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

[User] “First to land on the Moon.”

[Assistant] “First to land on the Moon.”

[User] That was a wry note, and the reason it was wry was because achieving that meant that many of the Grumman people got laid off three months earlier than they’d all anticipated. It was a mixed blessing, so far as many people were concerned. I’ve since been told that the Russians had a vehicle in orbit with us for Apollo 11, and it turned out in recent years they found out it was an unmanned landing probe that failed. We didn’t know at the time but what it was a manned spacecraft that Russia was preparing to land while we were in orbit around the Moon before we landed.

[Assistant] How much information were you given about the Russians? I know that upper management was in meetings.

[User] Very little. Very little. All I knew was that there was something in orbit with us, and they suspected it was a Russian spacecraft. They didn’t have any knowledge of whether it was manned or unmanned. They didn’t even know for sure who it belonged to.

[Assistant] Was this after the launch that you learned this?


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

[User] That was a wry note, and the reason it was wry was because achieving that meant that many of the Grumman people got laid off three months earlier than they’d all anticipated. It was a mixed blessing, so far as many people were concerned. I’ve since been told that the Russians had a vehicle in orbit with us for Apollo 11, and it turned out in recent years they found out it was an unmanned landing probe that failed. We didn’t know at the time but what it was a manned spacecraft that Russia was preparing to land while we were in orbit around the Moon before we landed.

[Assistant] How much information were you given about the Russians? I know that upper management was in meetings.

[User] Very little. Very little. All I knew was that there was something in orbit with us, and they suspected it was a Russian spacecraft. They didn’t have any knowledge of whether it was manned or unmanned. They didn’t even know for sure who it belonged to.

[Assistant] Was this after the launch that you learned this?

[User] It was after we were in orbit around the Moon when I first heard about it. But people weren’t talking very much, because it was, I guess, considered a deep dark secret that they knew how to detect such things. We thought it was a very nip and tuck situation up until the time that Neil [A. Armstrong] put his foot on the Moon.

[Assistant] I find it interesting that you have worked so closely with Buzz Aldrin since then. I’m sure you’ve had a chance to talk to him about his perspective on your bird.


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

[User] Very little. Very little. All I knew was that there was something in orbit with us, and they suspected it was a Russian spacecraft. They didn’t have any knowledge of whether it was manned or unmanned. They didn’t even know for sure who it belonged to.

[Assistant] Was this after the launch that you learned this?

[User] It was after we were in orbit around the Moon when I first heard about it. But people weren’t talking very much, because it was, I guess, considered a deep dark secret that they knew how to detect such things. We thought it was a very nip and tuck situation up until the time that Neil [A. Armstrong] put his foot on the Moon.

[Assistant] I find it interesting that you have worked so closely with Buzz Aldrin since then. I’m sure you’ve had a chance to talk to him about his perspective on your bird.

[User] Not in any serious way. He’s always just made that joke about, “This is the guy that gave me an overweight Lunar Module.”

[Assistant] What an interesting, almost simple way to lessen that burden, by leaving the backpacks and the flight plans. That’s still weight, certainly nothing that they needed to return home with.


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

[User] Yes, that was another thing that went right. We got it done, and that was I think an important thing, because it’s been my contention ever since that that lunar landing was at least as important as the fall of the Berlin Wall in getting us out of the situation of being in a far worse situation than we’re in today with regard to the Russians.

[Assistant] Do you feel like the momentum at the Space Center changed at all after you had the first lunar landing?

[User] Of course it did. It was almost entirely lost; it carried on just through inertia. Later, I was a party to LM-15 as my last such assignment. Because there were five of us, I went from LM-5 to LM-10 or Apollo 15. LM-10 was another interesting assignment, because the decision had been made before I was given that assignment to have Apollo 15 be the first to stay three days and to carry the [Lunar] Rover, which was a very significant modification to the vehicle. I had to look after getting those things done, which was another interesting drill. There again it worked well.

[Assistant] Did you spend a lot of time at [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], or at all?

[User] No, I didn’t worry about the Rover itself. I worried only about getting it stowed in the Lunar Module, which was not easy, having it where the flight crew could get it out and get it to work on the Moon. But the Lunar Module itself was what I was concerned with. The Lunar Rover I just steered completely away from that because it was Marshall’s responsibility, and I wasn’t about to touch it because I didn’t want any hint of my being responsible for it.

[Assistant] I imagine you had enough to do.


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

[User] Of course it did. It was almost entirely lost; it carried on just through inertia. Later, I was a party to LM-15 as my last such assignment. Because there were five of us, I went from LM-5 to LM-10 or Apollo 15. LM-10 was another interesting assignment, because the decision had been made before I was given that assignment to have Apollo 15 be the first to stay three days and to carry the [Lunar] Rover, which was a very significant modification to the vehicle. I had to look after getting those things done, which was another interesting drill. There again it worked well.

[Assistant] Did you spend a lot of time at [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], or at all?

[User] No, I didn’t worry about the Rover itself. I worried only about getting it stowed in the Lunar Module, which was not easy, having it where the flight crew could get it out and get it to work on the Moon. But the Lunar Module itself was what I was concerned with. The Lunar Rover I just steered completely away from that because it was Marshall’s responsibility, and I wasn’t about to touch it because I didn’t want any hint of my being responsible for it.

[Assistant] I imagine you had enough to do.

[User] Yes, I had plenty to do without that.

[Assistant] Were a lot of modifications made to the LM at that point?


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

[User] No, I didn’t worry about the Rover itself. I worried only about getting it stowed in the Lunar Module, which was not easy, having it where the flight crew could get it out and get it to work on the Moon. But the Lunar Module itself was what I was concerned with. The Lunar Rover I just steered completely away from that because it was Marshall’s responsibility, and I wasn’t about to touch it because I didn’t want any hint of my being responsible for it.

[Assistant] I imagine you had enough to do.

[User] Yes, I had plenty to do without that.

[Assistant] Were a lot of modifications made to the LM at that point?

[User] Yes. We had to put in additional cryogenic storage for the fuel cells, for example. We had to be sure that the ascent propulsion system, which used supercritical helium as its pressurant, was sufficiently well insulated to last for the additional time on the Moon. That system, by the way, is the only one that caused a comment to be made by George Low directed my way during the countdown for the Apollo 11 launch. There was an issue that came up between a guy at the Cape and me as to whether or not we had the ability to turn around the next day if we had to stop for some reason. The KSC guy raised alarm that no, the supercritical helium will heat it up too much, and we’d be out of limits and couldn’t go. My numbers said otherwise, so we had that discussion on the loop with George Low listening. He finally said, “You guys get off the loop and solve this offline.” We did, and I won the fuss, but that was not even necessary, because we didn’t have to wait. We launched the day we intended to. That’s some of my adventures. I hope that helps.

[Assistant] It does. It reminded me—again, with the recent 40th anniversary—it came up on a couple discussions about the lack of specific knowledge on how the Lunar Module would land on what was there. Some thought maybe it would go down 10 feet into the dust.


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

[User] Yes, there’s something to that. You know what the vernier thrusters are on the Orbiter?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] They have little tiny motors that help control it. Well, that came about from a conversation that my next door neighbor, Henry [O.] Pohl, and I had on his front yard one Sunday morning, because those 1,000-pound thrusters are just too big to give you the delicate control you need. So Henry stopped his lawn mower and he and I decided we needed to add the vernier thrusters in order to give people the finer mode of control. It would pay off greatly by conserving a lot of propellant we’d otherwise waste. There was some of that that went on. It wasn’t as frequent as you might think, because we didn’t have that much time for social life. But it did happen, and it was useful to have people living together in Nassau Bay and El Lago and Clear Lake City and the communities around there.

[Assistant] Must have been nice at least with the commute. You didn’t have to go very far to go home at night.

[User] That’s right. I only had to drive three miles to work, and I had the sun at my back going and coming.

[Assistant] That sounds like a good deal. Were there some other areas that you wanted to talk about before we close today?


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

[User] I’d say don’t worry about the long-term part of it, but if you have the drive and the interest in doing important work for the nation in the area of discovering unknowns, and you don’t mind long hours and hard work, you will enjoy this agency. You’ll enjoy the people you work with, because they’re all of like mind, and I think you’ll enjoy the values that we share. Now, if you’re coming here for the money, for the retirement plan, for the location of the Center, for example, forget about it. That’s not why people come to this agency. They will be disappointed in all those other things. If they’re not turned on by the mission that we have, then we probably don’t need to take them on.

[Assistant] And why do you think people, the majority of people, come to this agency?

[User] I think the majority of people that come to this agency do so because they like the mission.

[Assistant] Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about on any of these subjects that you’d like to mention?

[User] No, I don’t think so.

[Assistant] Okay. I appreciate your time today.