[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, yes.

[Assistant] And for everyone.

[User] There's nobody like him. But he was instrumental, and you've got to have somebody like him in the system to act as an interagency actor, whatever you want to call him, coordinator.

[Assistant] It's fortunate that he was able to be there and help make it all happen.

[User] Yes, yes. Another one of my heroes of that era.

[Assistant] Looking more specifically at Apollo, you said you were involved to some extent on Apollo 15.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] There's nobody like him. But he was instrumental, and you've got to have somebody like him in the system to act as an interagency actor, whatever you want to call him, coordinator.

[Assistant] It's fortunate that he was able to be there and help make it all happen.

[User] Yes, yes. Another one of my heroes of that era.

[Assistant] Looking more specifically at Apollo, you said you were involved to some extent on Apollo 15.

[User] Yes, I was there on all the field trips. I was in the science back room. Actually, maybe I ought to explain how we set up the geology part of the science back room.

[Assistant] Absolutely. That'd be great.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I would have loved to have done that some more. [Laughter] We also tried having the command module pilot join us on one of these field trips, just to have him get involved in a different perspective. He flew over in his T-38 and then landed and came and joined us. I don't know whether it was useful or not, but we did it. I would like to think it would be, just so you see more in detail, so you have a better chance of interpreting when you get up in orbit.

[Assistant] It's a perspective so different, as you mentioned earlier.

[User] Quite different, yes.

[Assistant] Being able to see it from both angles would be helpful, I would think.

[User] That's the nice thing about having pictures on the ground as well as pictures from space. You can use both in illustrating the different facets of the whole thing.

[Assistant] Definitely. As you were planning for all of these missions, did you spend a lot of time looking at the samples from the earlier missions, especially the ones you hadn't been involved with?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Quite different, yes.

[Assistant] Being able to see it from both angles would be helpful, I would think.

[User] That's the nice thing about having pictures on the ground as well as pictures from space. You can use both in illustrating the different facets of the whole thing.

[Assistant] Definitely. As you were planning for all of these missions, did you spend a lot of time looking at the samples from the earlier missions, especially the ones you hadn't been involved with?

[User] I never did. Never had the time. During the ninety days after each mission that we spent there at Johnson Space Center, writing up all the reports and everything, I'd go over to the lunar lab each day and see what's been opened and cleaned up so I could see what the rocks were. But there was certain [members] of my team that were assigned to work with those rocks all the time, so they were the contributors of the information about the rocks, and other guys would work with the photographs. They were always periodically trying to find the crew so we could talk to them and ask them questions.\n\n As soon as 16's splashdown, of course, then 17 was on your neck and you were going off of that. When 17 splashed down, it was easy. All of a sudden all we had to do was look at the rocks in the photos and talk with the crew. We didn't have another mission to plan. Wow, it really was different without all those endless other commitments of time and, "How do I get another roll of film aboard so that they don't run out?" That went all the way to NASA headquarters before I sold one more magazine of film. "You're sending a scientist to the Moon, gang. Don't handicap him without giving him enough film."

[Assistant] Absolutely. Got to have the tools that they need.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Rocco [Petrone] agreed, and away it went. One pound. Then, of course, the question is, what do you want to give up? They charged the vehicle against the geology team, so we had 450 pounds or something like that. You know, made it really look bad. "Take a wheel off." [Laughter] There weren't any spare tires, so you couldn't remove those. They had enough. They always keep a safety factor in these things, and by 17 they were willing to start shaving some of those safety factors down, they'd been so successful. As a matter of fact, by 17, they had the fewest failures on that mission of any of them, and, again, I guess it's just experience. You learn about these things and make sure they don't happen again. That's a key problem.

[Assistant] Absolutely.

[User] Other than breaking fenders. [Laughter]

[Assistant] [Laughter] Hopefully they'll come up with a good fix for that next time.

[User] Yes. It so happens that they would put their geology pick in a holder on their pants leg so it would stick out as they would go around the vehicle, and those fenders, of course, are flimsy as the devil. All they have to do is stop the rooster tail of dust from coming up over you, which is very important. You've got enough dust problems as it is on those missions. And luckily they took along some duct tape. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Ah, the universal fixer.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Other than breaking fenders. [Laughter]

[Assistant] [Laughter] Hopefully they'll come up with a good fix for that next time.

[User] Yes. It so happens that they would put their geology pick in a holder on their pants leg so it would stick out as they would go around the vehicle, and those fenders, of course, are flimsy as the devil. All they have to do is stop the rooster tail of dust from coming up over you, which is very important. You've got enough dust problems as it is on those missions. And luckily they took along some duct tape. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Ah, the universal fixer.

[User] The universal fixer. Right.

[Assistant] Speaking of like the fenders and duct tape and the weight on the lunar module, were you involved in some of the discussions on any of the tools that they used?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The universal fixer. Right.

[Assistant] Speaking of like the fenders and duct tape and the weight on the lunar module, were you involved in some of the discussions on any of the tools that they used?

[User] Oh, yes. Actually, the first meeting I ever went to after I was officially blessed as being principal investigator, Gordon Swann called me up and said, "Well, Bill, you really ought to come down to this meeting and get a little bit familiar with things. It's on geology hand tools."\n\n So here's the geology hammer with the head, and the handle was an oval-shaped handle that you grab onto. Some engineer had gotten in a space suit and couldn't get the hammer to hit on the head, so they redesigned it so that the head was askew to the handle. Well, any normal human being would try to work it as a regular hammer. The Apollo 11 crew had a terrible time, so they had to redesign the hammer, put it back to its original shape. Golly.\n\n Then the other thing was, all of the tools had an extension handle that you put on and gave a 90-degree twist, it clicked and locked into place, except for the hammer and its extension handle, which was a squeeze grip. You know what happens. You grab the hammer, you hit the squeeze grip, and there goes your extension handle. So they had to redesign that.\n\n Here's about thirty people sitting in this room, solving a problem of two dumb things, and I don't know how many salary dollars that represents. It's bound to be a bunch. Then I saw later that to fix those things and do the rattle and roll tests and make sure it was space-worthy cost about 25,000 dollars. That was bucks in 1970. I'd hate to think what they—I could be rich.

[Assistant] Absolutely.

[User] And then two days later, I was in Washington at a meeting, and where should Apollo 14 land? Total other extreme from this sort of thing. What a way to be introduced to business. [Laughter]

[Assistant] So many parts, they had to each come together and make it happen.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And then two days later, I was in Washington at a meeting, and where should Apollo 14 land? Total other extreme from this sort of thing. What a way to be introduced to business. [Laughter]

[Assistant] So many parts, they had to each come together and make it happen.

[User] It was largely Lee Silver and Jack Schmitt working together that designed the rake that was taken along. When you just scoop in and pick up the soil, there's an occasional rock sitting in there, and so you're trying to amplify the variety of rocks that you bring back. Well, you're not going to take four scoops if you can help it, so what they did was design this rake with the tines equally spaced so that they'd scrape it through and shake it, and all the finer stuff would come out and you'd have all these little pebbles that were left, just bring them back. They represent—they're big enough pieces that you could cut a slice and see it in thin section under the microscope and really learn a heck of a lot more by having a variety of those. They invented that and got it aboard. It was used in the last couple of missions, a really useful tool.\n\n But I never designed one. I just ended up hearing about redesigning tools. There was a stereocamera that they were going to use, and because of the small company bit, this little outfit got this contract. Well, instead of modifying a Hassleblad or a Kodak camera, one of these already workable and working, they were designing their own shutter systems and, oh, Lordy, and they could never get any consistent workings out of it. I made the statement, "It'll never work," and that kind of caused a flurry of, "You're not supposed to say that out loud" kind of thing. But it was true; it never worked. So we didn't have it. It's all right.

[Assistant] Had enough other things that did work.

[User] Yes. Some things that probably should have taken and didn't take.

[Assistant] I'm sure you can always think of something else.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was largely Lee Silver and Jack Schmitt working together that designed the rake that was taken along. When you just scoop in and pick up the soil, there's an occasional rock sitting in there, and so you're trying to amplify the variety of rocks that you bring back. Well, you're not going to take four scoops if you can help it, so what they did was design this rake with the tines equally spaced so that they'd scrape it through and shake it, and all the finer stuff would come out and you'd have all these little pebbles that were left, just bring them back. They represent—they're big enough pieces that you could cut a slice and see it in thin section under the microscope and really learn a heck of a lot more by having a variety of those. They invented that and got it aboard. It was used in the last couple of missions, a really useful tool.\n\n But I never designed one. I just ended up hearing about redesigning tools. There was a stereocamera that they were going to use, and because of the small company bit, this little outfit got this contract. Well, instead of modifying a Hassleblad or a Kodak camera, one of these already workable and working, they were designing their own shutter systems and, oh, Lordy, and they could never get any consistent workings out of it. I made the statement, "It'll never work," and that kind of caused a flurry of, "You're not supposed to say that out loud" kind of thing. But it was true; it never worked. So we didn't have it. It's all right.

[Assistant] Had enough other things that did work.

[User] Yes. Some things that probably should have taken and didn't take.

[Assistant] I'm sure you can always think of something else.

[User] Oh, yes. The way it goes.

[Assistant] We'll take a brief pause here and change out our tape. [Recorder turned off, brief interruption]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. The measles bit stopped them. So, anyway, the training was always the same. It was a big advantage, as it turned out for me, because I got well acquainted with working with Schmitt and with the Capcom that they had, who became the Capcom in 17. So Bob Parker, the physicist astronaut, and us got well acquainted throughout all that sort of stuff.

[Assistant] Built a good relationship.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] While you were doing some of the field training, were you involved with them in setting up the ALSEP [Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package]? Did they do any of that during these trips?

[User] No. On these trips we never did those. It was purely the geology part of them. The ALSEP training was done there at JSC or at the Cape. We hauled two freight car loads of basalt near Flagstaff [Arizona] to the Cape to cover up the seashells. [Laughter] So they could look a little more like the Moon. Then dug craters into it, salted it with certain kinds of rocks. I spent all kinds of time trying to find Jack Schmitt's dissertation rocks to slip in there on the last exercise. [Laughter] I got a hold of them two weeks too late.

[Assistant] [Laughter] That would have been good.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No. On these trips we never did those. It was purely the geology part of them. The ALSEP training was done there at JSC or at the Cape. We hauled two freight car loads of basalt near Flagstaff [Arizona] to the Cape to cover up the seashells. [Laughter] So they could look a little more like the Moon. Then dug craters into it, salted it with certain kinds of rocks. I spent all kinds of time trying to find Jack Schmitt's dissertation rocks to slip in there on the last exercise. [Laughter] I got a hold of them two weeks too late.

[Assistant] [Laughter] That would have been good.

[User] I thought that would have been great, because his dissertation area in Norway, where mafic/ultramafic rocks are the same kinds of things we're finding on the Moon, so it would have been logical kind of rocks, except they'd have a little—in those days we used red fingernail polish to paint on there and then ink in a number on top of that, the number of that sample. But I think every geologist used fingernail polish because it goes on easily, and when it sets up it's nice and hard and then you use your india ink and you've got a good contrast there. But we were just hoping and praying that we could get the dang things, and they were hidden in the recesses of Harvard's collections. Oh, well.

[Assistant] Good idea.

[User] Great idea, but didn't work. So, where were we?

[Assistant] Having mentioned the ALSEP, were you involved in any of the planning for that? You said not in the setting up.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, they did it on 17, worked all right. Of course, then they had redesigned the cables such that there was no way they were going to get torn apart. I remember Lee Silver behind me jittering, "Watch out! Watch out, guys! Watch out!" as they were walking by the cables. I turned around and said, "Lee, they're going to have to tear the planet apart before they can get those cables unhooked. Forget it." [Laughter] And I think that phrase—and I said it differently. [But] it's in the Apollo 17 movie that they used to show all the time, the half-hour things. After each mission, they generated a film about each mission.\n\n That's the other thing. Always in the back room there was a NASA cameraman taking film, and quite often a still-camera guy, too. So there's gazillions of—I don't know what they took. Very quickly you don't pay any attention to the camera anymore and you're doing your job.

[Assistant] You had some rather exciting things to be focused on.

[User] Well, yes. You'd better focus on that rather than giving a big smile to the camera. [Laughter]

[Assistant] [Laughter] That's right.

[User] Or giving them your best profile instead of the other one, or whatever the case may be. To heck with it.

[Assistant] Talking about Apollo 16, and this was the one that you were starting with and was fully going to be under you and so forth, tell us about that and how it went.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, yes. You'd better focus on that rather than giving a big smile to the camera. [Laughter]

[Assistant] [Laughter] That's right.

[User] Or giving them your best profile instead of the other one, or whatever the case may be. To heck with it.

[Assistant] Talking about Apollo 16, and this was the one that you were starting with and was fully going to be under you and so forth, tell us about that and how it went.

[User] I tried something different with the field trip training on one exercise, just to—I wanted these guys to be able to understand how we make maps. The only time they'd made a map was back there in '64 out in West Texas, and that was on earth, and I'd worked in an area in Northeast New Mexico one summer near Capulin Mountain, a little perfect volcano that's a national monument out there, and mapped the region for the state of New Mexico on a groundwater project.\n\n It was the kind of an area where you had a half a dozen different volcanoes that went, "Burp," and rolled their lava flows out across the country. If you worked it right, you could figure here's where they overlap, and therefore we've got to go here to see which one's on top. So I let them make their own map of this hunk of country, starting from each volcano and then tracing out the margins of the flows, and then, "Okay, now where do you want to go to go and check this out?" Luckily there are just enough roads that you could use the roads, a little bit of walking to do this, and we went out and did it then. So as far as I know, they're the only crew that ever made their own map and went out and field-checked it before going to the Moon, where somebody else made the map and there to go field-check it.

[Assistant] Did they take to the exercise pretty well?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, luckily they'd seen all the lunar rocks from before, so they were at least familiar with the different kinds of beat-up rocks that happen in a meteorite impact area. It gets blasted apart, partly melted, then cemented together again as you're flying through the—I can't say "air." [Laughter] Through space. Till it finally gets to the landing spot. Like the "Big Muehly" had that big glass rim on it. Probably had one all the way around it. Must have been a terrible place to be with all these broken-up pieces and all this glass, molten rocks as well as solid pieces. Obviously we wouldn't have survived. It happened so long ago, we don't have to worry about it.\n\n John [Young] and Charlie [Charles M. Duke, Jr.] were a very complementary pair in the way they worked. Charlie was talking all the time, jabbering away and describing things, and John, whenever he did say something, you'd better listen. It was important. We caught on to that pretty quickly early in the game. John would correct things that he saw that made him interpret it differently than Charlie. They worked together, as I see it, quite well. Did a heck of a good job, especially with the handicap that we gave them by telling them the wrong kind of stuff that they're going to be finding.

[Assistant] Did they give you a hard time about that later?

[User] No, they never did. We deserved it. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I'm sure they realized that you were just making—

[User] What bugs me is, I liked the minority interpretation, but because the guys that had spent their lifetime on this stuff said, "This is the way it is," I accepted that, rather than quizzing them even greater. The guy who stuck by this other interpretation was such a weird character that you could see why the other ideas became the more prevalent ones. Very different personality.

[Assistant] I think that wasn't the only time that you were expecting one thing and then ended up with another.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Great imaginations, too. [Laughter] Well, they had something. I was impressed, to say the least.\n\n So here the crew gets up to the rim of this giant crater, and, of course, we're running tight on time all the time because we have to get back and launch, keep the guarantees from failing on us, because you don't have your friendly gas station to come out and pump up your tires or whatever it might be. Then they were done in that area and they suggested, "Why don't we go over to House Rock." "Fine, go do it."\n\n God amighty, they started walking and they'd get smaller and smaller and smaller, and they're still not there and the time is running out. You start fretting, and they finally got to the darn thing. Of course, there's no pictures that show you the whole thing because it's simply so big. Well, they got some really intriguing rock samples out of that thing.\n\n They didn't want to walk too close to the inside of the crater, but they did take some panoramas across there, really amazing spectrum of rocks. That would have been a great place to have been able to spend a lot more hours, but no way. Had to drive home.

[Assistant] They always have to balance those needs.

[User] Oh, yes. Safety comes first. That was rule one. You never broke that one.

[Assistant] Absolutely. If you didn't have that, then—

[User] Something was wrong.

[Assistant] —you probably wouldn't have had much support for all the missions.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, yes. Safety comes first. That was rule one. You never broke that one.

[Assistant] Absolutely. If you didn't have that, then—

[User] Something was wrong.

[Assistant] —you probably wouldn't have had much support for all the missions.

[User] No. No. That's right.

[Assistant] Talking about the photographs before the mission and looking at it and planning it out, there were some discussions for going to the Tycho region on Apollo 16, is that correct?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Makes you wonder. Well, I guess the only thing we can say in defense of it is, everything was going so fast, you didn't have time to sit and think long enough about some of these things. You're running. If you had punched them off every six months or a year apart, you might have had time to think these things through and come up with a better answer. You might have ended up talking yourself out of that spot, though. That might not have been what you wanted to do.

[Assistant] They did manage to come back with interesting information, even if it wasn't what was expected.

[User] That's right. That's right. Fascinating.

[Assistant] Moving on to Apollo 17, we've talked about it a little bit back and forth here, but were there any points on Apollo 17 or any big issues that came up besides with the orange soil and, of course, Jack Schmitt running around and doing his interpretations?

[User] I described how we set up the thing, so he ran the mission for me. I appreciated the help. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Good to have.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's right. That's right. Fascinating.

[Assistant] Moving on to Apollo 17, we've talked about it a little bit back and forth here, but were there any points on Apollo 17 or any big issues that came up besides with the orange soil and, of course, Jack Schmitt running around and doing his interpretations?

[User] I described how we set up the thing, so he ran the mission for me. I appreciated the help. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Good to have.

[User] Well, we went to every spot that was preplanned, with one exception, and that was one of the craters in the first EVA after they set up the ALSEP. They didn't go as far as we had originally planned into this big crater field sitting out there, but as it turns out, they were all going to be in the same thing, so the nearer one, which we did go sample, did the job, as far as we can tell, perfectly well.\n\n They had sort of a small butterfly net kind of a thing which, because we had these long traverses between stops, and no samples in between, they designed this traverse sampler where Jack would just reach out with a little butterfly cup, you know, a butterfly net, and scoop up a scoop and stick it into the sample bag and let us know when he did it, so you just did it by time along these traverses. That way there are samples scattered all over the landing site, which was never done before in any of the other missions. I think that was an idea of his, too. I don't remember now specifically who thought up the Dixie Cup scoop.

[Assistant] It turned out pretty useful, too, if I recall, in that it got some sample of the landslide material that it wouldn't have gotten otherwise.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, my, yes. It was a horrendous shock to most of us, the Apollo 11 basalts coming up to be 3.7 to 3.8 billion years old, older than anything we'd dated here on Earth. Holy Toledo! Right off the bat. And that's some of the youngest stuff on the Moon, because it's sitting there in very big sheets, not very much pounded up by meteorites, just the top few meters are all smashed up by them, but the rest of them are visibly—they've got folds in them and you can see the edges of the lava flows and all that kind of good stuff. Come on, guys. That made quite a difference.

[Assistant] Certainly learned a lot.

[User] The other thing it did—there's a bunch of things it did. At Apollo 11, they had a whole bunch of different laboratories that were analyzing for carbon, how much carbon is there. That equals life in some people's thinking, anyhow. So when they reported their results the day of the Lunar Science Conference that all the carbon people gave their papers in succession, they all got a piece of the same sample, and they came out with numbers that are really tremendously different. As they go back through all this, they discover it's how clean they got their lab. And as a result, we've learned how to clean labs, which means the hospitals are a hell of a lot cleaner and our own research labs are a lot cleaner.

[Assistant] That's an interesting correlation.

[User] There was a whole—[out of] trying to see how much organic debris there is on the Moon, all you're doing is checking how dirty your lab was. [Laughter] Sort of what it amounted to.

[Assistant] One way to learn. [Laughter]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The other thing it did—there's a bunch of things it did. At Apollo 11, they had a whole bunch of different laboratories that were analyzing for carbon, how much carbon is there. That equals life in some people's thinking, anyhow. So when they reported their results the day of the Lunar Science Conference that all the carbon people gave their papers in succession, they all got a piece of the same sample, and they came out with numbers that are really tremendously different. As they go back through all this, they discover it's how clean they got their lab. And as a result, we've learned how to clean labs, which means the hospitals are a hell of a lot cleaner and our own research labs are a lot cleaner.

[Assistant] That's an interesting correlation.

[User] There was a whole—[out of] trying to see how much organic debris there is on the Moon, all you're doing is checking how dirty your lab was. [Laughter] Sort of what it amounted to.

[Assistant] One way to learn. [Laughter]

[User] Yes. One of the cleanest labs was the one at Cal Tech, which has the worst smog at that time in the world.

[Assistant] That's pretty good.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] There was a whole—[out of] trying to see how much organic debris there is on the Moon, all you're doing is checking how dirty your lab was. [Laughter] Sort of what it amounted to.

[Assistant] One way to learn. [Laughter]

[User] Yes. One of the cleanest labs was the one at Cal Tech, which has the worst smog at that time in the world.

[Assistant] That's pretty good.

[User] And it was all burning gasoline mostly. When I grew up there, we used to burn our paper trash in the back yard and in incinerators. They gave that up. That was the first thing that got eliminated, back yard trash burners.

[Assistant] Probably just as well.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. One of the cleanest labs was the one at Cal Tech, which has the worst smog at that time in the world.

[Assistant] That's pretty good.

[User] And it was all burning gasoline mostly. When I grew up there, we used to burn our paper trash in the back yard and in incinerators. They gave that up. That was the first thing that got eliminated, back yard trash burners.

[Assistant] Probably just as well.

[User] Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

[Assistant] As Apollo 17 was the last mission, manned mission to the Moon, unfortunately. As you said, they originally planned for others, but for various reasons they had to cancel them. What were your thoughts as it came to a close?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

[Assistant] As Apollo 17 was the last mission, manned mission to the Moon, unfortunately. As you said, they originally planned for others, but for various reasons they had to cancel them. What were your thoughts as it came to a close?

[User] Tremendous degree of sadness that we didn't carry on the whole thing to the end like the original plans called for, because it was so damn exciting and you're learning so much and you're getting to work with and compete with the best there is, which forces you to do the best you can. Incredible competition in that whole group, the best laboratories in the world, and now all of a sudden we're not going to do that anymore. What are we going to do?\n\n Well, I got involved in other NASA stuff, as it turns out, and I'm still involved in training astronauts or trying to teach them. Hell, you can't teach them. They soak it up so fast. All I've got is experience over them. And once they go fly in orbit, around Earth, they beat me out any old day.\n\n In some ways it was nice to be home instead of the constant treadmill that you're on, because as soon as one mission's over, you've got to have the plans ready for the next one, and you're constantly playing with that, and half your team is working on the next mission beyond that. So you get schizophrenic in a way, trying to keep all these thing sorted out.\n\n I came back here, and the guy that had occupied this office, Hoover Mackin, actually he died before Apollo 11, of open-heart surgery, and they couldn't put him together. So I, being chairman, I wasn't getting anything out of it, I decided, "I'll take his office." So all these bookshelves were here and his maps were there for a long time. I just filled it up with my stuff. But his memory still hangs around here.

[Assistant] That's good.

[User] Really great people it was.

[Assistant] He was a founder in helping it all—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Really great people it was.

[Assistant] He was a founder in helping it all—

[User] Yes, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and all that good stuff, as well as being a fun guy. So.

[Assistant] The Apollo Program, as a whole, we've talked here about so much of the science aspects of it and the later missions, but yet the Apollo Program originally started for political reasons, and we talked earlier about some of that. Actually, today is the anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall, the whole Cold War.

[User] That's right. Yes.

[Assistant] And a lot of the impetus behind the Apollo Program. Did you think much about the political side of things and what it had all been about?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and all that good stuff, as well as being a fun guy. So.

[Assistant] The Apollo Program, as a whole, we've talked here about so much of the science aspects of it and the later missions, but yet the Apollo Program originally started for political reasons, and we talked earlier about some of that. Actually, today is the anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall, the whole Cold War.

[User] That's right. Yes.

[Assistant] And a lot of the impetus behind the Apollo Program. Did you think much about the political side of things and what it had all been about?

[User] Not really. I generally worry about politics the day before I vote. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's a good time. [Laughter]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, that's another problem.

[Assistant] Hopefully we can find a way to get back there.

[User] But it would be fun. The cost of it, when you compare it with the cost of other things, really fairly minimal. We spend more money on liquor than we do on space. I do, too, probably. [Laughter] You can make all those kind of comparisons, you know. Tobacco taxes could probably fund a mission to the Moon. Why don't we use it that way instead of passing it off? Some of the boondoggles we have invented are really something.

[Assistant] Oh, yes.

[User] Let's not get into those kind of—erase that off the record. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Okay. Well, after the Apollo Program, you moved in and did some work with Skylab, is that correct?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] But it would be fun. The cost of it, when you compare it with the cost of other things, really fairly minimal. We spend more money on liquor than we do on space. I do, too, probably. [Laughter] You can make all those kind of comparisons, you know. Tobacco taxes could probably fund a mission to the Moon. Why don't we use it that way instead of passing it off? Some of the boondoggles we have invented are really something.

[Assistant] Oh, yes.

[User] Let's not get into those kind of—erase that off the record. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Okay. Well, after the Apollo Program, you moved in and did some work with Skylab, is that correct?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] That was obviously very different. Instead of looking at another planet, now you're looking back at the Earth.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] Make it all work as a system.

[User] Yes, that's the current buzzword, the "Earth system."

[Assistant] Were you involved at all with the Apollo-Soyuz?

[User] Yes, I was a co-investigator on that one, as logical follow-on. Farouk El-Baz put together the team of us. Actually, it was most of the people that did the Skylab thing. That was a kind of restricted one, because while they were docked with the Russians, there were no pictures to be taken. Then once we were on our own, we could do what we want. So it was only about four days' worth of actual photography, but we'd set up some things to do.\n\n The things that were of most use to me were at the north end of the Dead Sea fault zone, because Skylab got some great pictures from about the Sea of Galilee south to the Red Sea, but the northern part we didn't have anything, and I didn't know much about it. So we had a couple of tracks that went right over it and they took these stereosets which I then used with existing geologic maps and made my own geologic interpretation, which is different from what the Turks had done there. So they invited me over and we went and spent a bunch of time in there and looked at all of the different things. I was right, as it turned out. Made me feel good, or I wouldn't have told you about this story. [Laughter]

[Assistant] You definitely want to get the ones where you're right.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, that's the current buzzword, the "Earth system."

[Assistant] Were you involved at all with the Apollo-Soyuz?

[User] Yes, I was a co-investigator on that one, as logical follow-on. Farouk El-Baz put together the team of us. Actually, it was most of the people that did the Skylab thing. That was a kind of restricted one, because while they were docked with the Russians, there were no pictures to be taken. Then once we were on our own, we could do what we want. So it was only about four days' worth of actual photography, but we'd set up some things to do.\n\n The things that were of most use to me were at the north end of the Dead Sea fault zone, because Skylab got some great pictures from about the Sea of Galilee south to the Red Sea, but the northern part we didn't have anything, and I didn't know much about it. So we had a couple of tracks that went right over it and they took these stereosets which I then used with existing geologic maps and made my own geologic interpretation, which is different from what the Turks had done there. So they invited me over and we went and spent a bunch of time in there and looked at all of the different things. I was right, as it turned out. Made me feel good, or I wouldn't have told you about this story. [Laughter]

[Assistant] You definitely want to get the ones where you're right.

[User] Oh, yes. Every once in a while you are right. You might as well talk about it. [Laughter] There's too many times you aren't.

[Assistant] So you probably didn't work a whole lot with any of the Russians?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, I was a co-investigator on that one, as logical follow-on. Farouk El-Baz put together the team of us. Actually, it was most of the people that did the Skylab thing. That was a kind of restricted one, because while they were docked with the Russians, there were no pictures to be taken. Then once we were on our own, we could do what we want. So it was only about four days' worth of actual photography, but we'd set up some things to do.\n\n The things that were of most use to me were at the north end of the Dead Sea fault zone, because Skylab got some great pictures from about the Sea of Galilee south to the Red Sea, but the northern part we didn't have anything, and I didn't know much about it. So we had a couple of tracks that went right over it and they took these stereosets which I then used with existing geologic maps and made my own geologic interpretation, which is different from what the Turks had done there. So they invited me over and we went and spent a bunch of time in there and looked at all of the different things. I was right, as it turned out. Made me feel good, or I wouldn't have told you about this story. [Laughter]

[Assistant] You definitely want to get the ones where you're right.

[User] Oh, yes. Every once in a while you are right. You might as well talk about it. [Laughter] There's too many times you aren't.

[Assistant] So you probably didn't work a whole lot with any of the Russians?

[User] We didn't work with the Russians at all, strictly with our own troops.

[Assistant] In between Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz, after that there wasn't anything for a while.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We didn't work with the Russians at all, strictly with our own troops.

[Assistant] In between Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz, after that there wasn't anything for a while.

[User] There wasn't anything for a while, yes.

[Assistant] Before Shuttle.

[User] Yes. Let me take five minutes off.

[Assistant] Absolutely. [Tape recorder turned off]\n\n In between Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz and then Shuttle, you came back to work and were teaching.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] There wasn't anything for a while, yes.

[Assistant] Before Shuttle.

[User] Yes. Let me take five minutes off.

[Assistant] Absolutely. [Tape recorder turned off]\n\n In between Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz and then Shuttle, you came back to work and were teaching.

[User] Yes. Well, all that time I was teaching. Apollo-Soyuz, fortunately, flew during the summer, so I could be down there in Mission Control during the mission. Skylab, I never was. Didn't need to. The phone works. In those days, the mail service worked.

[Assistant] In coming back to teaching, did you integrate now your experience with Apollo into the classroom?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Well, probably none of the people that did this will go to those planets, but by the time we do go, they'll be up in the management positions and they'll have a little feel, a better feel, for what it is that these guys are going to do or try to do.

[Assistant] How do the Shuttle astronauts adapt to the geology training? Are they pretty receptive to it?

[User] Oh, my, yes. Out of the couple hundred that went through this thing, I think there's only one that I have any qualms about as being uninterested.

[Assistant] That's good.

[User] Every time we look at these pictures after a mission, they say, "God, it was better than that." You've got them on the screen, big megasize, and I'm thinking, "Wow, isn't that fantastic," and they're saying, "Hell, it was better than that." I don't know what they can really see. This has been one of the ploys I've tried to get so I could go fly. "I don't know what they can really see, because they're telling me it's better than these pictures. And if I did, maybe I could then find out and do a better teaching job."

[Assistant] Sounds like a good argument to me.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, my, yes. Out of the couple hundred that went through this thing, I think there's only one that I have any qualms about as being uninterested.

[Assistant] That's good.

[User] Every time we look at these pictures after a mission, they say, "God, it was better than that." You've got them on the screen, big megasize, and I'm thinking, "Wow, isn't that fantastic," and they're saying, "Hell, it was better than that." I don't know what they can really see. This has been one of the ploys I've tried to get so I could go fly. "I don't know what they can really see, because they're telling me it's better than these pictures. And if I did, maybe I could then find out and do a better teaching job."

[Assistant] Sounds like a good argument to me.

[User] I tried that out on Senator John [H.] Glenn [Jr.] when I briefed his crew. He was really listening. He was really interested in the subject. It was afterwards I discovered he had to go buy his own camera in the drugstore when he flew [the first time], so he could take his own pictures. NASA wouldn't furnish him one because they didn't want him to be fooling around with this other stuff. But, about halfway through, I stopped and said, "Damn it, John, I could have been the geriatric specimen on this mission. Besides that, I could find out what these guys can really see. They keep telling me it's better than this." And he smiles and says, "After me." [Laughter]

[Assistant] Then you need to call him up now and say, "It's my turn." [Laughter]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Every time we look at these pictures after a mission, they say, "God, it was better than that." You've got them on the screen, big megasize, and I'm thinking, "Wow, isn't that fantastic," and they're saying, "Hell, it was better than that." I don't know what they can really see. This has been one of the ploys I've tried to get so I could go fly. "I don't know what they can really see, because they're telling me it's better than these pictures. And if I did, maybe I could then find out and do a better teaching job."

[Assistant] Sounds like a good argument to me.

[User] I tried that out on Senator John [H.] Glenn [Jr.] when I briefed his crew. He was really listening. He was really interested in the subject. It was afterwards I discovered he had to go buy his own camera in the drugstore when he flew [the first time], so he could take his own pictures. NASA wouldn't furnish him one because they didn't want him to be fooling around with this other stuff. But, about halfway through, I stopped and said, "Damn it, John, I could have been the geriatric specimen on this mission. Besides that, I could find out what these guys can really see. They keep telling me it's better than this." And he smiles and says, "After me." [Laughter]

[Assistant] Then you need to call him up now and say, "It's my turn." [Laughter]

[User] Yes. He's gone. I go down next week. I think I'll go and see Mr. Abbey and bug him about this, once again.

[Assistant] There you go.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. He's gone. I go down next week. I think I'll go and see Mr. Abbey and bug him about this, once again.

[Assistant] There you go.

[User] Sorry. It's an off-to-the-side thing, but I was delighted to see him so interested in learning, asking good, intelligent questions.

[Assistant] Absolutely.

[User] He wasn't along for the ride. He was going to be doing something.

[Assistant] That's good. And that's good that so many of them were interested.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Sorry. It's an off-to-the-side thing, but I was delighted to see him so interested in learning, asking good, intelligent questions.

[Assistant] Absolutely.

[User] He wasn't along for the ride. He was going to be doing something.

[Assistant] That's good. And that's good that so many of them were interested.

[User] Half of them, roughly, in the past, anyhow, used to be military pilots, flown all over the world and don't know what they've been looking at. So here I am helping them find out. "When you're flying to L.A., you're going to go over this and this and this." "Oh, yes."\n\n When I show them some of the picture taken from orbit, every once in a while I get some 35-millimeter slides taken from somewhere they've been flying in some T-38, "And if you can identify these, Bill, you can have them," one of those kind of things. [Laughter] Luckily, I've been able to work them out since they give me a long enough string of pictures that you can find something that is familiar enough that, "Oh, yes, they've got to be in this region," and you can work backwards.

[Assistant] Sounds like you've got a pretty good rapport with them.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Of course, looking at the Earth is different from all the other stuff. They're trained to work checklists, got to do this, got to do this. If this happens, then I do this. That's the whole kind of training. All the equipment that they're going to be working with in the laboratories on the Shuttle, they learn how to operate all that stuff. That's a different attitude or approach than exploring, where you don't know what you're going to find, but let's see if we can find it and figure it out or work these things together.\n\n Exploring the Earth is a different thing. You see something that grabs your eye you didn't know about, take a picture of it. Very often those pictures have been educational as the devil. There's one Shuttle picture looking at the eye of a hurricane, with little thunderstorm topknots sitting in various places. The weathermen hadn't realized that you might have thunderstorms inside a hurricane, which equals tornados. These extra real strong bursts that they talk about apparently are those things. Until that picture came along, they hadn't even thought about it. That's only about five years now that that idea's gotten in. God knows how these pictures will change something.

[Assistant] A lot of benefits.

[User] And they don't cost much to take, and they're all sitting on the Internet, so all of us get to use them.

[Assistant] Good for everybody.

[User] Good for everybody.

[Assistant] We're going to pause here real quick and change our tape out, if that's okay. [Tape turned off and changed]\n\n You mentioned the hurricane and that particular picture and how much can be learned from that. Are there any others that you can think of offhand, pictures taken from the Shuttle Program, that made a big difference in any particular areas of earth science?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's right. And because there's no soil to soak in the water, it just runs off and away it goes.

[Assistant] There's a lot to be learned.

[User] There's lots of other pictures, and I'm sure that as soon as we stop, I'll think of them all. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Of course. That's how it works. You mentioned using the CD for Space Station. Have you done other planning ahead for Space Station Earth observations?

[User] Yes, the project I've been working on for the last six months is the India Plate crash, which occupies most of Asia. The reason I started with the Arabian plate is that it hasn't moved very far yet, so you're dealing with beautiful structures and simpler problems, but India has been jamming in there for 50 million years and is beaten up stuff clear up by Lake Baikal, 1,000 kilometers to the north. So you need to work out all these different pieces. Boy, am I learning a lot of geography and geology by doing this. That's fun for me. And I get paid for it.

[Assistant] That's even better.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] There's lots of other pictures, and I'm sure that as soon as we stop, I'll think of them all. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Of course. That's how it works. You mentioned using the CD for Space Station. Have you done other planning ahead for Space Station Earth observations?

[User] Yes, the project I've been working on for the last six months is the India Plate crash, which occupies most of Asia. The reason I started with the Arabian plate is that it hasn't moved very far yet, so you're dealing with beautiful structures and simpler problems, but India has been jamming in there for 50 million years and is beaten up stuff clear up by Lake Baikal, 1,000 kilometers to the north. So you need to work out all these different pieces. Boy, am I learning a lot of geography and geology by doing this. That's fun for me. And I get paid for it.

[Assistant] That's even better.

[User] On occasion. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's good to still be able to keep learning and building on all this experience.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, the project I've been working on for the last six months is the India Plate crash, which occupies most of Asia. The reason I started with the Arabian plate is that it hasn't moved very far yet, so you're dealing with beautiful structures and simpler problems, but India has been jamming in there for 50 million years and is beaten up stuff clear up by Lake Baikal, 1,000 kilometers to the north. So you need to work out all these different pieces. Boy, am I learning a lot of geography and geology by doing this. That's fun for me. And I get paid for it.

[Assistant] That's even better.

[User] On occasion. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's good to still be able to keep learning and building on all this experience.

[User] That's what life's all about. Keep learning. Otherwise, you'll have big footprints crawling up your back.

[Assistant] Looking back over your work, specifically on the space program, was there a point that you would consider your biggest challenge?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] On occasion. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's good to still be able to keep learning and building on all this experience.

[User] That's what life's all about. Keep learning. Otherwise, you'll have big footprints crawling up your back.

[Assistant] Looking back over your work, specifically on the space program, was there a point that you would consider your biggest challenge?

[User] Biggest challenge. I'd say the whole Apollo Program was that, was one continuous challenge. I don't know what to discriminate out of that as the max problem time. It could have been when we had to defend saving the last EVA on Apollo 16, where you had just overnight to get the documents together to sell management to say yes. Instead of a seven-hour EVA, they gave us five, and we ran with it.

[Assistant] And pulled it off successfully.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's what life's all about. Keep learning. Otherwise, you'll have big footprints crawling up your back.

[Assistant] Looking back over your work, specifically on the space program, was there a point that you would consider your biggest challenge?

[User] Biggest challenge. I'd say the whole Apollo Program was that, was one continuous challenge. I don't know what to discriminate out of that as the max problem time. It could have been when we had to defend saving the last EVA on Apollo 16, where you had just overnight to get the documents together to sell management to say yes. Instead of a seven-hour EVA, they gave us five, and we ran with it.

[Assistant] And pulled it off successfully.

[User] And pulled it off, yes. If only that House Rock hadn't been so far away. [Laughter] If we'd known, probably would have told them to drive there. Then we would have had the TV camera there. As it was, we didn't see anything. All we were doing was hearing them. They'd gone over the edge.

[Assistant] Good reason to go back.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And pulled it off, yes. If only that House Rock hadn't been so far away. [Laughter] If we'd known, probably would have told them to drive there. Then we would have had the TV camera there. As it was, we didn't see anything. All we were doing was hearing them. They'd gone over the edge.

[Assistant] Good reason to go back.

[User] That's right. Go back and really look at that crater. Just land it on the rim. Heck, that'll be a skill.

[Assistant] Quite.

[User] But they could.

[Assistant] Certainly have enough technological advances to help.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's right. Go back and really look at that crater. Just land it on the rim. Heck, that'll be a skill.

[Assistant] Quite.

[User] But they could.

[Assistant] Certainly have enough technological advances to help.

[User] Well, even then, though, they were landing within a couple of yards of the pre-planned point, except for Apollo 11, and there they deliberately had to go downrange to miss all the rockpile.

[Assistant] That's interesting that that's the only one that they had that problem with.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] But they could.

[Assistant] Certainly have enough technological advances to help.

[User] Well, even then, though, they were landing within a couple of yards of the pre-planned point, except for Apollo 11, and there they deliberately had to go downrange to miss all the rockpile.

[Assistant] That's interesting that that's the only one that they had that problem with.

[User] Isn't it, though? Dumb computers. [Laughter] But look at where we've landed at Mars. Every one of them has been a rockpile. Luckily, the rocks aren't too big, so you wouldn't sit there tilted too badly, but you don't want to be tilted too much.

[Assistant] Is there any one point that you would say was your most significant accomplishment or contribution to the space program?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, even then, though, they were landing within a couple of yards of the pre-planned point, except for Apollo 11, and there they deliberately had to go downrange to miss all the rockpile.

[Assistant] That's interesting that that's the only one that they had that problem with.

[User] Isn't it, though? Dumb computers. [Laughter] But look at where we've landed at Mars. Every one of them has been a rockpile. Luckily, the rocks aren't too big, so you wouldn't sit there tilted too badly, but you don't want to be tilted too much.

[Assistant] Is there any one point that you would say was your most significant accomplishment or contribution to the space program?

[User] Well, I like the fact that I did get some science out of it, namely this business of the buckling of the Apollo 17 site and the wrinkling of the lava flows out in the mare basins that I ended up writing about and contributing that aspect to the history, rather than running a team of guys who were all smarter than me and who were doing the science while I was doing the running around to make sure that the—to get the engineers off their back.

[Assistant] Would you have ever imagined where, as you were starting out, that you would even be involved with the space program?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Isn't it, though? Dumb computers. [Laughter] But look at where we've landed at Mars. Every one of them has been a rockpile. Luckily, the rocks aren't too big, so you wouldn't sit there tilted too badly, but you don't want to be tilted too much.

[Assistant] Is there any one point that you would say was your most significant accomplishment or contribution to the space program?

[User] Well, I like the fact that I did get some science out of it, namely this business of the buckling of the Apollo 17 site and the wrinkling of the lava flows out in the mare basins that I ended up writing about and contributing that aspect to the history, rather than running a team of guys who were all smarter than me and who were doing the science while I was doing the running around to make sure that the—to get the engineers off their back.

[Assistant] Would you have ever imagined where, as you were starting out, that you would even be involved with the space program?

[User] Never dreamed that I'd ever been seeing anybody go to another planet, much less be involved in it. I've always been a science fiction fan, so I've always had that attitude. Never thought it would come to pass. Here it did.

[Assistant] Here it did, and hopefully it will continue.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, I like the fact that I did get some science out of it, namely this business of the buckling of the Apollo 17 site and the wrinkling of the lava flows out in the mare basins that I ended up writing about and contributing that aspect to the history, rather than running a team of guys who were all smarter than me and who were doing the science while I was doing the running around to make sure that the—to get the engineers off their back.

[Assistant] Would you have ever imagined where, as you were starting out, that you would even be involved with the space program?

[User] Never dreamed that I'd ever been seeing anybody go to another planet, much less be involved in it. I've always been a science fiction fan, so I've always had that attitude. Never thought it would come to pass. Here it did.

[Assistant] Here it did, and hopefully it will continue.

[User] Amen.

[Assistant] Before we close, I'd like to ask Kevin and Sandra if they have any questions.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Never dreamed that I'd ever been seeing anybody go to another planet, much less be involved in it. I've always been a science fiction fan, so I've always had that attitude. Never thought it would come to pass. Here it did.

[Assistant] Here it did, and hopefully it will continue.

[User] Amen.

[Assistant] Before we close, I'd like to ask Kevin and Sandra if they have any questions.

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] I did have one. I wanted to ask you about being a scientist involved with NASA, which is traditionally an engineering organization—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Amen.

[Assistant] Before we close, I'd like to ask Kevin and Sandra if they have any questions.

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] I did have one. I wanted to ask you about being a scientist involved with NASA, which is traditionally an engineering organization—

[User] It has to be.

[Assistant] —how the relationship between the scientists and the engineers was.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] I did have one. I wanted to ask you about being a scientist involved with NASA, which is traditionally an engineering organization—

[User] It has to be.

[Assistant] —how the relationship between the scientists and the engineers was.

[User] I think the biggest problem at the time was during the Apollo days, when you had the really big names of the geochemists and the geophysicists working, and they were the types that wanted their way, now if not yesterday.

[Assistant] Egos you mentioned before?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Once they got sold on the idea that the science needed to be done, yes, I think they did. That was largely the selling of Gene Shoemaker, who sort of invented the whole thing himself. He made the first geologic map of the Moon, demonstrated you could do it using these photographs. He organized the Astrogeology Branch of USGS. He told NASA that, "Once you're on the Moon, what are you going to be doing? Geology," and making sure that that was done. Eventually he was pushing so hard, he got crosswise with NASA management and they didn't want him around. So we took over. He was PI for the first missions, Gordon Swann the middle set, and me the last set. Gene's gone, killed himself in a car wreck. But Gordon Swann's the one you ought to get, because he was Gene's backup and my backup.

[Assistant] We'd love to talk to him.

[User] So he's been through the whole thing and he lives just west of Sedona, so you'd probably have a lousy time having to go to Sedona.

[Assistant] That's all the questions that I had. Thank you.

[User] Thank you.

[Assistant] One question occurred to me. You mentioned Gene Shoemaker. Of course, we've talked about Jack Schmitt. Had you ever considered becoming part of the astronaut program yourself, or trying to?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So he's been through the whole thing and he lives just west of Sedona, so you'd probably have a lousy time having to go to Sedona.

[Assistant] That's all the questions that I had. Thank you.

[User] Thank you.

[Assistant] One question occurred to me. You mentioned Gene Shoemaker. Of course, we've talked about Jack Schmitt. Had you ever considered becoming part of the astronaut program yourself, or trying to?

[User] Only recently, since the Shuttle days. By the time I got involved in this thing, how old was I? I was in my forties. So that was an old man to those guys. No, I guess not really, because [John] Glenn is two years older than I am. Or am I two years older than he is? It's close.

[Assistant] Close enough. I think you fit in the category together.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Thank you.

[Assistant] One question occurred to me. You mentioned Gene Shoemaker. Of course, we've talked about Jack Schmitt. Had you ever considered becoming part of the astronaut program yourself, or trying to?

[User] Only recently, since the Shuttle days. By the time I got involved in this thing, how old was I? I was in my forties. So that was an old man to those guys. No, I guess not really, because [John] Glenn is two years older than I am. Or am I two years older than he is? It's close.

[Assistant] Close enough. I think you fit in the category together.

[User] Yes, I've thought about it, but at the time I could have done something about it, it was too late. They were all picked and they were all competing with each other. I've applied to go in the Shuttle, been turned down. Could try again. [Laughter] Actually, one of our Earth Obs people did go, but he worked for the Office of Naval Research, so there's a big lobby organization. University of Texas doesn't have a very big lobby front down there.

[Assistant] Well, who knows what might be possible.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Only recently, since the Shuttle days. By the time I got involved in this thing, how old was I? I was in my forties. So that was an old man to those guys. No, I guess not really, because [John] Glenn is two years older than I am. Or am I two years older than he is? It's close.

[Assistant] Close enough. I think you fit in the category together.

[User] Yes, I've thought about it, but at the time I could have done something about it, it was too late. They were all picked and they were all competing with each other. I've applied to go in the Shuttle, been turned down. Could try again. [Laughter] Actually, one of our Earth Obs people did go, but he worked for the Office of Naval Research, so there's a big lobby organization. University of Texas doesn't have a very big lobby front down there.

[Assistant] Well, who knows what might be possible.

[User] That's right.

[Assistant] And you certainly had quite an important contribution with what you did.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, I've thought about it, but at the time I could have done something about it, it was too late. They were all picked and they were all competing with each other. I've applied to go in the Shuttle, been turned down. Could try again. [Laughter] Actually, one of our Earth Obs people did go, but he worked for the Office of Naval Research, so there's a big lobby organization. University of Texas doesn't have a very big lobby front down there.

[Assistant] Well, who knows what might be possible.

[User] That's right.

[Assistant] And you certainly had quite an important contribution with what you did.

[User] It was fun.

[Assistant] We appreciate you sharing it with us today. Thank you very much.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I would say that there was anywhere from 10 to 15 of us, because if you can imagine what the diameter of the Apollo spacecraft was, then the diameter of the chamber was probably 10 times that. So that was a huge area, and in one shift we were doing good if we could get two floors done of wiping it down.

[Assistant] So it wasn’t a quick process by any means.

[User] No. It would probably take a week just to wipe the chamber down.

[Assistant] Was that after a test?

[User] That was right before a test.

[Assistant] While the LRL was being built, and before it was built actually, there was a lot of controversy about whether it was going to be located here or not. Were you aware of any of that going on in your position? That that was coming and that it was something you wanted to move into?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No. It would probably take a week just to wipe the chamber down.

[Assistant] Was that after a test?

[User] That was right before a test.

[Assistant] While the LRL was being built, and before it was built actually, there was a lot of controversy about whether it was going to be located here or not. Were you aware of any of that going on in your position? That that was coming and that it was something you wanted to move into?

[User] We did not know about the argument over where the site was going to be. That was before the time I hired on. What we knew at the time was, the building was being built on site and they were going to need people. I knew that I wanted to be in the vacuum systems part of our program. My best friend, Bob Eason, was in that section and I was in the mechanical section. This would be a chance to get into the vacuum section. We both applied for these openings for Building 37. All of the new hires were trying to get over to Building 37 because we were low man on the totem pole where we were.\n\n I was not on the first crew that made it over to 37, but a bunch of my friends made it. They encouraged the staff in 37 to get me if they could, and they knew from several different things that had happened in [Building] 32 that they could use my experience. Actually 32 did not want to let me go, but I won out in the end.

[Assistant] What type of things happened that they knew they could use your experience?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The electronics section was about approximately 10 to 15, and the mechanical section was 15 to 16. So you’re talking about 26 guys working either the vacuum chambers or the processing nitrogen cabinets. It’s according to whether you were in Apollo 11, 12, or 14 through 17. Once we stopped the vacuum processing, after Apollo 12, we had two processing lines, which took more people.

[Assistant] What were the backgrounds for the other people that were working with you? Were they varied as far as their experiences?

[User] Everybody was varied. We had people that worked in Air Force electronics. We had people that were just in electronics. We had a slew of engineers. I would say for that system, we had six engineers, plus we had managers that were engineers and supervisors that were engineers. When we ran across a problem, everybody just came together and we just worked it out. Sometimes we didn’t know the exact answer. Sometimes we would just try something. If that didn’t work quite right, well, then we’d try something else.

[Assistant] It was definitely an interesting time when you really didn’t know what you would be facing. You were practicing for something that you didn’t even really know what it was going to be when it got here.

[User] Yes. The first day when we opened that rock box and all we saw mainly was one or two rocks sticking up and the rest of it was loose soil, that wasn’t what we were really expecting. We did have more rocks, but they were covered up.

[Assistant] There was concern also when they were building the LRL and some of the controversy over the possibility of back contamination and the contamination not only from the Moon rocks, but contamination of the samples from everything else. Of course that’s why everything had to be pristine. The fear of that contamination, when some people said we didn’t have to worry about it and others thought that we needed to have everything in place in case there were some bugs from space, was that ever a concern for the group, for you personally, or your family?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I believe we signed a waiver saying that if we did get quarantined, we could only be paid eight hours a day, and that kind of stuff. If there was a medical problem they would take care of us, but we couldn’t sue NASA because of it. I swear I signed that type of waiver. I can’t be positive now. That’s too many years ago.

[Assistant] Probably in a record somewhere. Well, you mentioned the showering in and out and that sort of thing. So there were a lot of precautions taken to keep everything as pristine on the inside also.

[User] Right. We tried to keep contamination away from the samples. We tried to keep any contamination from samples coming towards us. Everything that went in went through at least a UV system. The food for the animals was autoclaved in. All your tools and instruments were autoclaved in. Then, like I said, we walked through a UV lamp to go in, and we were in surgical-type clothes and had a gas mask on our hip ready to put on if there was a spill. Then on our way out we had to shower, and we would change back into our regular clothes. All of the clothes that we had on, they didn’t come to the original side, they stayed on the lunar side, and they were autoclaved before they were sent out to be washed. So every time we went in, we had on a new set of clothes.

[Assistant] Did that process, as far as what you wore and protection, change during Apollo, or did that pretty much stay the same all the way through?

[User] It stayed the same through Apollo 12. After Apollo 12 we just wore regular clothes with company emblems.

[Assistant] That’s interesting. You mentioned that you were working long hours for about a five-year period, 12 hours a day pretty much every day.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, and we did, as far as I’m concerned. It was a team effort.

[Assistant] Did you live in a community with a lot of other NASA people?

[User] I didn’t know the NASA people as well as I knew the contractor people that I was working with.

[Assistant] By NASA I meant both [civil servants and contractors].

[User] The contractor people. Yes, actually most of the guys at that time—well, no, it was about 50/50. Fifty percent of them were in apartment complexes. I know in one complex next to me there were at least five guys in it, which was good, because they could ride together. Then when they had time off, they had something that they could do together. I was within two blocks of that apartment. Then there were two other guys that had houses within eight or ten blocks of us. But as far as being in like the Baybrook section, no, it wasn’t built up that much. All of us were in League City [Texas], because your engineers and NASA upper management were in Nassau Bay [across from JSC], and at that time we couldn’t afford anything like that, so we were in League City, and we were mainly in apartment complexes or renting.

[Assistant] I know a lot of the neighborhoods and the areas around—because there was such a concentration, and they were all building up because of NASA—a lot of people tended to live close together and work together.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I didn’t know the NASA people as well as I knew the contractor people that I was working with.

[Assistant] By NASA I meant both [civil servants and contractors].

[User] The contractor people. Yes, actually most of the guys at that time—well, no, it was about 50/50. Fifty percent of them were in apartment complexes. I know in one complex next to me there were at least five guys in it, which was good, because they could ride together. Then when they had time off, they had something that they could do together. I was within two blocks of that apartment. Then there were two other guys that had houses within eight or ten blocks of us. But as far as being in like the Baybrook section, no, it wasn’t built up that much. All of us were in League City [Texas], because your engineers and NASA upper management were in Nassau Bay [across from JSC], and at that time we couldn’t afford anything like that, so we were in League City, and we were mainly in apartment complexes or renting.

[Assistant] I know a lot of the neighborhoods and the areas around—because there was such a concentration, and they were all building up because of NASA—a lot of people tended to live close together and work together.

[User] This is true. Kemah, Seabrook, El Lago, Nassau Bay, Webster, and League City. I believe that Interstate 45 South was only two lanes or they were working on it and it was down to two lanes. You know if you are working 12 hours a day and almost 7 days a week, you do not want to live too far away from work. So yes, we were all together in this location. And yes, a lot of the families were close. Another thing, a lot of the people were recruited from other locations, so once they got on they would get their friends on also, then live in the same area.

[Assistant] The Seabrook area had some communities.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] This is true. Kemah, Seabrook, El Lago, Nassau Bay, Webster, and League City. I believe that Interstate 45 South was only two lanes or they were working on it and it was down to two lanes. You know if you are working 12 hours a day and almost 7 days a week, you do not want to live too far away from work. So yes, we were all together in this location. And yes, a lot of the families were close. Another thing, a lot of the people were recruited from other locations, so once they got on they would get their friends on also, then live in the same area.

[Assistant] The Seabrook area had some communities.

[User] Seabrook area, and El Lago is what I was trying to think of. I would say El Lago was a main one, and then you had Nassau Bay, and then the small towns were Kemah, and Seabrook, and then League City, Webster, and then there wasn’t anything else. So I guess you would say that most of us lived in League City.

[Assistant] You mentioned that there was some contamination from some of the workers during—was it after Apollo 11 that happened? You said that some of them had to go into quarantine with the astronauts.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What was the process once that happened or once they were aware that they’d been contaminated or cross-contaminated?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. We never got to see that done. So I don’t know exactly what they did. Safety took care of that.

[Assistant] When the lunar samples returned and you opened that canister, did you ever have anything to do with the film canisters that were coming back, the first photos taken on the Moon?

[User] No.

[Assistant] The vacuum storage system—from our notes, it looked like it was replaced around 1970 by the Sample Storage and Processing Lab, and they were then stored in pure nitrogen containers. How did that affect the work at the LRL and what you were doing, if at all?

[User] I think that some of the containers that were sealed under a vacuum are still under a vacuum even today. What I mean is the containers that we used for the vacuum chambers were stainless steel heavy duty containers. If you seal a container under a vacuum and then bring it out to atmosphere pressure, it will collapse due to the pressure that the atmosphere put on the container, if the container is not strong enough. We used the same containers with the GN2 [gaseous nitrogen] cabinets. This was due to the amount of containers that we had bought and the expense of these containers. Sealing a sample in a Nitrogen Cabinet was usually at a positive pressure of 1 inch water gage pressure which is 0.036 psi [pounds per square inch]. The oxygen level is supposed to be less than 20 ppm [parts per million] and the water level was to be less than 50 ppm. This was to keep the samples from rusting. So, with the GN2 cabinets, after using all the heavy duty stuff, we went to a lighter container. The sample was Teflon bagged and the put into a container or put into a container and some Teflon sheeting put in with it for cushioning material. Then the container was triple bagged and stored.

[Assistant] You mentioned that when you were working under that light and actually had that UV exposure, but you were cataloging everything as it was done, is that correct?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The scientific people—the best way I can explain that is that we knew who they were. We knew who they were because they have given some geology 101 classes The scientists themselves, they were down on the first floor where they had their labs to do their experiments, and they usually had some university tech working with them. So we didn’t have that much time with them—we knew each other and we spoke to each other, but that was about it as far as the scientific. Now we did work with, like I told you, we were going to pull the gas-analysis sample off of the ALSRC, the rock box, before we opened it. We knew who the lead scientist was, but we worked mainly with the university tech that was working with him more than we did with the scientist himself.

[Assistant] So you just had somewhat of a working relationship.

[User] Yes. But by the time Apollo 17 rolled around, well, everybody knew everybody.

[Assistant] You also worked on those lunar sample information catalogs for the Apollo missions, as far as cataloging the information. Your name appeared on a lot of those. Do you have any memory of that? Or does that ring a bell?

[User] Well, no, I think what happens there on the lunar catalog is that since we did the photography and we did the weighing, they just gave us the respect that we worked on it and just put our name on the catalogs. So if you were working on SNAP line you got a certain set of samples, and you carried them from day one all the way to when they got packaged up and stored. So you were doing the dusting, the cleaning, the data work, and the photography, and putting them in a container and sealing it and getting it out. Then they would take that data and make a catalog out of it, and just in respect that we did the work they just put our name on the catalog. So I really can’t tell you much about it.

[Assistant] I know the universities and those kinds of folks were coming in to get samples to work on, and experiments and things being transferred to other universities. Did you have anything to do with any of that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, especially to see a Rottweiler with his doggone teeth showing and foaming at the mouth.

[Assistant] That’s not what I would want to see when I open a door.

[User] Since I had never assumed the position, I really didn’t know what he was talking about—I had never been in trouble with the law before.

[Assistant] Why was San Antonio chosen in the first place?

[User] I think that there were two locations, White Sands [Missile Range, New Mexico] and San Antonio. NASA knew that we were going to have to visit the location at least twice a year. If we needed to transfer out more samples or retrieve some samples then it would be more than that. Brooks was closer and it would be built in a bunker, and you had the Air Force security. After it was built, everything was free, I think. We might have paid them a small fee, but it wasn’t that much a year, because their security was already there. That was one of the reasons we left though, because when the Air Force gave the base to the city, then you had to use the city cops. Their response time was way too slow, and they wanted to charge us a higher price. So we moved out to White Sands. The security is even better at White Sands than what it was in San Antonio. We go through three different gates and we end up with two different badges before it’s over with at White Sands.

[Assistant] Is it a similar setup as at Brooks?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Since I had never assumed the position, I really didn’t know what he was talking about—I had never been in trouble with the law before.

[Assistant] Why was San Antonio chosen in the first place?

[User] I think that there were two locations, White Sands [Missile Range, New Mexico] and San Antonio. NASA knew that we were going to have to visit the location at least twice a year. If we needed to transfer out more samples or retrieve some samples then it would be more than that. Brooks was closer and it would be built in a bunker, and you had the Air Force security. After it was built, everything was free, I think. We might have paid them a small fee, but it wasn’t that much a year, because their security was already there. That was one of the reasons we left though, because when the Air Force gave the base to the city, then you had to use the city cops. Their response time was way too slow, and they wanted to charge us a higher price. So we moved out to White Sands. The security is even better at White Sands than what it was in San Antonio. We go through three different gates and we end up with two different badges before it’s over with at White Sands.

[Assistant] Is it a similar setup as at Brooks?

[User] It’s not in a bunker out there. We’re up against the mountains on one side. But at White Sands, you’re so far into the territory that nobody can get to you unless it’s by aircraft. All of that’s monitored, so nothing’s going to get in—aircraft aren’t allowed to fly over that area. For anyone to figure out what building we’re in would be difficult. We aren’t even allowed telephones. Telephones now have cameras in them. We are allowed to bring in a computer.\n\n Your security badges have to meet—gosh, I don’t know. Security here on site, you’ve got about four different levels. You have to be at a certain level to even be able to get into the area that we’re going into.

[Assistant] Was it the same collection that was at Brooks that was moved to White Sands?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I don’t know the route. In fact, I don’t think anybody knew the route but security, until that morning. I think they had two security cars in front and two behind, and the lead security guy said, “Okay, we’re going out this way, we’re going to hit so-and-so.” He said, “Okay, in five miles we’re going to be taking a right on so-and-so.” The 18-wheeler guy knew exactly where he was. In fact, he, I think, had one of the security guys in his cab, because he had to communicate to tell him what to do. That’s the way they did it. Instead of having the big deal with the highway patrol and all of that, they toned it way down, and nobody knew that they were hauling rocks. It wasn’t advertised or anything.

[Assistant] Probably wasn’t quite as interesting to the public by the time it was moved again in 2002 as it was earlier, either.

[User] True.

[Assistant] What percentage of the collection is actually out there?

[User] Approximately 25 percent of the lunar material. You also have samples from Stardust and Genesis.

[Assistant] You mentioned earlier that the scientists are still studying this because of the technology changes and the changes in the instruments. Then there’s also been a lot of technology changes here in the lab. Not just with the instruments themselves, but going from when you were first cataloging and writing everything down to computers being used on a daily basis and those kinds of technology changes. If you can just for a minute talk about some of those changes and how it’s affected the work here in the lab as far as the lunar samples.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We had to learn CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation] and had this dummy that people still use today called “Resuscitation Annie.” At that time in CPR, they always had you beat on the chest before you did the compressions. So everybody had been talking about it. It was my turn to go down and try, and I whopped the dummy on the chest several times. Hand kind of smarted a little bit. Went through it, and it’s okay. About that time my hand just started to swell up, and I had broken the fifth metacarpal, and everybody concluded they didn’t want to have a heart attack with me around.

[Assistant] [Laughs] Oh, gosh. Well, I can’t imagine being fifty-six days and giving you that feeling of a Space Station environment. And working so closely with Life Science, that was, I guess, another unique experience where you became very closely involved with all of the experiences as well.

[User] Since we had all the medical experiments on board that [were] going to be flying, and the medical aspect of it was a primary objective, we did work very closely with Life Sciences and did all of the bad things that we could think of to do to your body to make sure you were still healthy.

[Assistant] What type of input did you give them as far as from the astronaut perspective about what would work, what’s not going to work?

[User] Well, the urine collection system on board was very vital to Skylab, because they needed to sample the urine and freeze it, and bring it back and those kind of things. It was sized too small and one burst in the chamber, which was not fun. But as a result of that, the system became larger.

[Assistant] You also had input on communication systems and timelines and those types of things that are long-duration elements.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Since we had all the medical experiments on board that [were] going to be flying, and the medical aspect of it was a primary objective, we did work very closely with Life Sciences and did all of the bad things that we could think of to do to your body to make sure you were still healthy.

[Assistant] What type of input did you give them as far as from the astronaut perspective about what would work, what’s not going to work?

[User] Well, the urine collection system on board was very vital to Skylab, because they needed to sample the urine and freeze it, and bring it back and those kind of things. It was sized too small and one burst in the chamber, which was not fun. But as a result of that, the system became larger.

[Assistant] You also had input on communication systems and timelines and those types of things that are long-duration elements.

[User] Primarily, it was, I guess, more like the psychological thing [to stay busy]. On Skylab they had a lot more [to do]. They were doing Earth observations. They were doing solar observations and those kinds of things, and we didn’t have them. So we went through trying to add things just to keep us occupied, and I think that was carried over, that you want people to be busy, but you also want them to have time to relax. We did some of that; probably should have done it better, because we ended up overworking a couple of the Skylab [crews] somehow.

[Assistant] Were these some of the aspects and elements that you thought you’d be doing as part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory when you were part of the Air Force? [Crippen laughs.] Or can you share with us what you were supposed to do?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, the urine collection system on board was very vital to Skylab, because they needed to sample the urine and freeze it, and bring it back and those kind of things. It was sized too small and one burst in the chamber, which was not fun. But as a result of that, the system became larger.

[Assistant] You also had input on communication systems and timelines and those types of things that are long-duration elements.

[User] Primarily, it was, I guess, more like the psychological thing [to stay busy]. On Skylab they had a lot more [to do]. They were doing Earth observations. They were doing solar observations and those kinds of things, and we didn’t have them. So we went through trying to add things just to keep us occupied, and I think that was carried over, that you want people to be busy, but you also want them to have time to relax. We did some of that; probably should have done it better, because we ended up overworking a couple of the Skylab [crews] somehow.

[Assistant] Were these some of the aspects and elements that you thought you’d be doing as part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory when you were part of the Air Force? [Crippen laughs.] Or can you share with us what you were supposed to do?

[User] Well, if I told you what we were doing on MOL, I’d have to shoot you. It’s still classified. But essentially, it was a laboratory that was going to go up for thirty days and do military experiments. So we had all the problems of living in orbit for long durations and working up there with two-man crews, because we were using the Gemini vehicle as our vehicle up and down. But many of the things, just with the living aspects of being in orbit for a long period of times were directly associated with Skylab, and that was one of the reasons I think most of us were assigned to work on Skylab.

[Assistant] I understand, too, that you had a different qualification for being pulled in as part of the astronaut corps. All of you were very qualified, but the astronaut corps couldn’t take everybody, so you were split in half.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, absolutely. I don’t guess they could be Sim Sups if they weren’t tough. What they were primarily trying to do is to make sure that the procedures we had in place would work and that we knew how to use them. That was for both us in the cockpit and for the Mission Control folks, because we all had to work together. They would run you through the wringer, which is what we wanted them to do. If there was something that could fail, we wanted to make sure we could deal with it.\n\n It was kind of funny that my middle daughter is one of those simulator instructors today. [Laughs] And I hear she’s pretty tough.

[Assistant] She might need to use you as a student. I understand that maybe one of the rules that you can’t drink coffee during training simulations is your doing. [Crippen laughs.] Want to explain to us how that rule came about?

[User] Oh yes. Early on we were getting ready for one of our first big integrated sims [simulations] with Mission Control, and John and I used to—we would climb up in the cockpit with our cups of coffee and sit down in our seats and proceed to work. [Then] one day with this simulation going on, we climbed in and put our coffee down, and we set them on some checklists, books that we had sitting there on the console.\n\n Somehow during the process of getting ready—this was before the sim started—my cup of coffee ended up spilling over, all over the center console between the pilot and the commander, which was full of electrical apparatus. Sure enough, lights started to light up everywhere in the cockpit and on the simulator’s console. So we had to fess up that, hey, it was probably not going to work that day, and we had to come down.\n\n I’m curious as to whether people carry coffee into the cockpit anymore. I doubt it. [Laughs]

[Assistant] I don’t think so. One of the other tools that you used to train for the mission was the STA [Shuttle Training Aircraft].

[User] Right.

[Assistant] Talk about the Shuttle Training Aircraft and how that helped you.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, I knew getting into Kennedy Space Center, their runway, the first time was also going to be a challenge. My friend John Young believed that we ought to be landing out there on the lakebed, where you’ve got lots of opportunity to correct for problems because you’ve got so many places that you can land. So I didn’t think that landing at KSC was going to be that easy.\n\n John was the weather checker in our Shuttle Training Airplane at Kennedy, and he saw some weather, which it can develop very rapidly, which he and I both know. So he properly waved us off on that first time, and we elected to wait another day and try it. And sure enough, that didn’t work out, either, and we ended up coming into Edwards.\n\n But truthfully, that extra day we got on orbit was a free day. There wasn’t any real work to be done, so all of us had an opportunity to sit back and enjoy, and maybe play a little bit while we were on orbit.

[Assistant] I understand you had some organized events. Want to talk to us about the first round of Space Olympics?

[User] [Laughs] It was hard to keep this crew under control sometimes. But you can end up with a loop going from the flight deck down through one hatch into the middeck, back up through another hatch into the flight deck, and we did have what we called a Space Flight Olympics, of seeing who could get around the fastest.

[Assistant] I understand awards were given. What award did you take home?

[User] There were awards. I think I took the “Most Dangerous.” I bumped my side against something, a ladder or something I shouldn’t have.

[Assistant] It’s a good thing you all had a good time. Well, how different was the landing for you this time?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] [Laughs] It was hard to keep this crew under control sometimes. But you can end up with a loop going from the flight deck down through one hatch into the middeck, back up through another hatch into the flight deck, and we did have what we called a Space Flight Olympics, of seeing who could get around the fastest.

[Assistant] I understand awards were given. What award did you take home?

[User] There were awards. I think I took the “Most Dangerous.” I bumped my side against something, a ladder or something I shouldn’t have.

[Assistant] It’s a good thing you all had a good time. Well, how different was the landing for you this time?

[User] Well, I had hold of the stick this time. [Laughs] We, again, landed on a lakebed out at Edwards, I believe on 18. It was pretty much like I’d practiced in the Shuttle Training Airplane. I felt like I had done it before, so it’s like John taught me, that practice, practice, practice makes perfect, and that’s the way it was. So we landed out there. Didn’t have a big crowd this time, because people had been planning on us going the other way, but it was good, and we enjoyed it.

[Assistant] How did you feel after this mission, compared to your first one? This one was longer. It was six days, compared to just two. Physically, emotionally, how did you take it?