Apollo 17 quotes
"It's really turned out to be just an icon and we've discussed it after the event many times within NASA and without any hesitation we've mutually agreed that it is undoubtedly the most commonly recognised image, the most commonly distributed image of one single image. I mean there are many pictures of famous figures of Einstein, of Christ and so forth but one single image that's been most widely distributed is, without a doubt, the Apollo 17 image of earth.
...
"No one at that time in our photo lab had any idea I think of how long lasting it would be and how unmatched it has truly been, that particular image. There have been unmanned satellites that have taken pictures of earth and well there have not been any other human tended space craft that have taken nearly that majestic of a picture."
-- Mike Gentry, Media Resource Centre. NASA Johnson's Space Centre in Houston, Texas [1]
Early in the mission, Astronaut Ron Evans made his most notable photographic contribution; he took a picture that will rank among the classics of the space program. As Apollo sped toward the moon after blasting into its translunar trajectory, he pointed his camera back toward home and caught a stunning view of the earth, with the side visible to the astronauts completely illuminated. In crystal-clear detail it shows almost the entire coastline of Africa and the offshore island republic of Malagasy, the Arabian peninsula and an unusually thick cover of swirling clouds over Antarctica and the surrounding region at the bottom of the world. [2]
A beautiful picture of the full earth framed in the blackness of space and streaked with wispy clouds highlighted eight Apollo 17 photos released by the Space Agency Saturday. Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt captured the view of Africa, Arabia and the Antarctica polar ice cap a few hours after he and Eugene A. Cernan and Ronald E. Evans blasted away from Earth Dec. 7.[3]
The most widely recognized Earth views, however, were produced at much greater range by the Apollo astronauts on the moon voyages of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among those that stand out is an image captured by the crew of Apollo 17 en route to the moon, in which the Earth is sometimes referred to as the "Blue Marble." A rich dark blue masked by a brilliant swirl of starchy white clouds, the Earth appears vibrant but fragile suspended against the stark blackness of deep space.
The timing of the photograph coincided with an explosion of public concern over industrial pollution, calls for the protection of endangered species and new laws to protect natural habitats.
"In my opinion, it was one of NASA's most significant accomplishments," says Lulla [ed: Kamlesh Lulla, chief of Johnson's Earth Sciences Branch], who holds doctorates in ecology and space remote sensing. "The picture captured the conceptual thinking of what the planet looked like. Suddenly, there was an awareness of the Earth being one interrelated system." [4]
In training for the Apollo 17 flight, Schmitt — the first American scientist to go into space — did some extracurricular work in meteorology. "Prior to launch, he talked to our guys at Cape Kennedy quite a lot," said Alan Sanderson, the chief weatherman at the Manned Sapcecraft Center. "He was interested in the frontal systems that would be over the South Atlantic and South America after the ship left earth orbit. They had special forecast maps of the area prepared for him."[5]
As he descended the ladder, Schmitt's first thought was to not fall on his rear. But once he got a few meters from the ship, he got his first real glimpse of the moonscape. They had landed, by design, in a large canyon surrounded by mountains over a mile high. "The mountains were spectacularly illuminated against the blacker-than-black sky, and the sun was brilliant, brighter than any desert sun," Schmitt recalled.
He knew he couldn't spend too much time admiring the view. "In today's dollars, that mission cost seven to eight million dollars a minute, so you're not going to stand around scratching yourself," he said.
The actual exploration had been carefully planned for almost two years. "This wasn't some ad hoc field trip," Schmitt said. "We had obligations, and we knew exactly what to do." He and Cernan set about gathering specimens and examining the landscape. [6]
"If I didn't have 100 percent faith I could get back, I wouldn't have gone. I didn't go to not come home," Cernan said. "Fear didn't play a part -- apprehension, maybe, but not fear." [6]
"When you strap a Saturn 5 to your butt, you know you are going somewhere." -- Eugene Cernan[7], quoted by Anthony Young in The Space Review
"We trusted our engineers. We had worked with them for years," Schmitt agreed. "We believed in Newtonian physics -- we knew what to expect." In addition, virtually every process had a backup plan, which added to the men's confidence. [6]
The only photograph of the lunar liftoff was taken from Earth and had expectedly poor resolution. "Gene tried to persuade me to stay outside and take a really good picture of liftoff, but I politely declined," Schmitt joked. [6]
As the third outing drew to a close, Schmitt clambered up the ladder of the Apollo 17 lander. Alone on the moon's surface, Cernan steered their battery-powered automobile a mile from the spacecraft and parked the rover so a video camera could record their Dec. 14 liftoff. As he climbed from the vehicle, Cernan bent down and traced the initials of his 9-year-old daughter, Tracy, in the soil. Then he literally hopped and skipped in the moon's low gravity back to the lander ...[8]
Alone on the moon's surface, Cernan ... hopped and skipped in the moon's low gravity back to the lander, mulling over in his mind what he should say as he rejoined Schmitt. "I started to walk up the ladder, looking over my shoulder, and I still wasn't sure what I was going to say," Cernan recalled. Then the words flowed.
"As we leave the moon and Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind," he spoke. "As I take these last steps from the surface for some time to come, I'd just like to record that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow."
Cernan says the final sentence was intended to convey his belief that America could not turn away from what it had started with the challenge of Apollo....[8]
"Everyone wants to be first," Cernan said of the distinction that went to Neil Armstrong as the first man to walk on the moon. "But I will tell you the next best thing to being first is doing what I did, commanding the last flight, being the last man to leave his footprints," he said. "I think they both stand side by side. The beginning and the end of the beginning."...[8]
Cernan: "When you are on the surface of the moon in the daytime it's a paradox. You are standing on the surface of the moon lit by sunlight you, your body and the surroundings, and you look up at the sky and it's black it's not darkness it's just black. Most people confuse darkness with blackness they are totally two different words. Darkness is the absence of light in my definition. Blackness is a void. Blackness is the absence of almost anything. If you look at the Earth from the moon it reflects sunlight, yet it is surrounded by the blackest black you could ever conceive in your mind the absence of anything. The blackness has three dimensions. I didn't find the black sky above oppressive. I define blackness as the infinity of time and space and if you let your mind and imagination wander the infinity of time and space does anything but close in upon you it just goes on forever. When you stand on the moon and look up and see that blackness which goes all the way to the horizon of the moon, it doesn't feel like you are being closed in upon like a black painted ceiling at all as a matter of fact it is exactly the opposite.
When you are on the moon you can't look anywhere near the sun it's devastatingly bright. When we drove the rover back to the east it was a lot more difficult to see upsun than downsun because of the reflective surface. The closer you looked toward the sun you just couldn't see much definition at all.
A lot of people say can you see anything else in the daytime on the moon can you see stars? The answer to that is yes if you shield your face and eyes from all the reflected light around you can see stars in the daytime on the moon not as brightly as at night of course."[9]
Schmitt: "The rover only went about six or seven miles, but that was more than enough because if you hit a bump, you were off the surface for awhile," Schmitt said. "We found out about that once." [10]
Schmitt: "We had a high-protein fruit cake, hamburger, hot dogs and peanut butter," Schmitt said. "What else could I want?"[10]
Schmitt: "I left footprints in the sands of time, and that was a good place to do it," he said. "They'll be there for the next million or two years."?"[10]
The first scientist to land on the moon studied the most fantastic collection of rocks gathered by Apollo astronauts Wednesday [ed: December 27, 1972] and said the orange soil did not look as bright as it did when he kicked it around on the moon. "It doesn't look the same," Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt said. "The only real orange was the stuff I kicked up." ... The color was easily distinguishable on television and in pictures taken by the astronauts.
But the volcanic type soil, studied closely for the first time Wednesday, appeared to have a darker, duller tint. Geologists said it was probably because the orange soil was mixed with the other gray soil which Cernan and Schmitt scooped up. "It is not the perfectly gray or nearly black we've seen before," said Dr. William R. Muehlberger, head of the Apollo I7 surface geology investigating team. "But, this is the most fantastic collection we've ever had."
Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, said the soil looked brown or tan. But Schmitt confirmed that the sample being examined contained the orange soil which indicates there was volcanic activity on the moon. ... Scientists kept one ounce of the orange soil for immediate testing. It will be chemically analyzed, scrutinized, under a microscope, heated to see what gases are produced and tested to determine its age.[11]
Jan Evans represented the wives (a group of unsung heroes in the race to the moon, to be sure!), but I didn't get most of her jokes, because they were too insider-oriented. She chided Kranz about not packing Ron's "dinner number nine." She also said that NASA never told the wives how to do their lives, meaning not so much that they received no "orders" but rather that they received no "guidance" or even assistance.[12]
Schmitt recalled how very young the flight control teams were, only in their twenties, with Kranz an old man at 35 years old or so, while the astronauts were in their late thirties or older.[12]
[Schmitt] talked about his hopes to send Apollo 17 to the lunar farside, until one day Chris Kraft (then director of the Manned Spacecraft Center) bumped into Schmitt at the water cooler and told him to forget about it. This and other far-out plans were conceived by the ‘Lunar Mafia" (including George Abbey), who sometimes gathered at the "Singing Wheel" (a watering hole long since gone), which was the site of at least one memorable shuffleboard game (I am not making this up) between Schmitt and Abbey on one team and Rod Loe and someone else on the other team. .[12]
[Schmitt] also mentioned a classic photo of Ron Evans in-flight with a bag of salmon salad, showing an air bubble inside of the bag. He said that no one could recall requesting that salmon salad, so it never got eaten, and that is why it is still on display in some museum to this very day, as an example of "flown space food." [12]
"Shoot, it was a disappointment not to get to go to the moon," said Engle, now 70. "It wasn't my idea, and it didn't make me happy, but I certainly agreed with the decision." If Apollo 17 warranted a trained geologist, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt was the more qualified, Engle says. [13]
"Joe was very disappointed, I'm sure. I would have been disappointed and anyone would have been," said Schmitt, now 67. "It's one of those opportunities. No one, including myself was about to give up a seat." [13]
Tiny, trim Jan Evans, Ron's wife, joined us. "Sure I'd go to Mars," she says over the rim of her coffee cup, "if I could take the family." Their husbands might some day get the chance, would they want them to go? "Gene and Ron would be the first ones in line, and Jan and I would be right there pushing them," says Barbara. Jan nods in agreement.[14]
"Barbara [Cernan], a slim, attractive girl in a fitted, white knit pants suit, is an old hand at packing her husband off to outer space.".[14]
Neither the tension of the flights nor the constant separations during mission training have dimmed the luster of being an astronaut's wife for Barbara [Cernan]. She calls their nine years in the space program "the best years of our lives. You just have to learn to be independent all over again and make decisions you never thought you'd have to make."[14]
Sharing the activities of nine-year-old Tracy [Cernan], a Girl Scout with a passion for horses (they have two), taking part in church and community work and preparing for endless streams of company fill the days when Gene is away. Last summer, they spent three weeks with him at the Cape. When Tracy, who thinks "the sun rises and sets, in Gene," was small, she was convinced he lived in a capsule down there.
Space flights haven't changed Gene [Cernan] as a husband and father, Barbara says. "He's a very thoughtful person." Only his patience has given way to the pressures of the space program. "There aren't enough hours in the day to do what he has to do. I don't see how their systems stand it," she said of the astronauts.[14]
Jan Evans, who has been in an Apollo simulator with Ron and taken what she calls the "gee whiz" tour of the Cape, says being the wife of an astronaut isn't even a strain for her. "As long as he's happy, I'm happy."
Of course military life prepared her for the experience. "We see more of him now than we did when he was flying for the Navy." Ron was flying combat missions from the carrier, USS Ticonderoga, in 1966, when word came he'd been selected for the astronaut program. In the same mail, a Dr. Seuss book arrived for their daughter, Jamie. In it was the line: "I will go to the Moon." They made a big thing of it, Jan remembers.[14]
Since then, Jan's life has been typically suburban; carpooling kids to school, swim meets and football practice, attending PTA open houses and sewing. "Beautifully, unbelievably," Barbara [Cernan] remarks. "I love it, it's my therapy," says Jan [Evans].[14]
Von Braun, whose former science teams developed the Saturn rocket that powered the Apollo spacecraft to the moon, told interviewers that he is "optimistic" about the space industry's future. Anticipating that reusable shuttle craft will prompt a resumption of manned moon missions in a decade in efforts to set up a semipermanent lunar base, Von Braun said, "Space is here lo stay."[15]
[Ron Evans:] "I'd like to get down to the moon's surface, you darn right I would. There's a certain amount of disappointment . . . but there's a heck of lot of compensation from just being able to get up there 240,000 miles away from earth and get within eight miles of the thing."[16]
Those who know Ron Evans say he is always smiling and cheerful. His wife, Jan, said, "he doesn't have a worry in his body."[16]
Evans is considered one of the most proficient pilots in the astronaut corps and, despite his views on making scientific observations from space, conceded that he has more interest in the flying aspects of the Apollo 17 mission than in the science. Flying, he said, gives him "a sense of freedom."[16]
Evans: I don't think my spiritual values have changed. During the flight the feelings up there were so much beyond my expectations. It is very hard for me to explain the feeling of pure enjoyment of being able to float, of being able to maneuver oneself, view the moon, crawl out of the spacecraft into the blackness of space and look at the earth and look at the moon. These things were pure joy to me. I don't thing I have changed.[17]
Cernan: I have always had a belief in God. The one thing that will probably slick with me for the rest of my life is that there really is some supreme being who is behind this entire system. When you get 250,000 miles from earth and look back the earth is really beautiful. You can see the roundness, you can see from the snowcap of the North Pole to the ice caps of the South Pole. You can see across continents. You look for the strings that are holding this earth up and you look for the fulcrum and it doesn't exist. You look alongside earth at the blackest blackness man can conceive.
That's what I call infinity of time and infinity of space and I know that it exists. I don't understand it and I am not sure that anyone else does. You look at the beauty of our earth, not tumbling aimlessly through the space but moving logically, perfectly and with purpose and you have a special feeling for its significance because it is home. You look at it and say: "Hey, there is ho way this could have happened by two dust particles coming together. It's all too beautiful, it's all too perfect to have happened by accident."[17]
Evans: The way I look at it is the way I think our nation should look at it. I can't be 39 years old and say that the greatest thing I've done in my life is to go to the moon. I've got to have another challenge, another goal. Our nation can't afford to say that the greatest thing it has done is to have a space program. We've got to continue, we've got to have another goal and jump ahead.[17]
Schmitt: No, there weren't [many surprises on the flight]. The single big surprise was that it pretty well went as we hoped it would, and that to me is gratifying.[17]
Schmitt, the first scientist to be sent into space, is under no delusions. The decision to send men back into outer space, he said, won't be made by scientists, but by politicians. He expressed regret that his Apollo 17 trip marked the end of lunar exploration, perhaps for the rest of this century. "There's no doubt we've pulled back," he said. "Why, I'm not sure. We seem not to follow nonprofit operations in a systematic way. We tend to do exciting projects and then don't follow through." This is too bad, he indicated, because the Apollo explorations were just on the verge of major scientific information.[18]
"Scared?" asked Evans. "Well, if you're not a little bit apprehensive, you don't understand what's happening beneath you," he laughed.
"That thing ignites — 7 1/2 million pounds of thrust, then the whole thing is shaking, shaking like...son of a gun! The pressure builds up and builds up. Then, bang! it quits. Then boooooorrrinng! You're bouncing back and forth — and then it's a smooth ride, like nothing you can imagine."[19]
The Navy pilot [Evans] is in that tiny fraternity of men who have known the experience of dangling outside a spacecraft in deep space, connected only by an umbilical cord. As he looks back on that experience, Evans speaks almost spiritually of viewing the earth and sun and moon, and the reflected, glistening light on the spacecraft which illuminated the words "United States of America" and the country's flag. He termed that "a marvelous, marvelous feeling. Our nation's accomplishments in the space program have created an unprecedented prestige throughout the world," he said, adding: "I'm damn proud to be an American."[19]
In another serious vein, Evans said, "I'm often asked if I saw God while I was out in space. No, I didn't see God. But you cannot look down on that crescent Earth, and return without having whatever convictions you had when you left strengthened."[19]
[Ron Evans:] "I think it has been a good experience for my son and daughter. I think my wife has gotten used to all the crazy things I do. So, I say I'm going off to the moon. She thinks, 'Big deal.'"[19]
Two factors improved the quality of the television still more on the last Apollo missions [ed: Apollo 16 and 17]. NASA's using the 210-foot dish stations of the Deep Space Network, which increased the signal strength by almost 8 dB, brought about the first improvement. Image Transform, then a startup company in North Hollywood, brought about the other improvement. They demonstrated to NASA, using Apollo 15 footage, their new proprietary system for enhancing video. NASA had them bring their system online for Apollo 16. Now the converted video from all EVA's was shipped to California, enhanced, returned to Houston, and then distributed to the network pool, all in real time.[20]
For Apollo 16 and 17, however, flight controllers did track the ascent stage. With the punch button command arrangement and a 3 to 4 second time delay, their command sequence had to be totally preplanned. I had worked with Ed Fendell for the Apollo 17 liftoff to get it exactly right for a long tracking shot. At liftoff, the action was perfect, but soon the image of the ascending capsule drifted out at the top of the frame. Ed was furious that, after all the calculations, we missed the mark. It was discovered later that the crew had parked the Rover buggy closer to the Lunar Module than was prescribed by mission plan, and the vertical tilting of the camera was too slow.
Whenever I see a clip of that liftoff I note, as the stage nears the top of frame, a cut to a film shot of the stage ready to dock with the command module. And I still think, "Darn, we could have followed that final liftoff 'til it was but a dot of light winking out as it headed for the mother ship."[20]
"I know of only one selection where if Deke had his own way, or for that matter probably JSC had its own way, it would not have been made, and that was with Jack Schmitt [Apollo 17]. I don't think Jack would have flown if it hadn't been pushed very hard from up here." — George M. Low, January 16, 1974[21]
In the late 1960s, when Frank Pullo helped design electronic circuitry on several Grumman Lunar Modules used in the Apollo space missions, he put in such heavy workweeks, he was instructed to visit the company physician. After clocking 70 hours a week, such visits were mandatory at Grumman. But Pullo, of Wantagh, didn't stop there. He routinely clocked 90-hour weeks. And, some nights he didn't bother going home, instead curling up inside a trailer used by some of the astronauts working on the $180-million modules. "Some of my time sheets were unbelievable," recalled Pullo, 68. "But working on the modules was like building the pyramids. We knew we were working on something that was going to be tremendously historic." -- Newsday, December 20, 2000[22]
With the shut down of the SIVB, weightlessness enveloped us. This feeling of floating in water without any water gradually induced the first mild symptoms of space adaptation -- slight headache and slight nausea. These feelings became more pronounced with movement through the cabin and went away with a few minutes of inactivity. We found that over a few days, symptoms lessened and disappeared.[23]
More intriguing, however, were the expansive views of oceans, clouds, and continents below. At 18,000 miles per hour and 90 minutes per orbit, patterns sped by far too fast -- the South Atlantic and its washboard of stratus clouds, the desert coast of southwest Africa, the burning savannahs of Africa's interior, Madagascar, the towering thunderheads of the Indian Ocean, cloud and shadow fingers of sunset, lightening flashes in the South Pacific darkness, city glows through winter clouds covering North America, and then the grid of lights of Florida once again.[23]
With all systems "go" in our spacecraft and rocket, the third stage re-ignited to send us toward the moon through the darkness over Australia, across the banded colors of sunrise, and then directly away from Africa at 25,000 miles per hour.[23]
After retrieving the Lunar Module Challenger from its launch cocoon in the front end of the SIVB, we could relax and view the rapidly receding Earth, the absolute highlight of the flight from Earth orbit to lunar orbit.
At first, the blue and white marbled Earth with its red, brown, and green continental rafts filled only one window and, gradually, not even that. Our photograph of a nearly full Earth with Africa as its centerpiece, taken from 34,000 miles away, does not do justice to the memories.
Like childhood's home which we now only visit, changing in time but unchanged in the mind, we could see the full Earth revolve beneath us. The serpentine coasts of South America and Africa, like pieces from a child's wood block puzzle, bound the blue-black South Atlantic. The eastward bulge of the Amazon and the westward dent of the Congo appear to fit together so neatly that one can easily imagine their joint birth when an ancient super continent slowly began to split apart to form a new ocean.
Later, we can absorb all of South America with one glance from the historic Isthmus of Panama to the gale rent Straits of Magellan and from the streaming brown mouth of the Amazon to the jagged backbone of the Andes. At one point in the planet's rotation, only the brilliant white ranges, valleys, and plains of Antarctica remind the viewer that land still exists. The red-orange continent of Australia finally conquers this impression and becomes the Earth's natural desert beacon for the rest of our voyage.
As they slowly revolve into view, we watch the thunderhead capped islands of the Philippines, the South China Sea with its dense white typhoon Teresa, the gray-green island arcs of the East Indies and their turquoise lagoons, and the jungle blanketed regions of Southeast Asia. The Indian Ocean reappears to finally saturate the mind, and the cycle repeats.
For three days, the fascinating changing scenes of an ever smaller planet Earth dominated our thoughts, until outside, a dark looming presence increasingly made itself felt as much as seen. The disk of the black, lightless moon grew in aspect, blocking more and more of the universal star field and then the mountains of the moon crossed the Earth itself.
Once in orbit about the moon, we looked first toward the airless sunrise and saw increasingly bright and glowing streamers radiating vast distances from a hidden sun. Then, just before sunrise, the center of each streamer became a spike of brilliant light piercing the dark lunar horizon like a luminous blade. A few high peaks cast their reflected light around the horizon's edge for a few moments and then, sunrise!
At last, held to our own cyclic wandering around the moon, we saw the Earthrise; that first and lasting symbol of a generation's spirit, its daring, and its imagination.[23]
The Challenger provided one of the more serviceable and comfortable camps in my experience as a field geologist. The lower half, or descent stage, contained not only the big rocket engine that set us down in the valley, but also the equipment we would use during our exploration. In addition, the descent stage held the food, water, and oxygen needed for the three day stay. The upper half of the Challenger, or ascent stage, not only would take us back into orbit but provided a bedroom, kitchen, dining room, and bathroom.
Although two large, empty spacesuits made things cramped, sleeping in one-sixth G provided better rest than on Earth -- just enough gravity to feel the hammock beneath you but not enough pressure to cause you to toss and turn. The freeze dried, dehydrated, and irradiated foods tasted fine, certainly better than some food prepared by geological field assistants in Alaskan field camps I have known. Possibly most important, there were no black flies or mosquitoes.[23]
Rover television, commanded to begin a vertical pan six seconds before engine ignition, showed the world its first liftoff from the moon. Unfortunately, the only film photograph of a lunar liftoff came from a TV screen on Earth and suffers from extremely poor resolution. Gene tried to persuade me to stay outside and take a really good picture of liftoff, but I politely declined.[23]
With the shutdown of Challenger's ascent rocket engine right on schedule, weightlessness once again invaded the cabin, this time in the company of a cloud of lunar dust from that accumulated beneath the floor grating. In a few minutes, the carbon dioxide removal system acted as an air filter and the cabin air cleared.[23]
Following a routine rendezvous and docking with Ron, we proceeded to transfer precious samples and film as well as the EVA equipment Ron would use on the way home. Then came the sadness of casting Challenger loose for its last trip to the Valley of Taurus-Littrow and a crash for seismology near the South Massif. Having lived for many years with Challenger (or LM-12 as it is carried on the books) through design reviews, crew function checks, vacuum tests, flight configuration checks, and final tests, I had become attached to this inanimate object as if it were a member of the family. Tough to let go.[23]
Ron quickly acquired the reputation of "chow hound" for the Apollo 17 crew. In fact, Gene and I worried about leaving him alone for three days with the food supplies. Although food remained when we returned from the lunar surface, all the good stuff, that is, everything with any flavor like bacon squares and chocolate, had disappeared.[23]
All of us had to live with hydrogen gas in the water used to reconstitute various foods (basically the same as today's trail foods). Engineers never have been able to keep this hydrogen from diffusing into the water created when hydrogen and oxygen combine to produce electricity in fuel cells. Although the convenience of having a continuous supply of fresh water should be obvious, hydrogen going into our guts with the food had to come out, much to the discomfort of crew mates.[23]
As entry into the atmosphere approached, our speed increased to about 35,000 miles per hour. We first separated from America's Service Module, relying on the Command Module's batteries to see us through to splashdown. Then, with the blunt end forward, we pointed the lift vector of the conical Command Module toward the Earth (at 35,000 mile per hour, even something that looks like a chocolate Kiss has lift like a wing). This insured capture by the atmosphere and avoided any danger of skipping out into space. As a consequence of this maneuver, we experienced a peak deceleration of seven G's. Seven G's takes a lot of grunts.
Once captured, the spacecraft guidance computer held about four G's for several minutes. More grunts required while the computer rolled its lift vector back and forth, correcting our flight path toward where it believed the recovery aircraft carrier waited in the South Pacific. Actually, the computers demonstrated such accurate knowledge of the planned point of splashdown that the Navy decided to cruise several miles away in order to avoid any possibility of a hard and embarrassing landing on the carrier's deck.
At 25,000 feet above the ocean the drogue parachutes (similar to those used for special fuels hot rods) deployed to slow us down even more. This short period actually surprised us by including the most violent motion of the flight. However, at 10,000 feet, the big, beautiful, red and white main chutes began to deploy. Although it seemed to take forever, all three chutes eventually filled, and we drifted to a amazingly low impact splashdown in the reportedly "gentle" swells of the blue Pacific near Samoa.
Reports of gentle swells did not take into account the strange shape of our spacecraft-turned-boat. Strange new motions, coupled with re-adjustments to Earth's gravity and the soak back of entry heat into the cabin, made me more uncomfortable than at any other time during the mission. No one became sick, but it was close.
The efficiency of the Navy frogmen saved us from the indignity of throwing up. Within a few minutes, they deployed a flotation collar around the spacecraft, inflated a staging liferaft for the hoist to the hovering helicopter, opened the hatch, and handed us each an engraved underwater knife. Soon, we reached for friendly hands through the side door of the helicopter and flew to the carrier Ticonderoga and the beginning of other adventures.[23]
[Rolling Stone magazine:] The idea was to go to Cape Kennedy and cover the launch of Apollo 17, Nasa's final mission to the Moon, and the antics of all the people who are drawn to such events, all those who insist on being at heavyweight championship fights and the World Series and bicentennial celebrations in New York Harbour, those who show up, in short, when things are happening.[24]
The whole swarm materialised at the Cape. In the VIP grandstand on the night of the launch was everyone from Frank Sinatra to King Hussein of Jordan, who insisted on flying in to the Cape at the controls of his own military jet. The air controllers sent their women and children to north Georgia In fact, the king merely ran off the runway and came to rest harmlessly on the bands of the Banana river. Half the content of the New York tabloid gossip columns was there. Also on hand was a young photographer named Annie Leibovitz, who had just started doing work for Rolling Stone and looked like 12 people, all of them identical and born with batteries included. It was as crazy a scene as any chronicler of the social tableau could wish for.
But my eyes kept wandering to the rocket, the Saturn V rocket that would launch Apollo 17, a stupendous thing 36 storeys high, a white shaft gleaming in a bath of arc light against the night sky. Three men were perched up on top of it in a little thimble known as a command module. The rocket was gorged with a highly volatile fuel called liquid oxygen, and the three men were waiting for someone to light the fuse Who on earth were they? Or, rather, what were they? Why were they willing to do such a thing?
It was a pretty obvious side-eyed question, but I couldn't get it out of my mind. I told Young Wenner I wanted to make the story a study of the psychology of the astronauts themselves. And since I had a good 10 days or so until the deadline, why not include all the astronauts who had signed on for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes? No stranger to folly and the delusions of journalists, Young Wenner said go ahead.
At first I though my task would be easy, because this, the final mission to the Moon, had turned into a reunion of all the astronauts and they were in a jolly mood and quite approachable. Or they were approachable up to a certain point. Unfortunately, that point was my key question: "What does it take to be an astronaut?" The very subject seemed to violate a taboo. The taboo had to do with a secret code of conduct among military pilots, which I decided to call "the code of the right stuff".
I can remember flying from Florida to Texas and from Texas to Colorado to San Jose, California, frantically in search of some stray astronaut somewhere who would break the code and spill the beans. My one article for Rolling Stone turned into four, each written against some yet more hellish deadline. After some seven weeks, 50,000 words had gone into this series, which Editor Wenner entitled "Post-Orbital Remorse", referring not to the astronauts, as everyone thought, but to the author. By now it was March of 1973. After three months of couscous, fluids and bed rest, I decided to rewrite the series in book form. I figured this might take five or six months. It took a little longer. In the summer of 1979 I completed the rewrite and, trying to overcome the remorse, renamed it The Right Stuff.
Dr. Schmitt, 36 years old, has guided all the moon landing crews through their geology training. He said he thought that sending "a professional observer" to the moon would significantly increase the knowledge gained, particularly concerning the very early history of the earth and the history of the sun.[25]
"There's no question that Joe Engle is one of the most outstandingly qualified test pilots in the business," Dr. Schmitt said in answer to a question. But, he continued: "I believe that as far as my qualifications to fly the spacecraft are concerned, I will attempt to compete with anybody in the program."[25]
"Jack isn't sitting here as part of this crew for any other reason than that he has rowed hard, he's earned it and he deserved it," Captain Cernan said.[25]
The space agency, in a move expected to help soften criticism that it neglects science, plans to announce next week the first assignment of a scientist-astronaut to train actively for a lunar landing. Reliable agency sources said yesterday that Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt would be named to the back-up crew for Apollo 15 with the idea that he would go to the moon on Apollo 16 or Apollo 17. The Apollo 16 and 17 flights are tentatively scheduled for 1971. Apollo 15 is scheduled to go to the moon in October, 1970. Dr. Schmitt is a 34-year-old geologist who put in many hours drilling the Apollo 11 and 12 crews on the geological aspects of their missions.[26]
Dr. Schmitt, who is from New Mexico, is the only bachelor astronaut. He was in the six-man group picked in June, 1964, as the first scientist-astronauts. Since then, he has logged hundreds of hours as a pilot, mostly in jets.[26]
The naming of Dr. Schmitt will answer one of the chief specific complaints in the scientific community about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's prosecution of the Apollo program. This has been that failure to assign a scientist-astronaut to a reasonably early flight meant sacrificing the chances of obtaining maximum knowledge from the $24-billion program. The theory of the critics is that only an expert scientist can interpret the subtle relationships of lunar terrain and material and come up with significant discoveries that might elude a packet of instruments or a test pilot. The critics have complained that top NASA officials were oriented too heavily toward engineering and were badly shortchanging science. The complaints intensified after the first lunar landing and were accompanied by a scattering of resignations by scientists and scientist-astronauts from the space agency.[26]
References
- ↑ Alexandra de Blas, World Environment Day: Spaceship Earth, Earthbeat (Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Radio National)
- ↑ "Portfolio from Apollo", Time Magazine, January 08, 1973.
- ↑ UPI, "Astronauts Relax; Photos Of Moon Voyage Released", The Times Standard, Saturday December 24, 1972, Eureka, California, Page: 9 (Subscription required)
- ↑ Mark Carreau, "Archives Window of opportunity", 06/30/1996, Section: Texas Magazine, Page: 6, Edition: 2 STAR (Registration required)
- ↑ Associated Press, "Schmitt Turning In Weather Man", Florence Morning News, Sunday December 10, 1972 Page 11:B
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Dinesh Ramde, "Professor recounts 1972 trip to moon" UniversalJournal (The Association of Young Journalists)
- ↑ Anthony Young, Generation Y and lunar disbelief, The Space Review, January 22, 2007. Reports on “breakfast with the astronauts” (Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14, John Young and Charlie Duke of Apollo 16, and Eugene Cernan of Apollo 17) 'several years ago' at Kennedy Space Center
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Mark Carreau, "Apollo 17 not final chapter", Houston Chronicle, 12/07/2002, Section: A, Page: 01, Edition: 3 STAR (Registration required)
- ↑ Hamish Lindsay, Tracking Apollo to the Moon, Chapter 6: After Apollo 11 (online), Springer; 1 edition (May 18, 2001), ISBN 1852332123
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Claire Bartel, "Former astronaut discusses moonwalk", Indiana Daily Student, 4/14/2004.
- ↑ Bruce E. Hicks, UPI, "Moon Soil 'Not As Bright' On Earth, Scientist Says", The Middlesboro Daily News Monday, January 1, 1973, Page 10
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 John Charles , "My notes from the Apollo 17 splashdown 30th anniersary party, Dec. 19, 2002", sci.space.history, December 25 2002>
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Mark Carreau, "Astronaut's attitude down to earth about being left behind", Houston Chronicle, 12/06/2002, Section: A, Page: 23, Edition: 3 STAR (Registration required)
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 Carolyn Callahan, WNS, "Barbara Cernan, Jan Evans Send Astronaut Husbands Moonwards", Tuesday December 5, 1972, Burlington (N.C.) Times-News, page 8-A
- ↑ Lyle W. Price, Associated Press Writer, "", The Lowell Sun, Page 2, Saturday, December 9, 1972
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 N.Y. Times Service, "Astronaut Evans outspoken", 8 Syracuse Herald-American Page 8, December 10, 1972
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 The Lowell Sun, "Apollo 17 astronauts weigh space challenge", The Lowell Sun, Thursday, March 29, 1973, Page 26
- ↑ Bob Corbett, Copley News Service, "Sees Man Traveling To Stars", The Vidette-Messenger, April 03, 1973
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Sam Russell, Shooting the Apollo Moonwalks (PDF - ALSJ), Government Video, September 2000
- ↑ Glen E. Swanson, ed., 'Before This Decade Is Out...' — Personal Reflections on the Apollo Program, (PDF), (NASA SP: 4223) (The NASA History Series), 1999, Page 340, NTRS Document ID: 20000027506, Report Number: LC-99-23780; NAS 1.214223; NASA SP-1999-4223, ISBN 0-16-050139-3
- ↑ By Samuel Bruchey, Lunar Module Meets Its Makers - Spacecraft Exhibited at Local Museum, Newsday, December 20, 2000
- ↑ 23.00 23.01 23.02 23.03 23.04 23.05 23.06 23.07 23.08 23.09 23.10 Harrison H. Schmitt, A Field Trip to the Moon, NEEP602 - Resources from Space Course Notes (Fall 1996), Dept. of Engineering Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- ↑ Tom Wolfe [Jann S Wenner, Editor], Revolutionary, wild, unpredictable - and that was just the writers', The (London) Independent, May 10, 2006'
- ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 Reuters, [Geologist, Picked for Moon Flight, Defends the Choice], Copyright © The New York Times, Originally published August 20, 1971
- ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 Richard Witkin, [Scientist Expected to Be Picked for Moon Trip], Copyright © The New York Times Originally published December 12, 1969