Young leaps high . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

40. Crew of Apollo 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .305

41. Ron Evans, Bob Overmyer,

and Farouk El-Baz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

42. Schmitt on the moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

43. Harrison Schmitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

44. Backup crew for Apollo 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

45. Backup crew for Apollo 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

46. sl-1 launch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

47. First crew of Skylab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352

48. Second crew of Skylab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354

49. Third crew of Skylab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

50. Geoffrey Bowman at the

Kennedy Space Center, 1975 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .364

51. U.S. and Soviet astp crews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .367

52. Saturn ib liftoff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381

53. Alexei Leonov, April 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .399

54. Geoffrey Bowman and Vance Brand, 2008. . . . . . 400

55. Twenty-two Apollo astronauts outside the

Johnson Space Center’s Project Management

Building, 22 August 1978 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

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Footprints in the Dust The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 Edited by Colin Burgess Foreword by Richard F. Gordon

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Foreword

Certain difficult and controversial questions always seem to be asked when­ ever my fellow astronauts and I are quizzed about Apollo and subsequent space programs. One that perpetually chases us around is why we are spend­ ing all this money on space exploration when it could surely be put to far better use right here on Earth. I always respond to this by saying that not a dime has been spent in space; it’s spent right here on Earth. And not just on job creation: the incredible technological and lifesaving advances we now enjoy, as well as our current standard of living, have been principally driven and accelerated by our space program and those of other nations. The mere fact that you can pick up a telephone today and call anywhere in the world and the response sounds like it’s coming from next door —that’s space technology. In an era when technology is fast allowing a merging and fusion of infor­ mation science, telecommunications and computers, there are boundless op­ portunities for all of us in high-tech service industries, from electronic and fiber optic compression techniques to designer materials for specific appli­ cations, pollution control, and environmental monitoring. Think of global cellular phones, push-button banking, computers, and especially the Inter­ net and e-mails; all have an unseen nervous system —a galaxy of satellites in both low Earth orbit and at geosynchronous altitudes. Much of what we take for granted these days has derived from space technology and explora­ tion. The only other event that accelerates technology is war, and you know which one I would choose. I think you would too. Of course when we think of space, we almost invariably tend to think of human space exploration; this natural quest of the soul, where we seek to go beyond our reach. It provides the underpinning for motivation, in­ quiry, inspiration, imagination, and our unquenchable search for knowl­ edge and answers.

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foreword

Back in 1859 an exciting new book was published. Written by the celebrated English novelist Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities begins with the un­ forgettable first line, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” Those words were still very apropos over a hundred years later, in 1969, as I was in training to travel to the moon late that year with Pete Conrad and Al Bean on Apollo 12—the second lunar landing expedition. In many respects it was indeed the worst of times, and maybe we’ll also see it as the best of times, if we think of the way our world was back in the 1960s. In that unsettled era we had the very divisive nature of the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, campus riots, and bloody civil rights marches. We also shared in the grief and horrors of political assas­ sination as one by one several great men were brutally gunned down—Presi­ dent John F. Kennedy, his brother Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. Yes, indeed, we had the worst of times. Conversely, look­ ing farther afield, they were some of the best of times as well. I am of the firm belief that in those otherwise turbulent times, social ad­ vances and our space program also gave us some of the best of times. But it didn’t start out that way. Back in 1957 the Soviet Union had achieved the first giant step in the challenge of space flight, with the launch of its first Sputnik satellite. The following month it followed up this feat by sending a dog named Laika into orbit aboard Sputnik 2. Less than four years later, as the United States struggled to compete against an ever more sophisticated array of satellites circling our planet, Soviet scientists triumphed yet again, this time by launching cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the world’s first human space traveler, into a single Earth orbit in 1961. It was definitely a time of uncertainty for our nation as we endeavored to play catch-up. Much to our increasing chagrin the Russians put the first woman into space, followed on the next flight by the first three-man crew, and then on the subsequent Voskhod flight a human eased out through an inflatable hatch to become the first person to walk in space—a person who later became a very good friend, Alexei Leonov. He may have been the first to walk in space, but it was later revealed that his return to the confines of Voskhod 2 was fraught with extreme danger, and he came perilously close to losing his life. The United States was rapidly closing in, however, and would soon take the lead in the race to the moon, a lead we would not lose.

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xvii

A colleague of mine from those days was quite correct when he said in some interview that we were at war back then. It was called the Cold War, an era when a very definite adversarial relationship existed between the So­ viet Union and the United States of America. I had experienced that “cold war” from a personal perspective before my participation in the space pro­ gram. I was a young navy carrier pilot assigned to the Sixth Fleet in the Med­ iterranean in 1954 and 1956 on six-month deployments and once again with the Seventh Fleet in Westpac [Western Pacific] on a nine-month cruise in 1962–63. Politically, economically, socially, it was a war. The Russians were desperately trying to get to the moon ahead of the United States. Through achievement and a good dose of propaganda they wanted to demonstrate to the world what they claimed was their superior technology and capabil­ ities. And of course, so did we. Following the successful conclusion of Project Mercury, the National Aero­ nautics and Space Administration (nasa) embarked on the Gemini program, which was created for a very specific reason. In October 1963 I became one of fourteen new astronauts selected by nasa, and we were immediately ded­ icated to the success of Gemini. On 25 May 1961, just twenty days after Alan Shepard flew a suborbital flight, and with a total of only fifteen minutes of human spaceflight un­ der our collective belts, President Kennedy said we should go to the moon. Just think about that greatest of all mission statements for a moment: how could it possibly be done? We hadn’t even sent one of our astronauts into orbit. We still had to learn how to do that. As history shows, the Mercury program proved that people could survive and do useful work in space, while Gemini was created to learn the things we’d need to achieve in order to accomplish an Apollo lunar landing. Planning for the moon then cen­ tered on a ten-day mission—three days out, three days back, and an arbi­ trary four days in near-lunar vicinity. It meant learning how to survive longduration flights of at least fourteen days, how to maneuver our spacecraft, how to rendezvous and dock with another orbiting spacecraft. We had to know how to do those things. It began well enough: Gemini 4, 5, and 7 were long-duration flights, while Gemini 6 and 8 onward were all missions lasting three or four days that

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gave us the necessary experience in how to rendezvous, dock, and maneu­ ver our spacecraft. In that very brief period of time, of ten manned flights in 1965–66, we accomplished all of the individual elements that we needed to go to the moon. There were many highlights during the ten Gemini missions, carried out at an astonishing average of a manned flight every two months. Ed White, for example, aboard Gemini 4, conducted a great and attention-grabbing spacewalk. Unfortunately, Ed did too good a job and made extravehicu­ lar activity (eva) look easy. It wasn’t, and the experiences of those who fol­ lowed him were entirely different. Gene Cernan on Gemini 9, Mike Collins on Gemini 10, me on Gemini 11—we simply hadn’t learned how to utilize or negotiate that environment very well. Mine was a particularly frustrat­ ing experience, not all that successful, and I wish now that I somehow had the opportunity to do it all again. The tasks I had were very difficult and challenging ones to carry out, which I equate to trying to tie your shoelace with one hand. But these experiences taught us well; we learned to create handholds and restraint systems that would allow us to position and secure ourselves to conduct useful work. They were lessons that now allow our as­ tronauts to carry out complex repairs and construction work on the exte­ rior of the International Space Station (iss). We thought we were ready to go in January 1967, and then Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee lost their lives in a spacecraft under routine testing conditions on the pad at Cape Kennedy. This appalling tragedy took our breath away and caused an immediate halt to Project Apollo. But know­ ing those three individuals and what they wanted us to do, we had to dig deep to find out what had happened, fix the problems, and then continue our plans to land men on the moon before the end of the decade. There were two Apollo spacecraft variants at that time, known as Block 1 and Block 2. Gus, Ed, and Roger had been assigned to fly a very early ver­ sion of the spacecraft in the program, one that was designed not to go to the moon but to launch what we called a “shakedown” test flight in Earth’s or­ bit. But we had become, as a team, very complacent about the environment in which we were operating. One hundred percent oxygen, with flamma­ ble material within the spacecraft. Over-pressurized. Above sea level pres­ sure during this particular test. All were factors that would combine to cre­ ate an environment ripe for disaster. All that was needed was a source of

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xix

ignition. The hatch design was a very poor one. Ed White was a physically strong individual, but it would have taken three or four Ed Whites to get that hatch open. On that day we lost three friends and colleagues, and the nation lost three heroes. Following the resultant redesign of the Block 2 spacecraft, the 100 per­ cent oxygen environment was eliminated, along with flammable materials. The brutally heavy hatch was redesigned, together with the wiring system within the spacecraft. It was still a very difficult time for everyone asso­ ciated with the program. We had been all the way through Mercury and Gemini, and all of a sudden this terrible thing had happened. In a prag­ matic sense the loss of our friends allowed us to go to the moon and accom­ plish the goal set out by President Kennedy in 1961 to which we had been committed ever since. It is a very difficult thing to say, but without their loss, there may have been more disasters—perhaps even on the way to the moon. It was certainly a very trying time, not only for the families but for the rest of us in the program. It took us more than a year and a half, until October 1968, to solve all the problems we had encountered with Apollo 1. Finally, Apollo 7—we filled up those other numbers with launched unmanned Saturn vehicles. Apollo 8 was a very daring event and one that I think had the highest risk element of any flight we have flown, including the first lunar landing. We sent three astronauts to the moon aboard a Command and Service Mod­ ule without a Lunar Module, orbited our nearest neighbor ten times, and returned the crew safely to the Earth at the tail end of 1968. Particularly for us in the space program, we had endured an agonizing period follow­ ing the launch pad tragedy, and now we had this tremendous, even auda­ cious, accomplishment. Apollo 9 then carried the first Lunar Module into Earth’s orbit, and Apollo 10 became a magnificent dress rehearsal for going to the moon and landing. In July 1969 Apollo 11 accomplished the goal set just eight years earlier by President Kennedy, and I had the great distinction and privilege of fly­ ing the next mission, Apollo 12. In November 1969 Pete Conrad and Al Bean carried out the second lunar landing in the Lunar Module Intrepid and explored the Ocean of Storms, while I flew as Command Module pi­ lot aboard the good ship Yankee Clipper. Not only did we (an all-navy crew) achieve the goal that President Kennedy had set for our nation, but we did

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it twice before the decade of the 1960s was over. The motivation that Pres­ ident Kennedy gave us as a people was exactly what we needed to accom­ plish those goals. The Apollo program then proceeded with the flight of Apollo 13, a trou­ bled flight with which we are all familiar, successfully bringing home three astronauts who came perilously close to losing their lives. Their safe return was doubtless one of nasa’s greatest accomplishments. Apollo 14, with Alan Shepard in command, became the next flight to take two crew members to the moon, taking over the flight plan that Apollo 13 had originally been as­ signed. The last three Apollo flights— 15, 16, and 17—had the added benefit of the Lunar Roving Vehicle, designed to be driven across the lunar surface. The culmination of that program was Apollo 17 in December 1972, when the crew traveled in excess of twenty-one miles around the area of TaurusLittrow aboard the Lunar Rover, in the process gathering several hundred pounds of lunar surface material. The Apollo program returned 2,196 rock samples, 842 pounds in all, for distribution to the scientific community. Varying in age between 3.1 and 4.7 billion years old, these samples greatly enhanced our knowledge of the moon and its characteristics. Twelve men spent close to 160 hours explor­ ing the surface of the moon, collectively traveling some sixty miles by foot and aboard the Lunar Rovers. As for me, I came off Apollo 12 and was assigned the role of backup com­ mander for Apollo 15. At that time the lunar flights were manifested to ex­ tend through to Apollo 20. By extrapolation of the normal rotation process in use then, I was therefore in line to command Apollo 18 and return to the moon, this time to set foot on the lunar surface as mission commander. Much to my extreme disappointment and that of my fellow crew members it was not to be; severe congressional budget cuts descended on the Apollo program, and it was announced that Apollo 17 would be the final manned lunar landing mission. Apollo 18 never flew—so tantalizingly close yet aban­ doned in an overt haste to save a few dollars. It was a devastating blow at the time for the nine men who might have flown the three canceled mis­ sions and in retrospect a massive waste of resources and potential scientific results. If you can think of a way I can get those last sixty miles under my belt, please let me know —I’d still be glad to go.

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Three Skylab flights ensued that utilized the remaining Apollo hardware. Then interestingly enough, in 1975 we flew the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (astp). Our former Cold War adversaries came on board with the United States, and we flew a joint mission—a long way from the titanic and hardfought space race of the previous decade. Today we are seeing that multina­ tional cooperation continue with the International Space Station, with some sixteen nations participating in the program, and we have now made a ma­ jor transition from the exploration of space to the exploitation of space. Apollo was a true epoch of the Space Age, a golden era of scientific en­ deavor, advancement, and incredible discovery, and I was proud to have been a participant, along with some of the finest people one could ever have the privilege to know. I share a great treasure with my astronaut col­ leagues, for we have seen the splendor of our home planet from the vastness of space —a blue and white ball totally surrounded by the blackness and in­ finity of space. Seeing it, you are instantly struck with the beauty and won­ der of it all. To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, man was made to explore, and when his exploration days are over he will return from whence he came and know the place for the very first time. I have also been one of just twenty-four people who have traveled from the Earth to the moon, and this book celebrates not only those fantastic voyages of discovery but the evolution of Apollo into an Earth-orbiting program of scientific discovery and finally a vehicle that welcomes aboard a former adversary in a flight of international détente. This is the story of possibly the greatest adventure of all time. It is in our collective nature to expand our horizons, to seek new knowledge and explore. The frontier of space is without doubt the toughest challenge we have ever faced and one that is never breached without danger. Yet the human spirit is indomita­ ble, and as we now make plans to return to the moon and travel beyond, a whole new generation of dreams waits to be realized. Footprints in the Dust is a monumental account of an epic program and one in which the authors have truly captured the crackling excitement of those amazing times. Reading through these pages, I feel like less of a par­ ticipant and more of a wholly interested witness to the events that charac­ terize the drive and can-do spirit prevailing in that part of the twentieth century. The book has reacquainted me with the lively personalities who

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inhabited that historic program and made Project Apollo not only possi­ ble but a reality. Personally, I am delighted that our dream of space flight prevails and re­ mains alive within us and that we will continue to explore other worlds in the majestic spirit of Apollo. Capt. Richard F. Gordon Jr., USN (ret.) Pilot, Gemini 11 Command Module Pilot, Apollo 12

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