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

[User] I think they’re a little better at it these days. We have an upgraded experimental cabinet. We can take pictures, and of course it’s all electronic now. I don’t favor electronic note-taking because it’s like filling out the form. What you want to say never fits that form exactly. We did a lot of drawing of features we observed.

[Assistant] That definitely added to the amount of time it took to go through the core.

[User] Yes. Besides, I liked looking at it.

[Assistant] Were there other people that were working with you on those cores as you were going through? Or that was your project for those months?

[User] There’s very few people who have dissected lunar soil cores, working at most two core gloveboxes simultaneously. Those who have include myself, Stewart Nagel, Stephen [R.] Waltz, and Carol [M.] Schwarz. If I were working on a core, that would be my core, and I wouldn’t want the other person to come in and dig in it. Same thing would apply to their core. We interpreted what we saw probably a little bit differently, but then this was a basic characterization. I think researchers understood that. The science from the cores samples came from the detailed analysis by investigators, measuring the changing chemistry with each little increment of depth in the soil.

[Assistant] One of the other things I had read that you worked on was preparing samples for PIs. Wondering if you could talk about how you did that. How did you decide which samples? Was that something that they proposed? They wanted rock, whatever the title was at that point? Or did you get to decide which sample they would receive, and how did you go about making that decision?


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

[User] Yes, it is an impressive number. Some of the particles collected are orbital debris, exhaust from rockets that gets lofted up that high. The lab workers who pick particles from the gooey plates have an eye for cosmic dust versus rocket exhaust. Once picked, then the workers mount the particle for SEM [scanning electron microscope] screening, resulting in a good mugshot with the SEM and a little bit of chemistry. They publish catalogs using SEM data so researchers can shop for particles meeting their particular research requirements and request that particle. In all the curatorial collections, we still do basic characterization of samples and publish the results so researchers world-wide can access samples through requests and peer-review. We still do the equivalent of the Apollo PET to promote wise use of limited samples for best research.

[Assistant] I noticed you had worked on some of those catalogs.

[User] I don’t remember working on cosmic dust catalogs, maybe I helped with the database or something. I have written lunar core catalogs, historical summaries of the way Apollo samples were handled, and in recent years lunar and planetary science abstracts describing Genesis solar wind sample processing and sample status.

[Assistant] You have a lengthy publication record, that’s for sure.

[User] It’s interesting. Brownlee—he was the Stardust PI for the mission that went and directly collected particles in aerogel from Comet Wild 2 and returned those samples to the Stardust Lab. The Stardust Lab is separate from the Cosmic Dust Lab. Cosmic dust is a random mix of stuff that happens to fall on the Earth.

[Assistant] I was curious if you could talk about how procedures have changed since you started there, if they have at all. If things have changed or the facilities changed. Obviously there was the annex that was built in ’79 and opened. I don’t know if you want to talk about some of those changes, or if things have been pretty consistent over the years.


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

[User] Mostly an observer. Curators got a Greyhound [Lines, Inc.] bus whose vibration characteristics were less than any other bus they could find. They took out all the seats and strapped the isopods containing samples in with seatbelts. My husband, Charles S. Allton, provided the engineering support securing the isopods in the bus. Sometimes I found out things through him.

[Assistant] That’s funny. I didn’t know about the Greyhound bus, that’s pretty interesting.

[User] They drove in the dark of night at thirty-five miles an hour so they wouldn’t jostle the samples, with a security escort.

[Assistant] Thirty-five miles an hour. You all knew that was happening, but they didn’t make that announcement at the Center, I imagine.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] That’s interesting. So you primarily were just doing research during these days.


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

[User] They drove in the dark of night at thirty-five miles an hour so they wouldn’t jostle the samples, with a security escort.

[Assistant] Thirty-five miles an hour. You all knew that was happening, but they didn’t make that announcement at the Center, I imagine.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] That’s interesting. So you primarily were just doing research during these days.

[User] What would I have been doing? I was probably doing core samples.

[Assistant] Still exciting work, I think. After you were a research analyst for a few years, you became a senior research analyst. I was curious if your role changed at all in any way or you just sort of continued—it was just a promotion, a change in salary, things of that nature.


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

[User] Right.

[Assistant] That’s interesting. So you primarily were just doing research during these days.

[User] What would I have been doing? I was probably doing core samples.

[Assistant] Still exciting work, I think. After you were a research analyst for a few years, you became a senior research analyst. I was curious if your role changed at all in any way or you just sort of continued—it was just a promotion, a change in salary, things of that nature.

[User] The change in position titles reflects longevity of a willingness to work wherever needed, I think. Perhaps an enthusiasm for all projects. I’m just an ordinary person, but I was lucky enough to be able to spend a lot of extra time researching topics related to good curation, learning how to use Datatrieve [software] to compile sample statistics, collect documents and study photographs while compiling the Apollo geology sampling tool catalog, which is much used today by the young generation engineers designing tools for our future lunar missions.

[Assistant] You have an archive of all the materials that you have over in Building 31 and records related to the building and hardware and all those things?


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

[User] Now they did x-ray the soil cores in the early days to see if they were full of rocks, but they were fuzzy images on the early ones. Later ones got a little better. But even so, when you collect a core on the Moon and you tamp down the top so it doesn’t slide around, and you bring it back, it gets jostled a bit. The main thing is when it sits sideways on the shelf it just sort of settles on the end. There is not gross distortion, but it’s obviously not exactly like it was on the Moon.

[Assistant] How did you account for that when you were going through those core samples?

[User] We took better x-rays on those larger cores from the last three missions. Small void space is often visible on the ends. When the soil is pushed out of the tubes, the void space fills in. We just had to be aware that the ends might have been a little bit distorted.\n\n After the soil is pushed into the receptacle, the fused quartz top is removed and the exposed outer one mm of soil is scraped away to remove the soil that came in contact with the anodized aluminum tube wall. Anodization process is dirty, relatively speaking, and traces of contamination were detectable in that outer 1 mm, so we’d take that off. Then we would dig through the core in half-centimeter increments and place each subsample into a separate container.\n\n Subsamples were described with the depth from the top of the core. Finally, a lengthwise portion soil of the entire depth profile remained in the receptacle, and this material was removed from the nitrogen glovebox and taken to laboratory where the material is preserved in epoxy, some of which is prepared as thin sections.

[Assistant] Sounds like a lot of work.

[User] Hence all those procedures for extrusion, dissection, epoxy preservation, thin section preparation. The procedures were annotated as executed. We had a reader and a doer.

[Assistant] How many people were working with you on those?


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

[User] We took better x-rays on those larger cores from the last three missions. Small void space is often visible on the ends. When the soil is pushed out of the tubes, the void space fills in. We just had to be aware that the ends might have been a little bit distorted.\n\n After the soil is pushed into the receptacle, the fused quartz top is removed and the exposed outer one mm of soil is scraped away to remove the soil that came in contact with the anodized aluminum tube wall. Anodization process is dirty, relatively speaking, and traces of contamination were detectable in that outer 1 mm, so we’d take that off. Then we would dig through the core in half-centimeter increments and place each subsample into a separate container.\n\n Subsamples were described with the depth from the top of the core. Finally, a lengthwise portion soil of the entire depth profile remained in the receptacle, and this material was removed from the nitrogen glovebox and taken to laboratory where the material is preserved in epoxy, some of which is prepared as thin sections.

[Assistant] Sounds like a lot of work.

[User] Hence all those procedures for extrusion, dissection, epoxy preservation, thin section preparation. The procedures were annotated as executed. We had a reader and a doer.

[Assistant] How many people were working with you on those?

[User] When we did an extrusion, or any of these specialized things, about three people.

[Assistant] How long did that take?


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

[User] Hence all those procedures for extrusion, dissection, epoxy preservation, thin section preparation. The procedures were annotated as executed. We had a reader and a doer.

[Assistant] How many people were working with you on those?

[User] When we did an extrusion, or any of these specialized things, about three people.

[Assistant] How long did that take?

[User] I think some cores might have been done in a couple months. I was slower than everybody else, but I probably ran longer than three months on some of them.

[Assistant] Just enjoyed playing around with them and seeing and enjoying what was in there?


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

[User] When we did an extrusion, or any of these specialized things, about three people.

[Assistant] How long did that take?

[User] I think some cores might have been done in a couple months. I was slower than everybody else, but I probably ran longer than three months on some of them.

[Assistant] Just enjoyed playing around with them and seeing and enjoying what was in there?

[User] It was a bit tedious physically, too. I’m not going to shovel soil out of the tube really fast. That’s just not what you do.

[Assistant] It seems like it’s a very detailed process.


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

[User] I think some cores might have been done in a couple months. I was slower than everybody else, but I probably ran longer than three months on some of them.

[Assistant] Just enjoyed playing around with them and seeing and enjoying what was in there?

[User] It was a bit tedious physically, too. I’m not going to shovel soil out of the tube really fast. That’s just not what you do.

[Assistant] It seems like it’s a very detailed process.

[User] It is and very controlled. For those you pretty much know exactly what was done.

[Assistant] Were you sharing what you were learning as you were going through these cores? On a daily basis were you sharing with the curator, “This is what I found”? Would he come by and take a look, or were they just waiting until you finished and you gave a report?


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

[User] It was a bit tedious physically, too. I’m not going to shovel soil out of the tube really fast. That’s just not what you do.

[Assistant] It seems like it’s a very detailed process.

[User] It is and very controlled. For those you pretty much know exactly what was done.

[Assistant] Were you sharing what you were learning as you were going through these cores? On a daily basis were you sharing with the curator, “This is what I found”? Would he come by and take a look, or were they just waiting until you finished and you gave a report?

[User] Mostly they were waiting until I finished. But every once in a while I would find something really cool and then get somebody to come in and look at it.

[Assistant] What were some of those really cool moments, or really cool things that you found?


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

[User] It is and very controlled. For those you pretty much know exactly what was done.

[Assistant] Were you sharing what you were learning as you were going through these cores? On a daily basis were you sharing with the curator, “This is what I found”? Would he come by and take a look, or were they just waiting until you finished and you gave a report?

[User] Mostly they were waiting until I finished. But every once in a while I would find something really cool and then get somebody to come in and look at it.

[Assistant] What were some of those really cool moments, or really cool things that you found?

[User] The thing that comes to mind is something somebody else found. It was a glass bubble that was hollow that was this big [demonstrates] in an Apollo 17 core. It had enough metal in the glass, it looked like metallic glass. That was a little odd.

[Assistant] Were you speculating on what that could be?


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

[User] Mostly they were waiting until I finished. But every once in a while I would find something really cool and then get somebody to come in and look at it.

[Assistant] What were some of those really cool moments, or really cool things that you found?

[User] The thing that comes to mind is something somebody else found. It was a glass bubble that was hollow that was this big [demonstrates] in an Apollo 17 core. It had enough metal in the glass, it looked like metallic glass. That was a little odd.

[Assistant] Were you speculating on what that could be?

[User] Yes, I don’t remember what the outcome was. I don’t think it was something that changed a lot.

[Assistant] You had been there for a while and then you got promoted to a management position where you were overseeing about ten folks and a clerk. I was curious how you made that change from a researcher into more of a manager, and what you did to prepare yourself for that kind of role.


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

[User] The thing that comes to mind is something somebody else found. It was a glass bubble that was hollow that was this big [demonstrates] in an Apollo 17 core. It had enough metal in the glass, it looked like metallic glass. That was a little odd.

[Assistant] Were you speculating on what that could be?

[User] Yes, I don’t remember what the outcome was. I don’t think it was something that changed a lot.

[Assistant] You had been there for a while and then you got promoted to a management position where you were overseeing about ten folks and a clerk. I was curious how you made that change from a researcher into more of a manager, and what you did to prepare yourself for that kind of role.

[User] My basic answer is I don’t recall, but I do know it was a change of pace. I decided I couldn’t really concentrate on science kind of things or contamination control kind of things if I were to follow that many people and keep up with what they were doing. So I did change how I approached that project. I don’t think it lasted that long. One of the people I supervised later supervised me, that kind of thing. We’d both been there since ’73 and ’74. It just helps when you have people that know a many useful skills.

[Assistant] I guess you work independently quite a bit in that lab, I would think.


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

[User] Yes, I don’t remember what the outcome was. I don’t think it was something that changed a lot.

[Assistant] You had been there for a while and then you got promoted to a management position where you were overseeing about ten folks and a clerk. I was curious how you made that change from a researcher into more of a manager, and what you did to prepare yourself for that kind of role.

[User] My basic answer is I don’t recall, but I do know it was a change of pace. I decided I couldn’t really concentrate on science kind of things or contamination control kind of things if I were to follow that many people and keep up with what they were doing. So I did change how I approached that project. I don’t think it lasted that long. One of the people I supervised later supervised me, that kind of thing. We’d both been there since ’73 and ’74. It just helps when you have people that know a many useful skills.

[Assistant] I guess you work independently quite a bit in that lab, I would think.

[User] Doing cores, yes.

[Assistant] You mentioned earlier about the conference that you went to where there was a discussion in the women’s restroom. Are there other conferences that you would attend over the years where you recall any interesting events or moments, or some interesting discoveries that stand out in your mind, or maybe a presentation that you gave?


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

[User] I was speaking of competitive science. Most of the people we prepare samples for compete on proposals for proposal funding to answer a science question. Many people in the curation staff also do that. I don’t, but I’m the odd person out. I pay more attention to contamination control and lab operation. These responsibilities require science knowledge and are important in sample preservation. The other curators have their own narrowly focused research goals and proposals. My interests are broader, and sometimes I make connections between collections that are beneficial. Papers detailing curation handling of samples are important to science interpretation.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] The people that make the science conclusions need to know all that background material. We put out the catalogs for many of the collections. Genesis, for instance, we try and write abstracts every year that describe how we handle the samples, or what we’re doing. That would not be something that would make a publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

[Assistant] I see.

[User] But it’s helpful. Besides, if it’s an abstract, then I can always know where to find it. I don’t have to worry about it getting lost on an archive shelf. That works out nicely.

[Assistant] You’ve written quite a bit on lunar samples and the cores over the years. You’ve been going to the Lunar and Planetary Conferences for years. Have things changed in terms of the way people are using these samples and what we’re learning about the Moon, maybe even the universe?


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

[User] I thought, “Yes, sir, I can send you one.” He was wanting it for his painting.

[Assistant] I can imagine that would be really helpful. That’s really nice. I think I used it in December. I got a call from the Legal Office when the Neil [A.] Armstrong—that [lunar sample return] bag showed up. That was an interesting one.

[User] Not in my catalog, I swear I did not find that. I had not seen one like that. I searched through our archives. We asked everybody who was around back in those days. My husband Charlie works in Crew Systems. He and a colleague went through the closets in the soft goods, spent several hours. “No, we don’t have anything like that.” So I said, “I don’t think that’s genuine lar bag.”\n\n But then they did the last thing. They did a tape pull, put that in the SEM, and there was lunar grains on it. One of our young guys, I’m so proud of him. He went and dug up the photographic documentation for that.

[Assistant] Oh, good.

[User] Kind of bad the way that turned out in court. But I felt like we’ve got a new generation of somebody who likes digging in old records and learning this history.

[Assistant] How did you get picked to be the archivist? Is that a position that you take turns doing over there?


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

[User] Not in my catalog, I swear I did not find that. I had not seen one like that. I searched through our archives. We asked everybody who was around back in those days. My husband Charlie works in Crew Systems. He and a colleague went through the closets in the soft goods, spent several hours. “No, we don’t have anything like that.” So I said, “I don’t think that’s genuine lar bag.”\n\n But then they did the last thing. They did a tape pull, put that in the SEM, and there was lunar grains on it. One of our young guys, I’m so proud of him. He went and dug up the photographic documentation for that.

[Assistant] Oh, good.

[User] Kind of bad the way that turned out in court. But I felt like we’ve got a new generation of somebody who likes digging in old records and learning this history.

[Assistant] How did you get picked to be the archivist? Is that a position that you take turns doing over there?

[User] I think I was the first one. The curator just gave me a fancy title, and I took it.

[Assistant] It sounds like an interesting job.


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

[User] Kind of bad the way that turned out in court. But I felt like we’ve got a new generation of somebody who likes digging in old records and learning this history.

[Assistant] How did you get picked to be the archivist? Is that a position that you take turns doing over there?

[User] I think I was the first one. The curator just gave me a fancy title, and I took it.

[Assistant] It sounds like an interesting job.

[User] It was, because I got to look through all those Lunar Receiving Lab records. I think I got it because they didn’t have anything else to do with me. I had been working on a flight instrument for Jim [James L.] Gooding and that ran out of money. I wasn’t doing curation that much at that time, but once I went around talking to people I discovered such a gold mine of stories.

[Assistant] Yes, we’ve got to figure out how we can collaborate together on those interviews. Maybe we can make them accessible, see about getting some of them transcribed. Even the cafeteria one.


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

[User] I think I was the first one. The curator just gave me a fancy title, and I took it.

[Assistant] It sounds like an interesting job.

[User] It was, because I got to look through all those Lunar Receiving Lab records. I think I got it because they didn’t have anything else to do with me. I had been working on a flight instrument for Jim [James L.] Gooding and that ran out of money. I wasn’t doing curation that much at that time, but once I went around talking to people I discovered such a gold mine of stories.

[Assistant] Yes, we’ve got to figure out how we can collaborate together on those interviews. Maybe we can make them accessible, see about getting some of them transcribed. Even the cafeteria one.

[User] I’d like to do that. I made a list of some people I talked to.

[Assistant] That can be something that we could look at and see if that were a possibility. Be nice to make them available, because I’m sure there’s some great information in there.


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

[User] It was, because I got to look through all those Lunar Receiving Lab records. I think I got it because they didn’t have anything else to do with me. I had been working on a flight instrument for Jim [James L.] Gooding and that ran out of money. I wasn’t doing curation that much at that time, but once I went around talking to people I discovered such a gold mine of stories.

[Assistant] Yes, we’ve got to figure out how we can collaborate together on those interviews. Maybe we can make them accessible, see about getting some of them transcribed. Even the cafeteria one.

[User] I’d like to do that. I made a list of some people I talked to.

[Assistant] That can be something that we could look at and see if that were a possibility. Be nice to make them available, because I’m sure there’s some great information in there.

[User] I didn’t ask good questions like you did. They rose to the occasion. The interviewees certainly recognized the historic importance of their participation and told me great stories with similar themes.

[Assistant] Hey, that’s great, and they’re not around for us to talk to. That would be a good partnership. We’ll have to talk more about that, I think that’d be good. You also worked on some parts of the Solar Max [Maximum Mission] satellite, which I thought was interesting.


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

[User] I’d like to do that. I made a list of some people I talked to.

[Assistant] That can be something that we could look at and see if that were a possibility. Be nice to make them available, because I’m sure there’s some great information in there.

[User] I didn’t ask good questions like you did. They rose to the occasion. The interviewees certainly recognized the historic importance of their participation and told me great stories with similar themes.

[Assistant] Hey, that’s great, and they’re not around for us to talk to. That would be a good partnership. We’ll have to talk more about that, I think that’d be good. You also worked on some parts of the Solar Max [Maximum Mission] satellite, which I thought was interesting.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How did you get involved in that? That’s a little different than lunar curating.


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

[User] I didn’t ask good questions like you did. They rose to the occasion. The interviewees certainly recognized the historic importance of their participation and told me great stories with similar themes.

[Assistant] Hey, that’s great, and they’re not around for us to talk to. That would be a good partnership. We’ll have to talk more about that, I think that’d be good. You also worked on some parts of the Solar Max [Maximum Mission] satellite, which I thought was interesting.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How did you get involved in that? That’s a little different than lunar curating.

[User] We curated the blankets from Solar Max. They were scanning the microcrater populations. Herb [Herbert A.] Zook was the PI on that and the tech was Jack [L.] Warren. It was kind of a tech job of scanning. I just did the logistics stuff; I think I drafted the paper.

[Assistant] You were the main writer on that.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How did you get involved in that? That’s a little different than lunar curating.

[User] We curated the blankets from Solar Max. They were scanning the microcrater populations. Herb [Herbert A.] Zook was the PI on that and the tech was Jack [L.] Warren. It was kind of a tech job of scanning. I just did the logistics stuff; I think I drafted the paper.

[Assistant] You were the main writer on that.

[User] Oh, really? It was a documentation really, of a survey. Herb put the science in it—what the populations were based on our crater counts and the direction that the blankets were facing, what that told us about orbital debris population in orbit. We curate those pieces. We’ve got items from several things that spent time in space, and they collected micrometeorite impacts. In some of those you can get the chemistry of the impactor, so it gives you a feel for the identity of the source population. Not all of it is orbital debris. Some of it is micrometeorites.\n\n Think we have Palapa and Westar blankets. We might have Mir. I haven’t done that in a long time so I’ve kind of lost track. We had Genesis and Stardust capsules. The Stardust capsule is at the Smithsonian, and the Genesis capsule is still at JSC but not very presentable after the crash.

[Assistant] I think those would be interesting to talk about. You got involved at some point working on the Mars Rover Sample Return project. How did you get involved in that effort?


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

[User] Yes. We’d have a fair start if you wanted to do the history of Mars Rover Sample Return. Mars sample return has been in work for—that was in the 1980s I think when I did that. It was my first look at watching engineers and scientists work together. That’s probably the most interesting thing that needs to be solved in return.

[Assistant] Can you elaborate on that?

[User] MRSR, that was a fairly congenial group. That was my first look at the engineers saying, “Well, what are the requirements? We can design anything. What are the requirements? What do you require this piece of hardware to do?” Scientists often have difficulty setting a practical requirement, especially when they need to make cutting-edge measurements.\n\n Somewhere in the middle is an optimum compromise. The more complex spacecraft mechanisms, the more risk it will not work reliably—reliability versus returning a sample that’s worth analyzing. That’s always an interesting dance of watching how they arrive at something in the middle. At least the science people tend to stake out very rigorous conditions. I guess it’s just a bargaining point. I wasn’t used to that.

[Assistant] Was that the case with the Mars Rover Sample Return?

[User] Yes. I did put in my two cents’ worth. They started to define a Mars rover of a Volkswagen variety, but it grew into a Cadillac and got too expensive, so no rover was built for MRSR. That’s the basic story there.

[Assistant] You also, I had read, worked on packaging of Martian samples. You had worked with lunar samples. What impact did that have on your decision about what you can do with Martian samples and how they should be packaged and handled?


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

[User] MRSR, that was a fairly congenial group. That was my first look at the engineers saying, “Well, what are the requirements? We can design anything. What are the requirements? What do you require this piece of hardware to do?” Scientists often have difficulty setting a practical requirement, especially when they need to make cutting-edge measurements.\n\n Somewhere in the middle is an optimum compromise. The more complex spacecraft mechanisms, the more risk it will not work reliably—reliability versus returning a sample that’s worth analyzing. That’s always an interesting dance of watching how they arrive at something in the middle. At least the science people tend to stake out very rigorous conditions. I guess it’s just a bargaining point. I wasn’t used to that.

[Assistant] Was that the case with the Mars Rover Sample Return?

[User] Yes. I did put in my two cents’ worth. They started to define a Mars rover of a Volkswagen variety, but it grew into a Cadillac and got too expensive, so no rover was built for MRSR. That’s the basic story there.

[Assistant] You also, I had read, worked on packaging of Martian samples. You had worked with lunar samples. What impact did that have on your decision about what you can do with Martian samples and how they should be packaged and handled?

[User] Oh, that’s a bit tricky, because the Martian samples we do have, the meteorites, I have not personally worked with. And the meteorites that come from Antarctica are not handled quite as rigorously as lunar samples, because they’ve already fallen on the Earth.

[Assistant] You came up with a brochure for handling these samples.


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

[User] Yes. I did put in my two cents’ worth. They started to define a Mars rover of a Volkswagen variety, but it grew into a Cadillac and got too expensive, so no rover was built for MRSR. That’s the basic story there.

[Assistant] You also, I had read, worked on packaging of Martian samples. You had worked with lunar samples. What impact did that have on your decision about what you can do with Martian samples and how they should be packaged and handled?

[User] Oh, that’s a bit tricky, because the Martian samples we do have, the meteorites, I have not personally worked with. And the meteorites that come from Antarctica are not handled quite as rigorously as lunar samples, because they’ve already fallen on the Earth.

[Assistant] You came up with a brochure for handling these samples.

[User] I sent that out. Yes, there’s a packaging industry, and I was plugged into them. I thought, “Well, I’ll just ask their leaders what we should do,” and I got lots of suggestions. That’s back when we were looking at your soda can thing, what it takes to seal a soda can. It can hold ninety psi [pounds per square inch] pressure, which is quite a lot for not much weight. I got a number of replies that were very creative, but that’s all I did with that. The curator was aware of it. We didn’t make any PR [public relations] thing out of it. It was generally people who found that an interesting intellectual challenge. They had an idea, and they’d draw it up. It wasn’t high-paid graphics. It was people sitting down with pencil and paper.

[Assistant] It sounded like you were getting a step further, “How are we going to do this?” The next step, if we’re going to get samples and bring them back.


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

[User] Oh, that’s a bit tricky, because the Martian samples we do have, the meteorites, I have not personally worked with. And the meteorites that come from Antarctica are not handled quite as rigorously as lunar samples, because they’ve already fallen on the Earth.

[Assistant] You came up with a brochure for handling these samples.

[User] I sent that out. Yes, there’s a packaging industry, and I was plugged into them. I thought, “Well, I’ll just ask their leaders what we should do,” and I got lots of suggestions. That’s back when we were looking at your soda can thing, what it takes to seal a soda can. It can hold ninety psi [pounds per square inch] pressure, which is quite a lot for not much weight. I got a number of replies that were very creative, but that’s all I did with that. The curator was aware of it. We didn’t make any PR [public relations] thing out of it. It was generally people who found that an interesting intellectual challenge. They had an idea, and they’d draw it up. It wasn’t high-paid graphics. It was people sitting down with pencil and paper.

[Assistant] It sounded like you were getting a step further, “How are we going to do this?” The next step, if we’re going to get samples and bring them back.

[User] I’m trying to recall what some of them were. They had to do with canning, was one of them. They were certainly worth looking at. I probably have those somewhere.

[Assistant] When you retire, you’ll have to go through your records and donate those or keep them with the collection over in Building 31. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about those interviews that you did with some of the planetary scientists. Do you remember some of the people you interviewed?


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

[User] I sent that out. Yes, there’s a packaging industry, and I was plugged into them. I thought, “Well, I’ll just ask their leaders what we should do,” and I got lots of suggestions. That’s back when we were looking at your soda can thing, what it takes to seal a soda can. It can hold ninety psi [pounds per square inch] pressure, which is quite a lot for not much weight. I got a number of replies that were very creative, but that’s all I did with that. The curator was aware of it. We didn’t make any PR [public relations] thing out of it. It was generally people who found that an interesting intellectual challenge. They had an idea, and they’d draw it up. It wasn’t high-paid graphics. It was people sitting down with pencil and paper.

[Assistant] It sounded like you were getting a step further, “How are we going to do this?” The next step, if we’re going to get samples and bring them back.

[User] I’m trying to recall what some of them were. They had to do with canning, was one of them. They were certainly worth looking at. I probably have those somewhere.

[Assistant] When you retire, you’ll have to go through your records and donate those or keep them with the collection over in Building 31. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about those interviews that you did with some of the planetary scientists. Do you remember some of the people you interviewed?

[User] I wrote that down. I looked that up today. Where’d I put them?

[Assistant] I was curious who some of those folks might be.


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

[User] I’m trying to recall what some of them were. They had to do with canning, was one of them. They were certainly worth looking at. I probably have those somewhere.

[Assistant] When you retire, you’ll have to go through your records and donate those or keep them with the collection over in Building 31. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about those interviews that you did with some of the planetary scientists. Do you remember some of the people you interviewed?

[User] I wrote that down. I looked that up today. Where’d I put them?

[Assistant] I was curious who some of those folks might be.

[User] Down here at the bottom. There are several. I went around with my own tape recorder. I talked to these people. Elbert [A.] King [Jr.] was done. Joe [Joseph N.] Tatarewicz was in town. Do you know him?

[Assistant] No, that name doesn’t ring a bell.


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

[User] Everett [K.] Gibson, Gary [E.] Lofgren. I was just a test subject to test out the process.

[Assistant] That’s quite a lot. There’s some good history of the materials and the folks working up there, that’s great.

[User] I was hoping Beth Horner could take that and tell stories that would really be effectively told. I think somehow or other the contract she had with Jacobs didn’t allow her to do that with them, which is odd. And Kay didn’t get releases from these people.

[Assistant] Ah, that could be a challenge.

[User] I’m not sure I did either back in ’93. So I don’t know if that can be worked retroactively or not. They exist, so people could—my view is they could come to the archives and do what they wanted to with them.

[Assistant] I’d have to investigate that, but I’m sure we could figure something out.


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

[User] I was hoping Beth Horner could take that and tell stories that would really be effectively told. I think somehow or other the contract she had with Jacobs didn’t allow her to do that with them, which is odd. And Kay didn’t get releases from these people.

[Assistant] Ah, that could be a challenge.

[User] I’m not sure I did either back in ’93. So I don’t know if that can be worked retroactively or not. They exist, so people could—my view is they could come to the archives and do what they wanted to with them.

[Assistant] I’d have to investigate that, but I’m sure we could figure something out.

[User] By the time we did these, I knew we needed releases, but I just couldn’t be persuasive enough to get that done. David McKay has passed away, but his widow is still living.

[Assistant] I’m sure that you could probably ask the family for a release. We’ll have to figure that out. It’d be nice if you could release some of that work that you’ve done. I’m sure there’s a lot of good detail that people don’t know much about.


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

[User] I’m not sure I did either back in ’93. So I don’t know if that can be worked retroactively or not. They exist, so people could—my view is they could come to the archives and do what they wanted to with them.

[Assistant] I’d have to investigate that, but I’m sure we could figure something out.

[User] By the time we did these, I knew we needed releases, but I just couldn’t be persuasive enough to get that done. David McKay has passed away, but his widow is still living.

[Assistant] I’m sure that you could probably ask the family for a release. We’ll have to figure that out. It’d be nice if you could release some of that work that you’ve done. I’m sure there’s a lot of good detail that people don’t know much about.

[User] Yes. Bogard’s stories are good. You’ve talked to Everett, you know his stories are all good.

[Assistant] I think everyone’s interesting when we sit down and talk with them. They’ve all got good information, good stories.


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

[User] Dick [Richard H.] Koos sat down and wrote a piece to glue in the copy that’s in our church library. He talked about the role, just being able to sit in Sunday services and have a period to reflect, which allowed him to come to grips with some of the hard decisions that had been discussed or argued over the previous week. So I thought that that might have been the case with many of the people that were making Apollo decisions, not just astronauts. I thought maybe there was a role.

[Assistant] I thought it was an interesting article, giving some thought about that.

[User] Wendell got somebody in sociology to review it before he put it in his book.

[Assistant] I wonder if you want to review your notes and see if there’s anything we haven’t talked about, or if there’s something more you think we should talk about in terms of the lunar curation and your involvement and maybe processes or procedures. I know I wanted to come back and talk to you about Genesis, and now I know I need to ask you about Stardust as well.

[User] No, most of these were tagged from what you asked here. The only thing that I thought of—I thought back over the time I worked here, “What did I come away learning in terms of what advice would I give for future efforts?” So I collected some thoughts on that.

[Assistant] Do you want to share those now? Or would you like to talk about those the next time we come?


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

[User] Wendell got somebody in sociology to review it before he put it in his book.

[Assistant] I wonder if you want to review your notes and see if there’s anything we haven’t talked about, or if there’s something more you think we should talk about in terms of the lunar curation and your involvement and maybe processes or procedures. I know I wanted to come back and talk to you about Genesis, and now I know I need to ask you about Stardust as well.

[User] No, most of these were tagged from what you asked here. The only thing that I thought of—I thought back over the time I worked here, “What did I come away learning in terms of what advice would I give for future efforts?” So I collected some thoughts on that.

[Assistant] Do you want to share those now? Or would you like to talk about those the next time we come?

[User] It’s kind of long, let’s see. Discussing things now, the advantages of sample return are many. If I could advertise something, that would be it, because it lets more people be involved in making analytical measurements and participating in the science. With more people with different ideas and different instruments, you can confirm science results or refute them. This is better science. You can’t do that very well robotically or in situ. You need samples here. Socially, it’s just good to involve more people in participating in this exploration.\n\n You get state-of-the-art instruments, you can do complex sample preparation. I guess the main thing is you can recover from mess-ups like the Genesis crash. So sample return is very important. I’m not the only one that says that, but if I had a free soapbox that’s what I would talk about.

[Assistant] Those are important, and you know because you worked with them on a regular basis. I thank you for coming by today, and I will send you an e-mail about getting together again to talk about Genesis and Stardust.