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

[User] Oh, the very first Apollo, which was Apollo 201, which was not a real spacecraft. It was a launch vehicle test and had a spacecraft with some capabilities. We all worked all of those things in some capacity. In the early days, we didn't have crews working with us yet, so some of us would do capcom functions, and do the things in terms of sequencing the computer, like the launch abort mode would change when it was time to jettison the launch escape system, that tower with the rocket. So you had to tell the computer when that had happened, and that nominally was done on a voice report from the crew, so we had those kinds of inputs to make to the computer. When staging happened and you switched first stage to second stage, the astronaut, the capcom, would tell us. So we had those kind of functions early.\n\n I was not the flight dynamics officer on any of those until probably the first real [manned] Apollo. We had other folks in training that were running all of those jobs. I was very much involved in this integration function that I had done almost from the time I came here, so they were doing that, but when it came time to put people in it, then I was the lead flight dynamics officer. We went and did that.

[Assistant] Unfortunately, the first one that was supposed to be—

[User] Well, not the one we actually flew.

[Assistant] Oh, the Apollo 7?

[User] Yes. I had the same role on Grissom's flight where they got killed, yes.

[Assistant] That, unfortunately, did cause some changes that were necessitated and such, but yet a lot of people have said that without such an incident they wouldn't have been able to make it to the Moon probably eventually.


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

[User] Well, not the one we actually flew.

[Assistant] Oh, the Apollo 7?

[User] Yes. I had the same role on Grissom's flight where they got killed, yes.

[Assistant] That, unfortunately, did cause some changes that were necessitated and such, but yet a lot of people have said that without such an incident they wouldn't have been able to make it to the Moon probably eventually.

[User] I hear that. I don't disagree with it, nor do I understand it. I don't know whether they mean that there was design deficiencies or whether the quality wasn't good enough to go. I've never truly been able to make that distinction, but they do say that, and so we ended up with a very different vehicle in terms of its capability. So I'm certainly willing to accept it. I [don't] have reservations about that. But sometimes it takes something like that to really clear the air, too, and to get everybody really serious about what we were doing. Maybe that's what they mean when they say we needed that kind of incident. I don't know, but it was tough. I mean, we were in the control center when the guys died. That was not one of my favorite memories.

[Assistant] I certainly can understand why. Apollo 7 kind of brought the whole Apollo program together, bringing it all, making it work, and then this was the first mission in that you worked from the control room as flight dynamics officer then?


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

[User] Yes. I had the same role on Grissom's flight where they got killed, yes.

[Assistant] That, unfortunately, did cause some changes that were necessitated and such, but yet a lot of people have said that without such an incident they wouldn't have been able to make it to the Moon probably eventually.

[User] I hear that. I don't disagree with it, nor do I understand it. I don't know whether they mean that there was design deficiencies or whether the quality wasn't good enough to go. I've never truly been able to make that distinction, but they do say that, and so we ended up with a very different vehicle in terms of its capability. So I'm certainly willing to accept it. I [don't] have reservations about that. But sometimes it takes something like that to really clear the air, too, and to get everybody really serious about what we were doing. Maybe that's what they mean when they say we needed that kind of incident. I don't know, but it was tough. I mean, we were in the control center when the guys died. That was not one of my favorite memories.

[Assistant] I certainly can understand why. Apollo 7 kind of brought the whole Apollo program together, bringing it all, making it work, and then this was the first mission in that you worked from the control room as flight dynamics officer then?

[User] Yes, it was.

[Assistant] That must have been very rewarding to see it all come together and work.


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

[User] Yes, it was.

[Assistant] That must have been very rewarding to see it all come together and work.

[User] Well, it was. It not only was the first launch that I had done and the first launch of a manned Apollo, but it was also the first rendezvous that I had done, and we did it without a "transponder." Because we re-rendezvoused with the third stage, or actually the second stage of the launch vehicle, and it didn't have this wonderful transponder that gave you both range and range rate to tell you how fast you were closing on it, so you had to derive that from the range data. We got through that all right. It was also the first long-duration mission I'd done. We were there for ten days.\n\n It was the first sick crew I'd gotten to deal with. We got involved in that. I have to tell you that the job Glynn Lunney did, Glynn was the flight director then, and dealing with the sick crew was just nothing short of magnificent. I couldn't believe the Irishman could be that cool while he was being rained on from orbit. [Laughter] He did good.\n\n We had lots of memories about that one, too, you know. Launch phase was, I think it was this one, I think we got to orbit, we got the coast segment, we gave them a go-for-orbit, and the control center went dark, for real.

[Assistant] Oh, no.

[User] I'm almost sure that's what it was. A guy with a ditcher had gone through the power cables outside the control center. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Oops. Oh, dear. What did you do at that point?


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

[User] Well, we looked at the emergency lights. [Laughter] It was real quiet. Part of Apollo, part of early Apollo, was a very limited tracking network, so we had built…the Apollo instrumentation ships and had them placed around in strategic locations, and one of which was down range in the Atlantic, so that if we lost the control center, they would be able to monitor the latter part of boost and give them a go-for-orbit. A youngster named Jay Greene, who turned out to be the flight director on Challenger when it blew up, he was on the instrumentation ship.\n\n So it wasn't a panic, because we knew they were there and that they were up, so we got back and got it all pulled back together and pressed on with ten days of boring holes in the sky. It was not boring, but it was boring. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I guess it's good that all the training and simulation that you had done beforehand was able to—and people had the experience they needed to make it all happen.

[User] Well, I had been integral in the requirements for those ships, too, so I knew what they were capable of, and I had hired Jay from Rockwell, so I knew what he was capable of.

[Assistant] That's good.

[User] Another little piece of history there that I hadn't thought of in a long time.

[Assistant] I'm sure somebody changed some procedures about digging ditches. [Laughter]


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

[User] Well, I had been integral in the requirements for those ships, too, so I knew what they were capable of, and I had hired Jay from Rockwell, so I knew what he was capable of.

[Assistant] That's good.

[User] Another little piece of history there that I hadn't thought of in a long time.

[Assistant] I'm sure somebody changed some procedures about digging ditches. [Laughter]

[User] Got to impound all the ditchers during the launch phase. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Definitely not something you'd want to have happen when you were about to land on the Moon or anything. I suppose if it had to happen on a mission, that was maybe the best one that—


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

[User] Another little piece of history there that I hadn't thought of in a long time.

[Assistant] I'm sure somebody changed some procedures about digging ditches. [Laughter]

[User] Got to impound all the ditchers during the launch phase. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Definitely not something you'd want to have happen when you were about to land on the Moon or anything. I suppose if it had to happen on a mission, that was maybe the best one that—

[User] It was a great way to get started. It taught us a lot about what we needed to do with the flight crews before we flew, too, because, in all honesty, Wally [Walter M. Schirra, Jr.] and the guys were not fully briefed on all the tests that were going to be done, and some of them they heard for the first time while they were there [on orbit]. Then because we were there and because it was new, we actually invented a couple of new things to do while we were there, and at least one of those went really wrong and crashed the on-board computer. I mean, it was training for all of us. It was not just checkout of the spacecraft.

[Assistant] Had you, previous to that time, had a lot of interaction with the flight crew, or also did your interaction levels then with the flight crew change after that?


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

[User] It was a great way to get started. It taught us a lot about what we needed to do with the flight crews before we flew, too, because, in all honesty, Wally [Walter M. Schirra, Jr.] and the guys were not fully briefed on all the tests that were going to be done, and some of them they heard for the first time while they were there [on orbit]. Then because we were there and because it was new, we actually invented a couple of new things to do while we were there, and at least one of those went really wrong and crashed the on-board computer. I mean, it was training for all of us. It was not just checkout of the spacecraft.

[Assistant] Had you, previous to that time, had a lot of interaction with the flight crew, or also did your interaction levels then with the flight crew change after that?

[User] No. No, we had lots of interaction with them. The flight dynamics team spent a lot of time with the flight crew, because the trajectory management was the dynamic part of the phase, doing all the maneuvers and calculating the thing, getting them there, getting them home, and so we did. But all of us were neophytes. I mean, Wally wasn't, because he had flown in Mercury and Gemini, but we were, so we didn't know all the things that we really needed to talk to them about.\n\n Plus we had a lot of fun with them, too. One of the things that Wally and I did continually was make quarter bets on trajectory-related events while he was in the simulator. I nearly broke him with that. [Laughter] He was easy. But Wally and I had a good time. He was, for the most part, a pretty nice guy. But he was confident. But [Apollo] 7 was problematic for him because he was sick.

[Assistant] Certainly couldn't have been a comfortable situation, and then like you said, there were so many new things.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] It was a good learning mission for everyone.


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

[User] No. No, we had lots of interaction with them. The flight dynamics team spent a lot of time with the flight crew, because the trajectory management was the dynamic part of the phase, doing all the maneuvers and calculating the thing, getting them there, getting them home, and so we did. But all of us were neophytes. I mean, Wally wasn't, because he had flown in Mercury and Gemini, but we were, so we didn't know all the things that we really needed to talk to them about.\n\n Plus we had a lot of fun with them, too. One of the things that Wally and I did continually was make quarter bets on trajectory-related events while he was in the simulator. I nearly broke him with that. [Laughter] He was easy. But Wally and I had a good time. He was, for the most part, a pretty nice guy. But he was confident. But [Apollo] 7 was problematic for him because he was sick.

[Assistant] Certainly couldn't have been a comfortable situation, and then like you said, there were so many new things.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] It was a good learning mission for everyone.

[User] It was, which is what it was supposed to be. You cannot imagine how surprised we were when, although we were really bound up in Apollo 7, when—and I don't remember exactly when it was, but it could have been like the week before launch—they said, "We're going to go to the Moon on the next one." [Laughter]

[Assistant] That must have been shocking, from your standpoint.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] It was a good learning mission for everyone.

[User] It was, which is what it was supposed to be. You cannot imagine how surprised we were when, although we were really bound up in Apollo 7, when—and I don't remember exactly when it was, but it could have been like the week before launch—they said, "We're going to go to the Moon on the next one." [Laughter]

[Assistant] That must have been shocking, from your standpoint.

[User] It was. We couldn't go work on it, because we were getting ready to fly. Jay and I were clearly going to be leads on this first flight to the Moon, so we splashed down from Apollo 7 and sixty days later we went to the Moon. That was exciting. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's one way of putting it. [Laughter]


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

[User] It was, which is what it was supposed to be. You cannot imagine how surprised we were when, although we were really bound up in Apollo 7, when—and I don't remember exactly when it was, but it could have been like the week before launch—they said, "We're going to go to the Moon on the next one." [Laughter]

[Assistant] That must have been shocking, from your standpoint.

[User] It was. We couldn't go work on it, because we were getting ready to fly. Jay and I were clearly going to be leads on this first flight to the Moon, so we splashed down from Apollo 7 and sixty days later we went to the Moon. That was exciting. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's one way of putting it. [Laughter]

[User] It was.

[Assistant] Did you stop at that point ever and think about, "Wow, look at what we're really doing here"?


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

[User] It was. We couldn't go work on it, because we were getting ready to fly. Jay and I were clearly going to be leads on this first flight to the Moon, so we splashed down from Apollo 7 and sixty days later we went to the Moon. That was exciting. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's one way of putting it. [Laughter]

[User] It was.

[Assistant] Did you stop at that point ever and think about, "Wow, look at what we're really doing here"?

[User] No, we were 60-day intervals then, and I mean, it was end one and start on the next one.

[Assistant] How did you bring it all together for Apollo 8 to work, or did it just kind of—


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

[User] It was.

[Assistant] Did you stop at that point ever and think about, "Wow, look at what we're really doing here"?

[User] No, we were 60-day intervals then, and I mean, it was end one and start on the next one.

[Assistant] How did you bring it all together for Apollo 8 to work, or did it just kind of—

[User] No, we had started it, and we brought all the stuff that we were doing for what would have been the first one out, which would have probably been Apollo 10 anyway. I mean, we had all of that work done and the waves were started. We had some guys coming from Gemini now who were capable. I mean, Ed [Edward L.] Pavelka pretty much picked up the load while Jay and I finished with Apollo 7 and got on with that.

[Assistant] What shift were you assigned to in Apollo 8 for the mission actually going to the Moon?


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

[User] No, we were 60-day intervals then, and I mean, it was end one and start on the next one.

[Assistant] How did you bring it all together for Apollo 8 to work, or did it just kind of—

[User] No, we had started it, and we brought all the stuff that we were doing for what would have been the first one out, which would have probably been Apollo 10 anyway. I mean, we had all of that work done and the waves were started. We had some guys coming from Gemini now who were capable. I mean, Ed [Edward L.] Pavelka pretty much picked up the load while Jay and I finished with Apollo 7 and got on with that.

[Assistant] What shift were you assigned to in Apollo 8 for the mission actually going to the Moon?

[User] Jay launched it. I no longer remember who did reentry, but I did the lunar orbit parts, the getting in and out of lunar orbit. The orbit determination problem was going to be a real zoo there, because we hadn't done that before with a vehicle. JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] had done it, we hadn't done it yet.

[Assistant] When they went behind the Moon for the first time and you were waiting to see whether they had gotten lunar orbit, what was that like?


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

[User] No, we had started it, and we brought all the stuff that we were doing for what would have been the first one out, which would have probably been Apollo 10 anyway. I mean, we had all of that work done and the waves were started. We had some guys coming from Gemini now who were capable. I mean, Ed [Edward L.] Pavelka pretty much picked up the load while Jay and I finished with Apollo 7 and got on with that.

[Assistant] What shift were you assigned to in Apollo 8 for the mission actually going to the Moon?

[User] Jay launched it. I no longer remember who did reentry, but I did the lunar orbit parts, the getting in and out of lunar orbit. The orbit determination problem was going to be a real zoo there, because we hadn't done that before with a vehicle. JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] had done it, we hadn't done it yet.

[Assistant] When they went behind the Moon for the first time and you were waiting to see whether they had gotten lunar orbit, what was that like?

[User] It was not nice. They're up there with a single engine, no backup. If they have problems with the engine, they can end up in anything from doing a whifferdill around the Moon and going away, to being stuck in lunar orbit. I mean, we had the same problem when they did trans-Earth injection. All of the things that you worried about during lunar orbit insertion are now possible again in trans-Earth injection, because they're all basically associated with changing the energy of the orbit that you're in. One of the ways the orbit gets squirrelly, instead of being an orbit that has enough energy to go around the Moon and come all the way back to Earth, it has enough energy to go around the Moon and then get to the point where the Earth and the Moon have equal gravitational pull on it. Then who knows where it goes from there, or does it become another little moonlet? It's scary.

[Assistant] It must have been a very intense time.


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

[User] Jay launched it. I no longer remember who did reentry, but I did the lunar orbit parts, the getting in and out of lunar orbit. The orbit determination problem was going to be a real zoo there, because we hadn't done that before with a vehicle. JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] had done it, we hadn't done it yet.

[Assistant] When they went behind the Moon for the first time and you were waiting to see whether they had gotten lunar orbit, what was that like?

[User] It was not nice. They're up there with a single engine, no backup. If they have problems with the engine, they can end up in anything from doing a whifferdill around the Moon and going away, to being stuck in lunar orbit. I mean, we had the same problem when they did trans-Earth injection. All of the things that you worried about during lunar orbit insertion are now possible again in trans-Earth injection, because they're all basically associated with changing the energy of the orbit that you're in. One of the ways the orbit gets squirrelly, instead of being an orbit that has enough energy to go around the Moon and come all the way back to Earth, it has enough energy to go around the Moon and then get to the point where the Earth and the Moon have equal gravitational pull on it. Then who knows where it goes from there, or does it become another little moonlet? It's scary.

[Assistant] It must have been a very intense time.

[User] It really was scary. So doing it again when we back on Apollo 10 and had a lunar module with us for a backup engine, you know, it was just like being in a Cadillac after we'd just gotten done with a manure spreader. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, it must have been very rewarding or satisfying or a relief when it did all work.


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

[User] It was not nice. They're up there with a single engine, no backup. If they have problems with the engine, they can end up in anything from doing a whifferdill around the Moon and going away, to being stuck in lunar orbit. I mean, we had the same problem when they did trans-Earth injection. All of the things that you worried about during lunar orbit insertion are now possible again in trans-Earth injection, because they're all basically associated with changing the energy of the orbit that you're in. One of the ways the orbit gets squirrelly, instead of being an orbit that has enough energy to go around the Moon and come all the way back to Earth, it has enough energy to go around the Moon and then get to the point where the Earth and the Moon have equal gravitational pull on it. Then who knows where it goes from there, or does it become another little moonlet? It's scary.

[Assistant] It must have been a very intense time.

[User] It really was scary. So doing it again when we back on Apollo 10 and had a lunar module with us for a backup engine, you know, it was just like being in a Cadillac after we'd just gotten done with a manure spreader. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, it must have been very rewarding or satisfying or a relief when it did all work.

[User] It was, and we were all like sponges again. I mean, we were learning so much about translunar navigation problems and lunar orbit navigation. We were seeing things that we didn't expect, which were little perturbations to the trajectory, and were just absolutely stunned at how sensitive it all was. By the same token, we learned about how easy it was to fix, because if it was a small perturbation to disturb the trajectory, then it was a small maneuver to fix it, too.

[Assistant] It was a good learning mission, then.


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

[User] It really was scary. So doing it again when we back on Apollo 10 and had a lunar module with us for a backup engine, you know, it was just like being in a Cadillac after we'd just gotten done with a manure spreader. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, it must have been very rewarding or satisfying or a relief when it did all work.

[User] It was, and we were all like sponges again. I mean, we were learning so much about translunar navigation problems and lunar orbit navigation. We were seeing things that we didn't expect, which were little perturbations to the trajectory, and were just absolutely stunned at how sensitive it all was. By the same token, we learned about how easy it was to fix, because if it was a small perturbation to disturb the trajectory, then it was a small maneuver to fix it, too.

[Assistant] It was a good learning mission, then.

[User] Yes, but we all ended with a great deal of confidence in the vehicle, too. The vehicle was really, really a piece of work.

[Assistant] The vehicle and the crews, crews supporting it, both the flight crew and the ground crews, that you all knew what you were doing.


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

[User] It was, and we were all like sponges again. I mean, we were learning so much about translunar navigation problems and lunar orbit navigation. We were seeing things that we didn't expect, which were little perturbations to the trajectory, and were just absolutely stunned at how sensitive it all was. By the same token, we learned about how easy it was to fix, because if it was a small perturbation to disturb the trajectory, then it was a small maneuver to fix it, too.

[Assistant] It was a good learning mission, then.

[User] Yes, but we all ended with a great deal of confidence in the vehicle, too. The vehicle was really, really a piece of work.

[Assistant] The vehicle and the crews, crews supporting it, both the flight crew and the ground crews, that you all knew what you were doing.

[User] You're correct.

[Assistant] If we could go ahead and take a break here and we'll change out our tapes.\n\n We've just finished talking about Apollo 8 and the challenge with that mission and some of the things you discovered going around. Some of the next missions were then building up still toward the lunar landing, Apollo 9 with the lunar module and command module, both testing out in Earth orbit and then [Apollo] 10 going back to the Moon and testing them both in lunar orbit. Were there any particular incidents around either of those missions that stuck in your mind, or any particular things you learned?


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

[User] Yes, but we all ended with a great deal of confidence in the vehicle, too. The vehicle was really, really a piece of work.

[Assistant] The vehicle and the crews, crews supporting it, both the flight crew and the ground crews, that you all knew what you were doing.

[User] You're correct.

[Assistant] If we could go ahead and take a break here and we'll change out our tapes.\n\n We've just finished talking about Apollo 8 and the challenge with that mission and some of the things you discovered going around. Some of the next missions were then building up still toward the lunar landing, Apollo 9 with the lunar module and command module, both testing out in Earth orbit and then [Apollo] 10 going back to the Moon and testing them both in lunar orbit. Were there any particular incidents around either of those missions that stuck in your mind, or any particular things you learned?

[User] Yes, I launched Apollo 10, and also I got to run the first rendezvous around the Moon. If I remember the numbers, the command module and the lunar module got about 700 miles apart, something like that, and then we had to bring them back together. So that was another great reassurance builder, about our ability to navigate and to pull it off. It was an easier problem than getting the crew up off the lunar surface, which turned out was going to be next. I don't think it was supposed to be, but the way the schedules worked out, it was. So that piece, from a learning and a performance standpoint, was really important.\n\n I don't remember anything particular about launch phase or lunar orbit other than that. I mean, it was pretty much we'd done it once and now we did it again, except when the crew came out from behind the Moon after trans-Earth injection, the crew advised the ground that I was going to get a bottle of champagne for [having done] all that. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's pretty special.


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

[User] You're correct.

[Assistant] If we could go ahead and take a break here and we'll change out our tapes.\n\n We've just finished talking about Apollo 8 and the challenge with that mission and some of the things you discovered going around. Some of the next missions were then building up still toward the lunar landing, Apollo 9 with the lunar module and command module, both testing out in Earth orbit and then [Apollo] 10 going back to the Moon and testing them both in lunar orbit. Were there any particular incidents around either of those missions that stuck in your mind, or any particular things you learned?

[User] Yes, I launched Apollo 10, and also I got to run the first rendezvous around the Moon. If I remember the numbers, the command module and the lunar module got about 700 miles apart, something like that, and then we had to bring them back together. So that was another great reassurance builder, about our ability to navigate and to pull it off. It was an easier problem than getting the crew up off the lunar surface, which turned out was going to be next. I don't think it was supposed to be, but the way the schedules worked out, it was. So that piece, from a learning and a performance standpoint, was really important.\n\n I don't remember anything particular about launch phase or lunar orbit other than that. I mean, it was pretty much we'd done it once and now we did it again, except when the crew came out from behind the Moon after trans-Earth injection, the crew advised the ground that I was going to get a bottle of champagne for [having done] all that. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's pretty special.

[User] So I thought that was neat.

[Assistant] That's nice to have them recognize your work in that manner. Do you keep a recording of that part of the—


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

[User] Yes, I launched Apollo 10, and also I got to run the first rendezvous around the Moon. If I remember the numbers, the command module and the lunar module got about 700 miles apart, something like that, and then we had to bring them back together. So that was another great reassurance builder, about our ability to navigate and to pull it off. It was an easier problem than getting the crew up off the lunar surface, which turned out was going to be next. I don't think it was supposed to be, but the way the schedules worked out, it was. So that piece, from a learning and a performance standpoint, was really important.\n\n I don't remember anything particular about launch phase or lunar orbit other than that. I mean, it was pretty much we'd done it once and now we did it again, except when the crew came out from behind the Moon after trans-Earth injection, the crew advised the ground that I was going to get a bottle of champagne for [having done] all that. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's pretty special.

[User] So I thought that was neat.

[Assistant] That's nice to have them recognize your work in that manner. Do you keep a recording of that part of the—

[User] No. No, I didn't. I should have. I never got the champagne. [Laughter] But that didn't really matter; it was the acknowledgement.\n\n And sixty days later, whatever it was, we went back and I'm now ending my career as a flight dynamics officer. I pulled one shift on Apollo 11 and that was the launch rendezvous off the lunar surface, and that was the last time that I served as a flight dynamics officer.

[Assistant] That's certainly a very special mission to have your last one.


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

[User] Basically that's the last—I think that's the last clear memory I have of anything to do with Apollo, and I was off to do Skylab then. Somewhere in there we had started the mission techniques work for Skylab, and it was so different from the Moon. The Moon began very quickly to be like a really good dream with all its intensity that you could reconstruct anytime you wanted to, but it was kind of surrealistic in a way, too. You all may have had that experience, to go out and look at Moon now and think that thirty years ago we were walking around on that. Say what? [Laughter]

[Assistant] It really is something to think about.

[User] It's very different.

[Assistant] Having two of the critical missions in the Apollo program, we've touched on Apollo 8 and Apollo 11—

[User] You know, I've left out a huge piece here. I have left out a huge—I didn't realize I was leaving it out. In the middle of all of this, I was made a Flight Director.

[Assistant] Yes. [Laughter] We will definitely talk about that.


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

[User] It's very different.

[Assistant] Having two of the critical missions in the Apollo program, we've touched on Apollo 8 and Apollo 11—

[User] You know, I've left out a huge piece here. I have left out a huge—I didn't realize I was leaving it out. In the middle of all of this, I was made a Flight Director.

[Assistant] Yes. [Laughter] We will definitely talk about that.

[User] You know, it's a bit of overwhelm. We had data priority for Apollo, data priority for Skylab, assistant chief of the Flight Dynamics Branch, and now I'm going to be a flight director [Purple Flight]. Some of the younger guys, and I remember Bill [William M.] Stovall and Chuck [Charles F.] Dieterich, who were a couple of guys from the trench, they would come to talk to me about a problem and they would ask me which hat I was wearing. [Laughter] Because I was in a position where I was working for myself, and it was very confusing to them as to what role I was speaking, as their administrative leader or as the data priority, or was I being a flight director, because the perspective is different from all of those things.\n\n Yes, Apollo 16.

[Assistant] When did you get the opportunity to be a flight director? Do you recall how that happened, how that came about?


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

[User] You know, I've left out a huge piece here. I have left out a huge—I didn't realize I was leaving it out. In the middle of all of this, I was made a Flight Director.

[Assistant] Yes. [Laughter] We will definitely talk about that.

[User] You know, it's a bit of overwhelm. We had data priority for Apollo, data priority for Skylab, assistant chief of the Flight Dynamics Branch, and now I'm going to be a flight director [Purple Flight]. Some of the younger guys, and I remember Bill [William M.] Stovall and Chuck [Charles F.] Dieterich, who were a couple of guys from the trench, they would come to talk to me about a problem and they would ask me which hat I was wearing. [Laughter] Because I was in a position where I was working for myself, and it was very confusing to them as to what role I was speaking, as their administrative leader or as the data priority, or was I being a flight director, because the perspective is different from all of those things.\n\n Yes, Apollo 16.

[Assistant] When did you get the opportunity to be a flight director? Do you recall how that happened, how that came about?

[User] No. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Okay, that's fine.


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

[User] No. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Okay, that's fine.

[User] No, I don't. I really don't remember the specifics. Don [Donald R.] Puddy and Chuck [Charles R.] Lewis and Neil [B.] Hutchison and I, it was serendipity, all four of our home states start with O. [Laughter] We weren't really made flight directors; we were made deputy flight directors. And I didn't understand why, since the previous classes had not been deputy flight directors, until I understood that Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz, when he had been named, was named the deputy flight director. He was the Director of Flight Operations now, so he's the namer of the flight directors, so he was not going to start us out at a rank above the one he'd started at. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Certainly not.

[User] We knew that we were going to be flight directors for Skylab, that that was our principal role, and what we did on Apollo as flight directors was OJT [on-the-job training]. It was training in being a flight director. Don and I worked Apollo 16, and Neil and Chuck worked Apollo 17. The other pair worked in what was called the SPAN [Spacecraft Analysis] room, which was an advisory room to support the ones that were on the console.

[Assistant] What did your training entail for the job?


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

[User] Yes. And it won't retract. It's stuck. It's jammed. We fooled with it, fooled with it, and we're approaching loss of signal prior to trans-Earth injection. And I remember we've got all these heavy-hitters up behind me on the console and they're going to have a philosophy, they're going to have a plan. I told them how many minutes they had till loss of signal, and I can hear them up there debating about what's the right thing to do. We ran out of time, and I told the capcom [to tell the crew] to jettison the mass spectrometer boom with that pyrotechnic device on it, and it banged it and had already gotten the vehicle in attitude so that we would punch that boom out into an orbit that we wouldn't intersect it again, you know, from trans-Earth. They did, and it went away and gave them a go for trans-Earth injection, and they went behind the Moon. In a couple three or four minutes, this gang behind me says, "We have a recommendation for you."\n\n I said, "Nope, I have a recommendation for you. Take a break, and in about forty minutes we'll have AOS and the crew should be on their way home."\n\n And they said, "Oh, okay." [Laughter]

[Assistant] You did the job they had put you in a position to do.

[User] There was Apollo 16. It's amazing that I forgot there for a moment I'd done that.

[Assistant] Well, you did a lot of things. Talking more about Apollo 16, before they had gone down to the lunar surface, they had some problems with the command module engine and some oscillations with that. Were you at all involved in—

[User] Jay [Greene] was on for that. Yes.

[Assistant] Did you work any of the lunar surface activities?


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

[User] There was Apollo 16. It's amazing that I forgot there for a moment I'd done that.

[Assistant] Well, you did a lot of things. Talking more about Apollo 16, before they had gone down to the lunar surface, they had some problems with the command module engine and some oscillations with that. Were you at all involved in—

[User] Jay [Greene] was on for that. Yes.

[Assistant] Did you work any of the lunar surface activities?

[User] Everybody pulled a shift, but I think we deputy flight directors were doing sleep shift planning things. I don't think we were doing active activities. I don't recall doing those, so it would make sense that we were doing the planning kinds of things.

[Assistant] You certainly had enough interesting things that happened during your times on console.


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

[User] Jay [Greene] was on for that. Yes.

[Assistant] Did you work any of the lunar surface activities?

[User] Everybody pulled a shift, but I think we deputy flight directors were doing sleep shift planning things. I don't think we were doing active activities. I don't recall doing those, so it would make sense that we were doing the planning kinds of things.

[Assistant] You certainly had enough interesting things that happened during your times on console.

[User] Well, actually, Skylab was a lot more interesting from that standpoint than Apollo was, believe it or not.

[Assistant] Well, we will certainly talk on that. Before we go on to Skylab, there's a couple other things I'd like to talk at least briefly about on Apollo.


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

[User] Everybody pulled a shift, but I think we deputy flight directors were doing sleep shift planning things. I don't think we were doing active activities. I don't recall doing those, so it would make sense that we were doing the planning kinds of things.

[Assistant] You certainly had enough interesting things that happened during your times on console.

[User] Well, actually, Skylab was a lot more interesting from that standpoint than Apollo was, believe it or not.

[Assistant] Well, we will certainly talk on that. Before we go on to Skylab, there's a couple other things I'd like to talk at least briefly about on Apollo.

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] One being your thoughts on Apollo 8 and Apollo 11, both unique missions from many standpoints. Is there one of those that you think was the prime mission or the one that accomplished the goal most in your mind, or that was the biggest challenge for you, or meant the most?


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

[User] No. No, we were cocooned. Most of us were working 3,000, 3,500 hours a year on a standard issue 2,000-hour work year. We were all doing close to double time, and that's really all there was. No. Did anything happen then? [Laughter]

[Assistant] A few things. [Laughter]

[User] Well, you know, we really, in a sense, missed the hippie phenomenon. I'm serious. We didn't know anything about that. We'd see a picture of a young woman putting a flower in the end of the rifle and say, "What the hell are they doing that for?" Then we'd go back to whatever it was we were doing.

[Assistant] Well, you certainly had quite a goal to accomplish and work on.

[User] Yes. But I can't tell you how much fun it was. It really was.

[Assistant] Quite an experience.


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

[User] Well, you know, we really, in a sense, missed the hippie phenomenon. I'm serious. We didn't know anything about that. We'd see a picture of a young woman putting a flower in the end of the rifle and say, "What the hell are they doing that for?" Then we'd go back to whatever it was we were doing.

[Assistant] Well, you certainly had quite a goal to accomplish and work on.

[User] Yes. But I can't tell you how much fun it was. It really was.

[Assistant] Quite an experience.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Well, looking at a couple of the other missions, you said that after Apollo 11 you moved into the data priority area, and for Apollo 12, at least from a trajectory standpoint, it was quite a challenge to get—you wanted to go for the pinpoint landings and shooting for the Surveyor. Were you much involved with discussions on that?


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

[User] It's a psychic experience. I sat bolt upright in bed and knew that something awful had happened, and jumped in my clothes and my car and went to the control center.

[Assistant] Oh, my goodness.

[User] Yes, it was a peculiar kind of thing.

[Assistant] Wow. That's kind of chilling.

[User] So I got right in the middle of it just immediately. I had now been flight techniques just long enough that everybody was looking to me instead of Bill. Although Bill was still there and still involved, the piece of the development that I could do, or that mission techniques could do, was my part. Ken Mattingly and John Aaron did the thing that was the limiting resource, which was [they] finally found a way to have enough electricity to get home.

[Assistant] So you worked with them in trying to establish—


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

[User] Yes, it was a peculiar kind of thing.

[Assistant] Wow. That's kind of chilling.

[User] So I got right in the middle of it just immediately. I had now been flight techniques just long enough that everybody was looking to me instead of Bill. Although Bill was still there and still involved, the piece of the development that I could do, or that mission techniques could do, was my part. Ken Mattingly and John Aaron did the thing that was the limiting resource, which was [they] finally found a way to have enough electricity to get home.

[Assistant] So you worked with them in trying to establish—

[User] Well, we did everything we could, and then they just had to take it and finish it.

[Assistant] Quite a time.


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

[User] So I got right in the middle of it just immediately. I had now been flight techniques just long enough that everybody was looking to me instead of Bill. Although Bill was still there and still involved, the piece of the development that I could do, or that mission techniques could do, was my part. Ken Mattingly and John Aaron did the thing that was the limiting resource, which was [they] finally found a way to have enough electricity to get home.

[Assistant] So you worked with them in trying to establish—

[User] Well, we did everything we could, and then they just had to take it and finish it.

[Assistant] Quite a time.

[User] Yes, very much so. I yelled something at my neighbor as I went to the car, because his lights were still on, he was still up, and what he says is, he said he went to the bathroom and then turned the TV on, and when he turned it on, I was walking into the control center, the camera was there, and the problem was, I lived fourteen miles from the—so it was a trip. [Laughter]

[Assistant] You didn't waste much time.


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

[User] Well, we did everything we could, and then they just had to take it and finish it.

[Assistant] Quite a time.

[User] Yes, very much so. I yelled something at my neighbor as I went to the car, because his lights were still on, he was still up, and what he says is, he said he went to the bathroom and then turned the TV on, and when he turned it on, I was walking into the control center, the camera was there, and the problem was, I lived fourteen miles from the—so it was a trip. [Laughter]

[Assistant] You didn't waste much time.

[User] I don't even remember that part of it. I was trying to understand it, trying to get a sense, if I could, of what had happened, and all I had was it was bad. "Go to the control center now."

[Assistant] We'll go ahead and take a quick break again and change out our tape.\n\n We should talk now about Apollo in some pretty good detail, and you said toward the end of Apollo that, of course, you had worked as flight director for Apollo 16 and then you worked in the SPAN [Spacecraft Analysis] room for Apollo 17, is that correct?


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

[User] Yes, very much so. I yelled something at my neighbor as I went to the car, because his lights were still on, he was still up, and what he says is, he said he went to the bathroom and then turned the TV on, and when he turned it on, I was walking into the control center, the camera was there, and the problem was, I lived fourteen miles from the—so it was a trip. [Laughter]

[Assistant] You didn't waste much time.

[User] I don't even remember that part of it. I was trying to understand it, trying to get a sense, if I could, of what had happened, and all I had was it was bad. "Go to the control center now."

[Assistant] We'll go ahead and take a quick break again and change out our tape.\n\n We should talk now about Apollo in some pretty good detail, and you said toward the end of Apollo that, of course, you had worked as flight director for Apollo 16 and then you worked in the SPAN [Spacecraft Analysis] room for Apollo 17, is that correct?

[User] Right.

[Assistant] While you were in there, what were your duties and responsibilities for supporting that?


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

[User] I don't even remember that part of it. I was trying to understand it, trying to get a sense, if I could, of what had happened, and all I had was it was bad. "Go to the control center now."

[Assistant] We'll go ahead and take a quick break again and change out our tape.\n\n We should talk now about Apollo in some pretty good detail, and you said toward the end of Apollo that, of course, you had worked as flight director for Apollo 16 and then you worked in the SPAN [Spacecraft Analysis] room for Apollo 17, is that correct?

[User] Right.

[Assistant] While you were in there, what were your duties and responsibilities for supporting that?

[User] Well, the SPAN room was a function that basically coordinated analysis. They were very much a support role, but they were a senior support role. For instance, something would be going wrong with a spacecraft system, then the interface with the contractor, the builder who had built that system, was generally handled through the SPAN. So it was more an admin advisory process than it was anything else. So that's what we did, and basically we were "gofers" for whoever the flight director was out there. If he needed us to go do something in a deputy flight director role, he'd trigger us and we'd go do it. It was a terrible demotion to go off the flight director console into SPAN. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I can imagine. Quite a change.


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

[User] Right.

[Assistant] While you were in there, what were your duties and responsibilities for supporting that?

[User] Well, the SPAN room was a function that basically coordinated analysis. They were very much a support role, but they were a senior support role. For instance, something would be going wrong with a spacecraft system, then the interface with the contractor, the builder who had built that system, was generally handled through the SPAN. So it was more an admin advisory process than it was anything else. So that's what we did, and basically we were "gofers" for whoever the flight director was out there. If he needed us to go do something in a deputy flight director role, he'd trigger us and we'd go do it. It was a terrible demotion to go off the flight director console into SPAN. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I can imagine. Quite a change.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] But, of course, you were at the same time getting ready to be flight director for Skylab and had also been working Skylab data priority?


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

[User] Well, the SPAN room was a function that basically coordinated analysis. They were very much a support role, but they were a senior support role. For instance, something would be going wrong with a spacecraft system, then the interface with the contractor, the builder who had built that system, was generally handled through the SPAN. So it was more an admin advisory process than it was anything else. So that's what we did, and basically we were "gofers" for whoever the flight director was out there. If he needed us to go do something in a deputy flight director role, he'd trigger us and we'd go do it. It was a terrible demotion to go off the flight director console into SPAN. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I can imagine. Quite a change.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] But, of course, you were at the same time getting ready to be flight director for Skylab and had also been working Skylab data priority?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Can you tell us about some of what was involved in all of that?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] But, of course, you were at the same time getting ready to be flight director for Skylab and had also been working Skylab data priority?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Can you tell us about some of what was involved in all of that?

[User] Skylab, its principal difference from earlier Earth orbit missions was going to be the duration, because the longest Earth orbit we'd had was two weeks—Gemini VII. So we weren't terribly concerned about the first Skylab, because it was only going to be four weeks, but then it was going to be eight weeks and then it was going to be twelve weeks. That had some potential. We didn't think enough about the fact that the Skylab was going to be there for a year and you weren't going to be able to send a technician up to work on it. We were going to do rendezvous, but we had done rendezvous at the Moon now, so rendezvous in Earth orbit really were becoming old hat. Very quickly we had the Apollo launch vehicle. We hadn't flown very many of the 200 Series for a long time, but we flew a bunch of them early in the Apollo program, so there wasn't a lot new about that.\n\n The other piece was the large number of experimental endeavors that were going to go on up there, and the thrust was going to be of maximizing things [scientific activities] that basically interfered with each other, which, by the way, is the same problem [you]'ve got on the [International] Space Station. They're doing that, and it's one of the big problems that the current Space Station really doesn't address, is the conflict that's there. It's why Max [Maxime A.] Faget's idea of a whole bunch of little stations, single-discipline oriented, would have been a better way to do the science, not necessarily a better way economically or operationally, but to do the science. Anyhow, that was the problem. Milton [L.] Windler. Have you all talked to Milton Windler? Will you talk to Milton Windler?

[Assistant] Not yet, but we hope to, yes.


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

[User] I don't remember anything about that except the trajectory-related stuff. Vance [D.] Brand and I did a tremendous amount of work trying to figure out how to control that vehicle with those thrusters gone, and we finally solved it adequately with an offset CG [center of gravity], so that if you translated in that direction with the offset CG, it would yaw you. Once you got the big engine started, it wasn't a problem anymore. I mean, you had yaw control while that was going on, and once you separated the command module, it had its own attitude control system. So we got that done.\n\n I think Jerry and his crew did not get adequately supported in terms of [pre-flight] interface because of the distraction of the recovery problem. And they were up there the longest and they were all rookies, so the last one was more awkward than the other ones were, for an awful lot of reasons.

[Assistant] Were you involved in some of that and trying to find ways to make that work and pull everyone together between the control team and the flight crew?

[User] The answer is yes, but I was unaware of the problem. I was unaware of the problem until we got on orbit and discovered that we were—well, we didn't discover, the crew finally told us that we were overloading them. It turned out that we started out treating them like we had treated Alan's crew at the end of their flight, and they'd had sixty days of training and integration and all that. For us, we'd been up there so long now, it was almost like we didn't realize we'd changed out crews. So we [had] a lot of those kinds of things to work through.

[Assistant] You had another learning experience. Luckily were you were able to make it all come together and work it out.

[User] Well, we did, but I also feel like we got lucky in some ways. A ninety-day crew in the air and a year-old crew on the ground with all of that stuff is, in my opinion, not at the top of their form.

[Assistant] Hopefully that's something they'll keep in mind for the International Space Station now.


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

[User] The answer is yes, but I was unaware of the problem. I was unaware of the problem until we got on orbit and discovered that we were—well, we didn't discover, the crew finally told us that we were overloading them. It turned out that we started out treating them like we had treated Alan's crew at the end of their flight, and they'd had sixty days of training and integration and all that. For us, we'd been up there so long now, it was almost like we didn't realize we'd changed out crews. So we [had] a lot of those kinds of things to work through.

[Assistant] You had another learning experience. Luckily were you were able to make it all come together and work it out.

[User] Well, we did, but I also feel like we got lucky in some ways. A ninety-day crew in the air and a year-old crew on the ground with all of that stuff is, in my opinion, not at the top of their form.

[Assistant] Hopefully that's something they'll keep in mind for the International Space Station now.

[User] Well, it's not so much a problem with the International Space Station, because the Shuttle pilots are never going to get that worn down. It makes a difference, but it makes a tremendous difference for something like going to Mars. Big. Plus, they don't have the ground support. When you go to Mars, you're on your own when you get there. You got a many-minute time delay, so you really can't help those guys [in real-time].

[Assistant] It'll be interesting to see what happens with that when we get there.


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

[User] Well, we did, but I also feel like we got lucky in some ways. A ninety-day crew in the air and a year-old crew on the ground with all of that stuff is, in my opinion, not at the top of their form.

[Assistant] Hopefully that's something they'll keep in mind for the International Space Station now.

[User] Well, it's not so much a problem with the International Space Station, because the Shuttle pilots are never going to get that worn down. It makes a difference, but it makes a tremendous difference for something like going to Mars. Big. Plus, they don't have the ground support. When you go to Mars, you're on your own when you get there. You got a many-minute time delay, so you really can't help those guys [in real-time].

[Assistant] It'll be interesting to see what happens with that when we get there.

[User] Yes, it will. Skylab, in lots of ways, is like the year that never happened, because I continued this too many jobs. With the trauma we had, I was even more focused on what was going on there than I had been on the Apollo stuff. Being a flight director was different than being a flight dynamics officer, because your perspective was so much broader, the number of things you had to deal with and integrate.

[Assistant] Certainly a very complex time with a lot going on.


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

[User] Well, it's not so much a problem with the International Space Station, because the Shuttle pilots are never going to get that worn down. It makes a difference, but it makes a tremendous difference for something like going to Mars. Big. Plus, they don't have the ground support. When you go to Mars, you're on your own when you get there. You got a many-minute time delay, so you really can't help those guys [in real-time].

[Assistant] It'll be interesting to see what happens with that when we get there.

[User] Yes, it will. Skylab, in lots of ways, is like the year that never happened, because I continued this too many jobs. With the trauma we had, I was even more focused on what was going on there than I had been on the Apollo stuff. Being a flight director was different than being a flight dynamics officer, because your perspective was so much broader, the number of things you had to deal with and integrate.

[Assistant] Certainly a very complex time with a lot going on.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Are there any other aspects of Skylab that you recall that were important at the time?


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

[User] Yes, it will. Skylab, in lots of ways, is like the year that never happened, because I continued this too many jobs. With the trauma we had, I was even more focused on what was going on there than I had been on the Apollo stuff. Being a flight director was different than being a flight dynamics officer, because your perspective was so much broader, the number of things you had to deal with and integrate.

[Assistant] Certainly a very complex time with a lot going on.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Are there any other aspects of Skylab that you recall that were important at the time?

[User] Yes, I always wished we'd have done them in reverse order, that we'd done Skylab first and then gone to the Moon, but the politics of the problem did not support that.

[Assistant] I think a lot of people had initially had that as an idea.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Are there any other aspects of Skylab that you recall that were important at the time?

[User] Yes, I always wished we'd have done them in reverse order, that we'd done Skylab first and then gone to the Moon, but the politics of the problem did not support that.

[Assistant] I think a lot of people had initially had that as an idea.

[User] Well, yes, I think it was, but Skylab was never appreciated, because it [was], "Why are we boring holes in the sky after we've been to the Moon? Let's go to Andromeda [Galaxy] or somewhere really interesting."

[Assistant] Yes, Skylab often does get—it's kind of an afterthought a lot of times.


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

[User] Yes, I always wished we'd have done them in reverse order, that we'd done Skylab first and then gone to the Moon, but the politics of the problem did not support that.

[Assistant] I think a lot of people had initially had that as an idea.

[User] Well, yes, I think it was, but Skylab was never appreciated, because it [was], "Why are we boring holes in the sky after we've been to the Moon? Let's go to Andromeda [Galaxy] or somewhere really interesting."

[Assistant] Yes, Skylab often does get—it's kind of an afterthought a lot of times.

[User] But it produced a tremendous amount of very valuable information about the Earth and about the sun and about space flight and about the human physiology, metals and materials, etc, etc.

[Assistant] A lot of valuable science.


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

[User] Well, yes, I think it was, but Skylab was never appreciated, because it [was], "Why are we boring holes in the sky after we've been to the Moon? Let's go to Andromeda [Galaxy] or somewhere really interesting."

[Assistant] Yes, Skylab often does get—it's kind of an afterthought a lot of times.

[User] But it produced a tremendous amount of very valuable information about the Earth and about the sun and about space flight and about the human physiology, metals and materials, etc, etc.

[Assistant] A lot of valuable science.

[User] Yes, absolutely. A worthwhile program.

[Assistant] Very. Very much so. Well, following Skylab came Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project, ASTP]. Were you at all involved in that?


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

[User] But it produced a tremendous amount of very valuable information about the Earth and about the sun and about space flight and about the human physiology, metals and materials, etc, etc.

[Assistant] A lot of valuable science.

[User] Yes, absolutely. A worthwhile program.

[Assistant] Very. Very much so. Well, following Skylab came Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project, ASTP]. Were you at all involved in that?

[User] Yes, for about a half a day. Yes, [M. P.] Pete Frank said he wanted me to be the lead flight director for Apollo-Soyuz, and Kenny [Kenneth S.] Kleinknecht, who was the director of flight operations at that point, said he wanted me to become the crew/ground liaison with Rockwell for the crew interface. And since Pete worked for Kenny, Kenny won and I became a part-time Rockwell person. I spent a lot of time out there doing that job, which was directly in line with the mission techniques part now, because really mission techniques is about the crew-ground interface and who's going to do what and who's responsible for what and where does the information come from and what computations go on on board and what go on on the ground, you know, all that sort of thing.

[Assistant] Was there anything that was done differently for this mission or was it pretty similar to the other Apollo and Skylab?


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

[User] Well, it was very different from the impact of the international crew and the international cooperation required to do that. The vehicles are incompatible in terms of they're different electrically and they have different docking mechanisms. The Russians have got this three—thing with the three petals on it and the Americans have got the probe and drogue, which is an inverted umbrella with a retraction. So they built this adapter to go between them, and the Americans built that. I've always suspected it's because the Russians couldn't get off the dime with their bureaucracy. They couldn't get anything approved. I had the clear impression, listening to those guys, that when they finally started getting serious about procedural planning and mission design and that sort of thing that they were so—"lethargic" is the wrong word—labyrinthic in their process, that they were virtually nonresponsive. So they ended up finding themselves and proposing and the Russians saying, "Yes, that looks like a good plan." But other than the periphery of hearing people talk about it, I didn't know, I wasn't very much involved, and the Shuttle was coming on like gangbusters.

[Assistant] Did you ever think about having worked with the Air Force and then the Naval Weapons Lab and along those lines, did you ever think about the fact that now here you were working in cooperation with the Russians?

[User] No. No, I think civilians working with civilians is not the same thing. If you're not at the political level or in the armed services, then all that stuff in between isn't necessarily as tough. It's almost like the relationship between Johnson and Marshall, you know. At the top level they've got some problems, but at the working level we didn't have any problems with those people. I mean, we worked fine. We got it all done, what we needed to do. We just didn't tell our bosses. [Laughter]

[Assistant] [Laughter] Keep it less complicated that way.

[User] That's right.

[Assistant] Just do your job and they do theirs.


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

[User] No. No, I think civilians working with civilians is not the same thing. If you're not at the political level or in the armed services, then all that stuff in between isn't necessarily as tough. It's almost like the relationship between Johnson and Marshall, you know. At the top level they've got some problems, but at the working level we didn't have any problems with those people. I mean, we worked fine. We got it all done, what we needed to do. We just didn't tell our bosses. [Laughter]

[Assistant] [Laughter] Keep it less complicated that way.

[User] That's right.

[Assistant] Just do your job and they do theirs.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] That's good. Well, you mentioned that Shuttle was coming along and, of course, there was a lot that went into Shuttle, it was so different than the other programs, going to be a reusable vehicle, and just the aspects of the vehicle itself. What was then your role for the early Shuttle and building up to that?


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

[User] The Shuttle was interesting in that it was the first time we had built-in redundancy and the phenomenon of redundancy management. So for the computing system you had four of these machines that were all doing exactly the same thing. At the end of every cycle, they compared their answers and if they agreed, they went to the next cycle. If they didn't agree, they kicked the guy that didn't agree and turned him off. So that was a whole new kind of [philosophy]—we had rate gyros, rate sensors, and in gangs of three, like Hubble has now. Had accelerometers in gangs of three, multiple platforms. That vehicle was built to fail. So generally everything was two-fault-tolerant in terms of the critical [stuff], but to manage the procedures and the software and all, to manage all of those systems in that context were really interesting. They were all different.

[Assistant] As it was all different, but were there any big surprises or big challenges in this particular program?

[User] The scary part of the program [for me] was the fact that we weren't going to be able to do any unmanned orbital tests with it, that the first time we went to orbit, it was going to be for real. So that really kind of held everybody's attention really, really hard to be sure we did it right.\n\n Because there were people involved, we still had parochialism. I had some tickets that I printed up. When I'd go to a meeting with my seniors and they would make a decision that I disagreed with, I often gave them a ticket. What it was, was a free ride on the first Shuttle. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I like that. [Laughter]

[User] So they were not very popular.

[Assistant] But yet you were getting across your point.


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

[User] The scary part of the program [for me] was the fact that we weren't going to be able to do any unmanned orbital tests with it, that the first time we went to orbit, it was going to be for real. So that really kind of held everybody's attention really, really hard to be sure we did it right.\n\n Because there were people involved, we still had parochialism. I had some tickets that I printed up. When I'd go to a meeting with my seniors and they would make a decision that I disagreed with, I often gave them a ticket. What it was, was a free ride on the first Shuttle. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I like that. [Laughter]

[User] So they were not very popular.

[Assistant] But yet you were getting across your point.

[User] Or at least how I felt.

[Assistant] That's pretty good.


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

[User] No. As a matter of fact, I was gone. I left [Flight Operations] to go do other things before the Shuttle ever started flying. One of the structural recommendations I made was that the lead flight directors ought to chair the mission techniques activity for the specific kinds of things they were going to be doing, because doing as many different things as it was clear was going to be going on didn't make any sense to me. They all decided that was not a good plan, because most of them didn't want to do mission techniques. I think that's the way it ended up anyway, at least it was for a while.\n\n But I then went on to do the payload integration job, which was a program office function, but I didn't go to do the job so much as I went to set up the organization for the mission operations side of it. I did that, got it started, got it chartered, got it peopled, and had for my deputy a guy named—dropped his name. Leonard. He was a Shuttle program manager. Oh, for goodness sakes.

[Assistant] I know we can look it up in the record for sure.

[User] Yes. Anyway, he was my deputy. When I thought it was adequately off the ground and running, then that's when I left NASA.

[Assistant] There must have been a lot of complexities going into payload operations.

[User] There was. I mean, the number of payloads for the Shuttle is infinite. The number of combinations of payloads for the Shuttle is infinite. I mean, you got a cargo bay that's roughly the size of a boxcar, and you can put an awful lot of different kinds of things in there, and they all have to be compatible with each other and with the Orbiter and with the orbits you're going to use. So payload management is—well, it's the reason for existence, for the Shuttle, it's for whatever you can carry. It is.

[Assistant] Certainly very different from the earlier programs.


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

[User] Yes. Anyway, he was my deputy. When I thought it was adequately off the ground and running, then that's when I left NASA.

[Assistant] There must have been a lot of complexities going into payload operations.

[User] There was. I mean, the number of payloads for the Shuttle is infinite. The number of combinations of payloads for the Shuttle is infinite. I mean, you got a cargo bay that's roughly the size of a boxcar, and you can put an awful lot of different kinds of things in there, and they all have to be compatible with each other and with the Orbiter and with the orbits you're going to use. So payload management is—well, it's the reason for existence, for the Shuttle, it's for whatever you can carry. It is.

[Assistant] Certainly very different from the earlier programs.

[User] Very, very different. Plus it's a reusable vehicle. I guess I think that at least for a long time the Orbiters were more different from each other than any of the other spacecraft have been, with the exception of going from the first model of the lunar configuration to the J Series. Like the different—between Apollo 14 and 15, those were very different vehicles. But the Shuttles were all different.

[Assistant] As you were setting up the office, you said your main focus was on getting the operation up and running then for the payload integration. Were there anything along the way—


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

[User] There was. I mean, the number of payloads for the Shuttle is infinite. The number of combinations of payloads for the Shuttle is infinite. I mean, you got a cargo bay that's roughly the size of a boxcar, and you can put an awful lot of different kinds of things in there, and they all have to be compatible with each other and with the Orbiter and with the orbits you're going to use. So payload management is—well, it's the reason for existence, for the Shuttle, it's for whatever you can carry. It is.

[Assistant] Certainly very different from the earlier programs.

[User] Very, very different. Plus it's a reusable vehicle. I guess I think that at least for a long time the Orbiters were more different from each other than any of the other spacecraft have been, with the exception of going from the first model of the lunar configuration to the J Series. Like the different—between Apollo 14 and 15, those were very different vehicles. But the Shuttles were all different.

[Assistant] As you were setting up the office, you said your main focus was on getting the operation up and running then for the payload integration. Were there anything along the way—

[User] Just the major discovery that I really didn't have much interest in being an administrator. I didn't want to do that, so it was pretty easy to say, "I'm done," and go.

[Assistant] That's a pretty important thing to recognize.


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

[User] Very, very different. Plus it's a reusable vehicle. I guess I think that at least for a long time the Orbiters were more different from each other than any of the other spacecraft have been, with the exception of going from the first model of the lunar configuration to the J Series. Like the different—between Apollo 14 and 15, those were very different vehicles. But the Shuttles were all different.

[Assistant] As you were setting up the office, you said your main focus was on getting the operation up and running then for the payload integration. Were there anything along the way—

[User] Just the major discovery that I really didn't have much interest in being an administrator. I didn't want to do that, so it was pretty easy to say, "I'm done," and go.

[Assistant] That's a pretty important thing to recognize.

[User] But I really didn't want to do that anymore. That was enough of that. I had started a small oil and gas development activity in about the same time frame as doing the program office integration, the payload integration, so I had that to go do. I discovered very quickly that the focus of the work at NASA, how important that was in terms of organizing my time, that it was the central pivot and then you could order everything else around it, but without a central pivot, you didn't have any ranking criteria for what you were going to do first, and I missed that, so I jumped into graduate school and ended up with a master's degree in psychology.

[Assistant] That's an interesting choice.


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

[User] Just the major discovery that I really didn't have much interest in being an administrator. I didn't want to do that, so it was pretty easy to say, "I'm done," and go.

[Assistant] That's a pretty important thing to recognize.

[User] But I really didn't want to do that anymore. That was enough of that. I had started a small oil and gas development activity in about the same time frame as doing the program office integration, the payload integration, so I had that to go do. I discovered very quickly that the focus of the work at NASA, how important that was in terms of organizing my time, that it was the central pivot and then you could order everything else around it, but without a central pivot, you didn't have any ranking criteria for what you were going to do first, and I missed that, so I jumped into graduate school and ended up with a master's degree in psychology.

[Assistant] That's an interesting choice.

[User] But that was really the way I transitioned from NASA, the NASA years to the civilian years, was via the graduate school.

[Assistant] You continued to work then with your oil and gas while you were going to graduate school?


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

[User] But I really didn't want to do that anymore. That was enough of that. I had started a small oil and gas development activity in about the same time frame as doing the program office integration, the payload integration, so I had that to go do. I discovered very quickly that the focus of the work at NASA, how important that was in terms of organizing my time, that it was the central pivot and then you could order everything else around it, but without a central pivot, you didn't have any ranking criteria for what you were going to do first, and I missed that, so I jumped into graduate school and ended up with a master's degree in psychology.

[Assistant] That's an interesting choice.

[User] But that was really the way I transitioned from NASA, the NASA years to the civilian years, was via the graduate school.

[Assistant] You continued to work then with your oil and gas while you were going to graduate school?

[User] I still do that.

[Assistant] You still do that?


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

[User] But that was really the way I transitioned from NASA, the NASA years to the civilian years, was via the graduate school.

[Assistant] You continued to work then with your oil and gas while you were going to graduate school?

[User] I still do that.

[Assistant] You still do that?

[User] I still do that. I still do that. There's nothing wrong with being in oil and gas.

[Assistant] Nothing at all.


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

[User] I still do that.

[Assistant] You still do that?

[User] I still do that. I still do that. There's nothing wrong with being in oil and gas.

[Assistant] Nothing at all.

[User] It's a nice way to play commodities.

[Assistant] Certainly something we all need.


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

[User] I still do that. I still do that. There's nothing wrong with being in oil and gas.

[Assistant] Nothing at all.

[User] It's a nice way to play commodities.

[Assistant] Certainly something we all need.

[User] Exactly.

[Assistant] Have you done anything else besides that along the way?


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

[User] It's a nice way to play commodities.

[Assistant] Certainly something we all need.

[User] Exactly.

[Assistant] Have you done anything else besides that along the way?

[User] The degree in psychology, which I really did as a personal development and personal interest kind of thing, turned out to be a serendipity, because that training coupled with the technical training and the operational training from NASA, set me up to do consulting in the aerospace industry. In fact, I'm still doing some of that at a low level, but I did really about ten years of being very active in the area of business development, not as a techie, not as doing space flight, but it terms of going after the business of supporting that and helping those guys.\n\n Predominantly that was with Rockwell local here and Rockwell in California, but it has branched out into such things as Beth Williams Techtrans International and Barrios [Technology], and some of those companies I've also worked for. In fact, I've got a job going with Joe Kerwin right now on a contract.

[Assistant] Good. So you, to some extent then, have stayed somewhat involved in the space industry then.


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

[User] Exactly.

[Assistant] Have you done anything else besides that along the way?

[User] The degree in psychology, which I really did as a personal development and personal interest kind of thing, turned out to be a serendipity, because that training coupled with the technical training and the operational training from NASA, set me up to do consulting in the aerospace industry. In fact, I'm still doing some of that at a low level, but I did really about ten years of being very active in the area of business development, not as a techie, not as doing space flight, but it terms of going after the business of supporting that and helping those guys.\n\n Predominantly that was with Rockwell local here and Rockwell in California, but it has branched out into such things as Beth Williams Techtrans International and Barrios [Technology], and some of those companies I've also worked for. In fact, I've got a job going with Joe Kerwin right now on a contract.

[Assistant] Good. So you, to some extent then, have stayed somewhat involved in the space industry then.

[User] More with the people than with the technology, because what I do for them really is dissimilar from what I did at NASA. It combines the fact that my mom was an English teacher, with the psychology, with an interest in language. It's quite different. I always told them if I was going to do what I did before, I'd go back there and do it, it was more fun. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Certainly. Well, looking back over your time with NASA, is there any one point that was the greatest, most challenging time for you?


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

[User] The degree in psychology, which I really did as a personal development and personal interest kind of thing, turned out to be a serendipity, because that training coupled with the technical training and the operational training from NASA, set me up to do consulting in the aerospace industry. In fact, I'm still doing some of that at a low level, but I did really about ten years of being very active in the area of business development, not as a techie, not as doing space flight, but it terms of going after the business of supporting that and helping those guys.\n\n Predominantly that was with Rockwell local here and Rockwell in California, but it has branched out into such things as Beth Williams Techtrans International and Barrios [Technology], and some of those companies I've also worked for. In fact, I've got a job going with Joe Kerwin right now on a contract.

[Assistant] Good. So you, to some extent then, have stayed somewhat involved in the space industry then.

[User] More with the people than with the technology, because what I do for them really is dissimilar from what I did at NASA. It combines the fact that my mom was an English teacher, with the psychology, with an interest in language. It's quite different. I always told them if I was going to do what I did before, I'd go back there and do it, it was more fun. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Certainly. Well, looking back over your time with NASA, is there any one point that was the greatest, most challenging time for you?

[User] Oh, without a doubt it was Skylab. Without equivocation, it was Skylab.

[Assistant] I can certainly understand why.


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

[User] More with the people than with the technology, because what I do for them really is dissimilar from what I did at NASA. It combines the fact that my mom was an English teacher, with the psychology, with an interest in language. It's quite different. I always told them if I was going to do what I did before, I'd go back there and do it, it was more fun. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Certainly. Well, looking back over your time with NASA, is there any one point that was the greatest, most challenging time for you?

[User] Oh, without a doubt it was Skylab. Without equivocation, it was Skylab.

[Assistant] I can certainly understand why.

[User] It's one of those things that I'm sort of glad I did it, but if I'd have known I was going to have to do it and what it entailed, I wouldn't have done it.

[Assistant] Certainly a very complex program.


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

[User] Oh, without a doubt it was Skylab. Without equivocation, it was Skylab.

[Assistant] I can certainly understand why.

[User] It's one of those things that I'm sort of glad I did it, but if I'd have known I was going to have to do it and what it entailed, I wouldn't have done it.

[Assistant] Certainly a very complex program.

[User] And for me, very stressful. Really, it was too many functions, too many things going on.

[Assistant] Was there a time that was the most significant or most memorable for you, that you remember as the best or anything like that, or when you made your most significant contribution to NASA and the space program?


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

[User] It's one of those things that I'm sort of glad I did it, but if I'd have known I was going to have to do it and what it entailed, I wouldn't have done it.

[Assistant] Certainly a very complex program.

[User] And for me, very stressful. Really, it was too many functions, too many things going on.

[Assistant] Was there a time that was the most significant or most memorable for you, that you remember as the best or anything like that, or when you made your most significant contribution to NASA and the space program?

[User] Well, I guess I think, and it's probably a little smug, but the most significant contribution was when I decided to come here. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I think that's a very good—


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

[User] And for me, very stressful. Really, it was too many functions, too many things going on.

[Assistant] Was there a time that was the most significant or most memorable for you, that you remember as the best or anything like that, or when you made your most significant contribution to NASA and the space program?

[User] Well, I guess I think, and it's probably a little smug, but the most significant contribution was when I decided to come here. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I think that's a very good—

[User] Certainly from my standpoint that was probably the most significant step, because everything just evolved from—that was the classic fork in the road. Because some of the people I worked with in Virginia at the Naval Weapons Laboratory are still there and still doing the function that goes on there. My career and maybe even a lot of who I am would be different if I had stayed there.

[Assistant] Certainly would be.


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

[User] Well, I guess I think, and it's probably a little smug, but the most significant contribution was when I decided to come here. [Laughter]

[Assistant] I think that's a very good—

[User] Certainly from my standpoint that was probably the most significant step, because everything just evolved from—that was the classic fork in the road. Because some of the people I worked with in Virginia at the Naval Weapons Laboratory are still there and still doing the function that goes on there. My career and maybe even a lot of who I am would be different if I had stayed there.

[Assistant] Certainly would be.

[User] We all have those major forks, though, even if you don't recognize them as such when you take it. Yogi said it. Remember what Yogi [Berra] said? "When you come to the fork in a road, take it." [Laughter]

[Assistant] Very true. Very true. I imagine you probably would have never guessed where that fork would lead you.


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

[User] Certainly from my standpoint that was probably the most significant step, because everything just evolved from—that was the classic fork in the road. Because some of the people I worked with in Virginia at the Naval Weapons Laboratory are still there and still doing the function that goes on there. My career and maybe even a lot of who I am would be different if I had stayed there.

[Assistant] Certainly would be.

[User] We all have those major forks, though, even if you don't recognize them as such when you take it. Yogi said it. Remember what Yogi [Berra] said? "When you come to the fork in a road, take it." [Laughter]

[Assistant] Very true. Very true. I imagine you probably would have never guessed where that fork would lead you.

[User] I had not a clue. Not a clue.

[Assistant] But it certainly led you to some interesting times.


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

[User] We all have those major forks, though, even if you don't recognize them as such when you take it. Yogi said it. Remember what Yogi [Berra] said? "When you come to the fork in a road, take it." [Laughter]

[Assistant] Very true. Very true. I imagine you probably would have never guessed where that fork would lead you.

[User] I had not a clue. Not a clue.

[Assistant] But it certainly led you to some interesting times.

[User] I knew it was going to be different, but that was all I knew.

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


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

[User] I had not a clue. Not a clue.

[Assistant] But it certainly led you to some interesting times.

[User] I knew it was going to be different, but that was all I knew.

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

[User] Certainly.

[Assistant]
Sandra or Kevin?

Yes, I did have a few.


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

[User] Certainly.

[Assistant]
Sandra or Kevin?

Yes, I did have a few.

[User] A few? [Laughter]

[Assistant] A couple.

[User] That's all right. I didn't mean to limit your questions. That was not my intent.

[Assistant] One of the things I was wondering about, off camera you had mentioned a few things about John [S.] Llewellyn [Jr.], for instance, and I was wondering about being a member of the Trench. It gives a little bit of the character of that group of people. I was wondering how well you fit in with that group and how that dynamic really worked while you were a member of the Trench.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] To sort of follow-up on that, I think one of the arguments for sending Apollo 10 to do almost the landing, but not quite, was to further refine the mascon model, to get a better idea of what's going on. Do you think that was—

[User] There was nothing wrong with that idea, but the primary thing was to do a lunar orbit rendezvous. We hadn't done that. We'd only been there once and we had missed by a lot, so we had some serious orbit problems that needed to be demonstrated, and we didn't know how well we were going to be able to support a two-body trajectory problem. So we hadn't been able to do a full-scale test of the lunar propulsion system either, and I think that was a bigger deal than the mascons. We certainly got to add mascon at a significant level into that, but I would be hesitant to call it primary.

[Assistant] You think then it was a necessary flight to not land that on the Moon?

[User] Oh, absolutely. It would have been foolhardy to try to land without a safe bail-out since we hadn't done a rendezvous of the magnitude of coming off the surface and we hadn't done a full-blown propulsion test of the lunar module. I mean, we'd flown Apollo 9, but it ain't the same.

[Assistant] Just one last question, also on Apollo. You had spoken earlier about the Taurus-Littrow site for Apollo 17. I know prior to this selection that Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt and some others had toyed around with the idea of landing on the back side of the Moon. Do you have any memories of that or any thoughts of that?


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

[User] There was nothing wrong with that idea, but the primary thing was to do a lunar orbit rendezvous. We hadn't done that. We'd only been there once and we had missed by a lot, so we had some serious orbit problems that needed to be demonstrated, and we didn't know how well we were going to be able to support a two-body trajectory problem. So we hadn't been able to do a full-scale test of the lunar propulsion system either, and I think that was a bigger deal than the mascons. We certainly got to add mascon at a significant level into that, but I would be hesitant to call it primary.

[Assistant] You think then it was a necessary flight to not land that on the Moon?

[User] Oh, absolutely. It would have been foolhardy to try to land without a safe bail-out since we hadn't done a rendezvous of the magnitude of coming off the surface and we hadn't done a full-blown propulsion test of the lunar module. I mean, we'd flown Apollo 9, but it ain't the same.

[Assistant] Just one last question, also on Apollo. You had spoken earlier about the Taurus-Littrow site for Apollo 17. I know prior to this selection that Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt and some others had toyed around with the idea of landing on the back side of the Moon. Do you have any memories of that or any thoughts of that?

[User] I don't have any memories, but there were lots of people that wished Jack had gotten his way, especially the people he'd beat for the senatorial race in New Mexico. Foolhardy. It was insane, as a matter of fact, that he would think that's a realistic thing to do. It implies autonomy on the part of those vehicles, and they were not autonomous.

[Assistant] I think one of the ideas was to put up some lunar satellites as a way to provide some more communication.


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

[User] Oh, absolutely. It would have been foolhardy to try to land without a safe bail-out since we hadn't done a rendezvous of the magnitude of coming off the surface and we hadn't done a full-blown propulsion test of the lunar module. I mean, we'd flown Apollo 9, but it ain't the same.

[Assistant] Just one last question, also on Apollo. You had spoken earlier about the Taurus-Littrow site for Apollo 17. I know prior to this selection that Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt and some others had toyed around with the idea of landing on the back side of the Moon. Do you have any memories of that or any thoughts of that?

[User] I don't have any memories, but there were lots of people that wished Jack had gotten his way, especially the people he'd beat for the senatorial race in New Mexico. Foolhardy. It was insane, as a matter of fact, that he would think that's a realistic thing to do. It implies autonomy on the part of those vehicles, and they were not autonomous.

[Assistant] I think one of the ideas was to put up some lunar satellites as a way to provide some more communication.

[User] Oh, I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but geosynchronous satellites so that they hang off to the side, so that you've always got communication is not a trivial program in its own right. Plus you've got to get them there. Lunar orbits are not stable, by the way. They're not stable like Earth orbits are stable, because the Earth is a terrible perturbation on a lunar orbit, as is the sun because of the small size, and then the mascons are perturbations. So lunar orbits tend to change size and shape fairly dramatically on their own volition.

[Assistant] That's certainly not something that is commonly known, I don't think.


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

[User] I don't have any memories, but there were lots of people that wished Jack had gotten his way, especially the people he'd beat for the senatorial race in New Mexico. Foolhardy. It was insane, as a matter of fact, that he would think that's a realistic thing to do. It implies autonomy on the part of those vehicles, and they were not autonomous.

[Assistant] I think one of the ideas was to put up some lunar satellites as a way to provide some more communication.

[User] Oh, I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but geosynchronous satellites so that they hang off to the side, so that you've always got communication is not a trivial program in its own right. Plus you've got to get them there. Lunar orbits are not stable, by the way. They're not stable like Earth orbits are stable, because the Earth is a terrible perturbation on a lunar orbit, as is the sun because of the small size, and then the mascons are perturbations. So lunar orbits tend to change size and shape fairly dramatically on their own volition.

[Assistant] That's certainly not something that is commonly known, I don't think.

[User] Just think about it, 10,000 miles out from the Moon, the Earth is as big a gravitational attraction as the Moon is. That's where the sphere of equal potential is. Makes a big difference.

[Assistant] Very big difference.


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

[User] Oh, I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but geosynchronous satellites so that they hang off to the side, so that you've always got communication is not a trivial program in its own right. Plus you've got to get them there. Lunar orbits are not stable, by the way. They're not stable like Earth orbits are stable, because the Earth is a terrible perturbation on a lunar orbit, as is the sun because of the small size, and then the mascons are perturbations. So lunar orbits tend to change size and shape fairly dramatically on their own volition.

[Assistant] That's certainly not something that is commonly known, I don't think.

[User] Just think about it, 10,000 miles out from the Moon, the Earth is as big a gravitational attraction as the Moon is. That's where the sphere of equal potential is. Makes a big difference.

[Assistant] Very big difference.

[User] Good question. Have you got any more?

[Assistant] No, that's all I had.