Quotes from Schmitt oral history

The following quotes have been extracted from the Oral History, edited and reformatted for includion in the Apollo 17 Flight Journal.

• Part 1: July 14, 1999
• Part 2: March 16, 2000

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) The edited quotes look like this.

[edit] 30 Seconds

(2000) Everything went really just as one would have planned it, as we went out the elevator and out on the catwalk and met the white room crew. Guenter Wendt was waiting for us, as he waited for everybody. They strapped us in and closed it off, and we then went into the final countdown and got to thirty seconds, and everything had come alive beneath us. The gimbals were moving and the rocket, you could feel it. You're lying there on your back, you could feel the engines moving down a football field below you or more, as it prepared for ignition.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) We went into the final countdown and got to thirty seconds, and everything had come alive beneath us. The gimbals were moving and the rocket, you could feel it. You're lying there on your back, you could feel the engines moving down a football field below you or more, as it prepared for ignition.

[edit] Apollo Flight Journal

(2000) Schmitt: Interestingly enough, somebody just recently has contacted me and they want to put together a journal of that particular phase of the mission, which is not in the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal [website] that Eric [M.] Jones put together. So I think we're going to see a Web-based version of that transcript. I can't believe it's going to be of any great interest to anybody, but we'll see. [Laughter]

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Interestingly enough, somebody just recently has contacted me and they want to put together a journal of that particular phase of the mission, which is not in the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal that Eric Jones put together. So I think we're going to see a Web-based version of that transcript. I can't believe it's going to be of any great interest to anybody, but we'll see. [Laughter]

[edit] Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

(1999) In 1968, things really started to get intense. A number of things were happening. And by the way, one of the best resources for a lot of this are George Low's archives, which are at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in Troy, New York. They're available to researchers, and it is a — I've just started to use them myself, and it's just fascinating the material that's in there. He's a meticulous note-taker and dictator and not political dictator but a writing dictator. And so, that's a tremendous resource —

Butler

That's good to hear.

Schmitt

— for historians. Also a more direct resource is now the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal that's on the web, that Eric Jones (Dr. Eric Jones of Los Alamos) put together. Most of the astronauts participated in editing and annotating the air-to-ground transcripts as well as the videotape transcripts. So, those are two really important historical resources.

And I hope that somehow or another that Lunar Surface Journal will be maintained on the web indefinitely. I — NASA has put a little money into it, but probably not as much as they should in order to ensure its availability over the long haul. We don't live forever. And right now, it's purely the love of Eric Jones and his crew of people from all over the world that are adding checklists and all sorts of resources to that web page.

Schmitt: (Oral History 1999) A more direct resource is now the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal that’s on the web, that Eric Jones put together. Most of the astronauts participated in editing and annotating the air-to-ground transcripts as well as the videotape transcripts. So, those are two really important historical resources. And I hope that somehow or another that Lunar Surface Journal will be maintained on the web indefinitely. NASA has put a little money into it, but probably not as much as they should in order to ensure its availability over the long haul. We don’t live forever. And right now, it’s purely the love of Eric Jones and his crew of people from all over the world that are adding checklists and all sorts of resources to that web page.

[edit] Backup crew

(1999) Schmitt: On Apollo 15 and 17, my two experiences? Yeah, I think so. We didn't see an awful lot of our backup crew on Apollo 17, because they knew that they were just sort of filling a square unless something really serious happened. But still, when they were around, we did a lot of socializing with the support team. We tried to with contractor teams and stuff like that.

The astronauts were generally pretty good at socializing with people who were important to the success of the various missions. It was very important to do. Both formally, we had formal competitive baseball games and barbecue activities and things like that; and informally, we would golf and do things. I did a lot. And as I indicated before, I did particularly a lot with the Flight Control Division people.

Schmitt: (Oral History 1999) We didn’t see an awful lot of our backup crew on Apollo 17, because they knew that they were just sort of filling a square unless something really serious happened. But still, when they were around, we did a lot of socializing with the support team and contractor teams and stuff like that. The astronauts were generally pretty good at socializing with people who were important to the success of the various missions. It was very important to do. Both formally, we had formal competitive baseball games and barbecue activities and things like that; and informally, we would golf and do things. I did a lot, particularly with the Flight Control Division people.

[edit] Checklists

(2000) Schmitt: With only one or two exceptions, I think our crew was, if you go back, if somebody went back and looked at the record and really wanted to do an analysis, I think our crew was more wedded to following checklists than other crews. I don't know what that was. Maybe it was because I'd spent so much time mission after mission helping to develop them. We trained to them, and most of the problems that other crews had, not most, but some of the problems other crews had was when they sort of deviated from checklists.

Gene, of course, had had a bad experience related to that on Apollo 10. It's not quite clear that the crew still will — what actually happened, but it does appear like it might have been a checklist problem.

After us, the ASTP, Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project], yes, ASTP mission had a problem with checklists on reentry. But our mission, other than one time, Gene, I think it was on that next to last day when they just — Gene just started playing with the computer, I think absentmindedly and started firing thrusters, which got everybody all excited. He just accidentally hit, I guess, got a command in that started the thrusters firing, and that's the only one I remember where we didn't really — somebody didn't really follow the checklist.

Butler

Maybe that was to keep things from getting too boring. [Laughter]

Schmitt

I don't think so. He seemed as startled as anybody else. [Laughter]

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) With only one or two exceptions, I think our crew was more wedded to following checklists than other crews. Maybe it was because I'd spent so much time mission after mission helping to develop them. We trained to them, and most of the problems that other crews had, not most, but some of the problems other crews had was when they sort of deviated from checklists. Gene, of course, had had a bad experience related to that on Apollo 10. It's not quite clear what actually happened, but it does appear like it might have been a checklist problem. After us, the Apollo-Soyuz mission had a problem with checklists on reentry.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) On that next to last day Gene just started playing with the computer, I think absentmindedly, and started firing thrusters, which got everybody all excited. He just accidentally hit, I guess, got a command in that started the thrusters firing. That's the only one I remember where somebody didn't really follow the checklist. He seemed as startled as anybody else. [Laughter]

[edit] Cutoff

(2000) Then right at thirty seconds, Skip [Clarence] Chauvin, who was handling the launch director role on that mission, came over the line and said that we have a hold. I think Gene was more concerned than the rest of us, because he didn't know whether the — none of us knew, but he, I think, was most worried about whether everything in the spacecraft and in the rocket knew we were in a hold. But we went through that thirty-second period and it was quiet for a few minutes, and Chauvin came back on the line and said, "We have a problem with the launch computer. It's not a major problem. We're going to fix it and when we have it fixed, we'll recycle — " I think it was eight minutes for a planned hold and then go through it again.

That is exactly what happened. At that point I felt very comfortable. I'd worked with Skip in many chamber tests and things like that, so we knew him very well, and the sound of his voice, it didn't sound like anything that wasn't going to be fixed. So I fell asleep. Anytime you put fans humming or a little bit of vibration, things like that, I can go to sleep. There's no problem. So I got an hour or so dozing sleep while we were waiting for that problem to be fixed.

Launch director Skip (Clarence) Chauvin explained the situation to the crew. Schmitt managed to nap during the delay.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Right at thirty seconds, Skip Chauvin came over the line and said we have a hold. I think Gene was more concerned than the rest of us, because none of us knew whether everything in the spacecraft and in the rocket knew we were in a hold. But we went through that thirty-second period and it was quiet for a few minutes. Then Chauvin came back on the line and said, "We have a problem with the launch computer. It's not a major problem. We're going to fix it and when we have it fixed, we'll recycle." I think it was eight minutes for a planned hold and then go through it again. That is exactly what happened.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) At that point I felt very comfortable. I'd worked with Skip in many chamber tests and things like that, so we knew him very well, and from the sound of his voice, it didn't sound like anything that wasn't going to be fixed. So I fell asleep. Anytime you put fans humming or a little bit of vibration, things like that, I can go to sleep. There's no problem. So I got an hour or so dozing sleep while we were waiting for that problem to be fixed.

[edit] Dedication

(2000) It was reflected, I think, in the fact that when our mission actually flew, there were by far, probably an order of magnitude or two, fewer component failures, system failures. Everything just worked beautifully from a hardware and a software point of view, which wouldn't have happened had people been letting down anywhere along the line in the tests and checkout and working of the hardware. We replaced a lot of stuff during tests. For example, our lunar module [LM], we used to jokingly refer to it as the LM 9 module, because LM 9 was a lunar module that had been configured for the Block I or H missions, such as Neil [A.] Armstrong flew. It was superseded by a J mission, or Block II lunar module, the first one of which flew on Apollo 15.

But we took the landing radar off of it and replaced it. It was being cannibalized to make sure that our spacecraft had everything working at the time of launch. But still there was general atmosphere on the one hand of continued clear Apollo dedication. There just was no diminution of that at all that I could ever detect.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) When our mission actually flew, there were by far fewer component failures, system failures, probably an order of magnitude or two. Everything just worked beautifully from a hardware and a software point of view, which wouldn't have happened had people been letting down anywhere along the line in the tests and checkout and working of the hardware. We replaced a lot of stuff during tests. For example, our lunar module, we used to jokingly refer to it as the LM 9 module, because LM 9 was a lunar module that had been configured for the Block I or H missions, such as Neil Armstrong flew. It was superseded by a J mission, or Block II lunar module, the first one of which flew on Apollo 15. But we took the landing radar off of it and replaced it. It was being cannibalized to make sure that our spacecraft had everything working at the time of launch. But still there was general atmosphere on the one hand of continued clear Apollo dedication. There just was no diminution of that at all that I could ever detect.

[edit] Earth orbit

(2000) We didn't have an awful lot of time in Earth orbit to look out the window, but we got a few nice photographs at 90 nautical miles. That's pretty close compared to the space shuttle. But still I can remember not only taking pictures, but really being fascinated, as everybody is, by the rapidly changing views of the Earth. Our actual acceleration out of Earth orbit started in the dark and actually went through a sunrise, which we had a good chance to see as we went through that sunrise. That was spectacular, to be accelerating at those rates, about a G and a half, and then see this sunrise out the windows. It was really something to see.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) We didn't have an awful lot of time in Earth orbit to look out the window, but we got a few nice photographs at 90 nautical miles. That's pretty close compared to the space shuttle. But still I can remember not only taking pictures, but really being fascinated, as everybody is, by the rapidly changing views of the Earth.

[edit] Flight Control

(2000) Schmitt: One of the things that I had believed in from the very beginning, my first contact with Gene Kranz and the flight control people, as well as our own flight crew support groups, that the more contact that these groups could have with each other and with the astronauts, the crew and the backup crew, the better the whole atmosphere was for success. Gene agreed with that, and so we did a lot of socializing with our various types of support people. We had softball games with them. We went out for barbecue and beer when we were at the Cape [Cape Canaveral, Florida]. When we were back here, we had evenings with the flight controllers. Sometimes when the flight controllers were having a gathering, I would always try to show up. I think I was probably the only astronaut that showed up regularly at these social events down at the old Hoffbrau House in Dickinson [Texas] and places like that, and the Singing Wheel when it was still around.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) From the very beginning, my first contact with Gene Kranz and the flight control people, as well as our own flight crew support groups, I believed that the more contact that these groups could have with each other and with the astronauts, the crew and the backup crew, the better the whole atmosphere was for success. Gene agreed with that, and so we did a lot of socializing with our various types of support people. We had softball games with them. We went out for barbecue and beer when we were at the Cape. When we were back here, we had evenings with the flight controllers. Sometimes when the flight controllers were having a gathering, I would always try to show up. I think I was probably the only astronaut that showed up regularly at these social events down at the old Hoffbrau House in Dickinson [Texas] and places like that, and the Singing Wheel when it was still around.

[edit] Last cigarette

(2000) I do remember that when we were suiting up and getting ready to go out to the launch pad, that Ron Evans had his last cigarette just before he put on his helmet. We kept after him all during the flight that he had to take advantage of this now, he's going to have two weeks' cold turkey and he shouldn't pick it up again. He resisted for about two more weeks after we got back, but, unfortunately, he started to smoke again after that time.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) When we were suiting up and getting ready to go out to the launch pad, Ron Evans had his last cigarette just before he put on his helmet. We kept after him all during the flight that he had to take advantage of this now, he's going to have two weeks' cold turkey and he shouldn't pick it up again. He resisted for about two more weeks after we got back, but, unfortunately, he started to smoke again after that time.

[edit] Meterorology

(2000) Schmitt: My father was an amateur meteorologist and he excited my interest when I was a boy in Silver City, New Mexico, or near Silver City. We would try to develop various predicative techniques for whether we were going to have storms or not down in that area. In those days, there was not much meteorological information coming out of Mexico, and so the weather forecasters were not too good at figuring out when we were going to have storms. But we gradually figured out what wind directions and barometer changes and what part of the solar cycle you might be in that would enable us to predict.

So I had this significant interest in weather, which I still have today, and so as I approached the launch, I started talking with the Air Force meteorologist at the air base that supported the launches down in Florida. The name is obviously escaping me now.

Butler

Patrick [Air Force Base]?

Schmitt

Patrick. At Patrick. They got interested in this, and so just as I suited up, one of my friends with that group brought in the latest satellite pictures that covered the Earth, that gave me the whole southern hemisphere of the Earth. So I had those in my pocket as we went out to the launch pad.

I had planned, and we had talked about it, that in my spare time on the three and a half days to the Moon I would try to build on those, what those satellites pictures showed, primitive as they were, and try to experiment with how well could I forecast the weather, because the Earth in what we called a lunar reference trajectory, we would see the Earth turn every twenty-four hours beneath us. So you could see what the weather pattern was, try to predict the trend for the next day, and then see how well you did the next day.

Of course, we were getting farther and farther away and the Earth was changing from full to about two-thirds. But we had a 10-power binocular on board, so you could look out the window and see it. So all of that several inches of transcript was me exercising that little experiment, because there really wasn't much else to do, except try to get a little exercise and eat and check out systems. But it certainly was not a full day's work any one day.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) My father was an amateur meteorologist and he excited my interest when I was a boy in Silver City, New Mexico. We would try to develop various predicative techniques for whether we were going to have storms or not down in that area. In those days, there was not much meteorological information coming out of Mexico, and so the weather forecasters were not too good at figuring out when we were going to have storms. But we gradually figured out what wind directions and barometer changes and what part of the solar cycle you might be in that would enable us to predict. So I had this significant interest in weather, which I still have today.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) As I approached the launch, I started talking with the Air Force meteorologist at [Patrick Air Force Base] down in Florida. They got interested in this, and so just as I suited up, one of my friends with that group brought in the latest satellite pictures that covered the Earth, that gave me the whole southern hemisphere of the Earth. So I had those in my pocket as we went out to the launch pad.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) I had planned, and we had talked about it, that in my spare time on the three and a half days to the Moon I would try to build on what those satellite pictures showed, primitive as they were, and try to experiment with how well could I forecast the weather. In what we called a lunar reference trajectory, we would see the Earth turn every twenty-four hours beneath us. So you could see what the weather pattern was, try to predict the trend for the next day, and then see how well you did the next day. Of course, we were getting farther and farther away and the Earth was changing from full to about two-thirds. But we had a 10-power binocular [ed: monocular] on board, so you could look out the window and see it. So all of that several inches of transcript was me exercising that little experiment.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) There really wasn't much else to do, except try to get a little exercise and eat and check out systems. But it certainly was not a full day's work any one day.

[edit] Mission Control

(1999) Schmitt: It was. But, you know, we all — I think everybody — I was very close to Mission Control. One of the places I found you could learn — you could do a little simulation training before I was ever assigned to a mission and you could learn an awful lot about spacecraft systems, was to go over to Mission Control and work with the various console teams because they were the ones that developed the so-called schematics of each of the spacecraft systems. And I learned an awful lot from studying those and working with those people.

So, I had a real good relationship with the Mission Control folks. We went out to the Singing Wheel together often — and — the late Singing Wheel, I guess we have to refer to it since it's burned down — for barbecue and shuffleboard. And it was a good crew. I really enjoyed my time with them. The — Sy [Seymour A.] Liebergot and the — Steve [Stephen G.] Bales and the booster guy whose name I — . I feel bad but I can't remember all their names now.

Schmitt: (Oral History 1999) One of the places I found you could learn an awful lot about spacecraft systems, was to go over to Mission Control and work with the various console teams because they were the ones that developed the so-called schematics of each of the spacecraft systems. And I learned an awful lot from studying those and working with those people. So, I had a real good relationship with the Mission Control folks. We went out to the Singing Wheel (the late Singing Wheel, I guess we have to refer to, it since it’s burned down), together often for barbecue and shuffleboard. And it was a good crew. I really enjoyed my time with them. Sy [Seymour A.] Liebergot and Steve [Stephen G.] Bales and the booster guy — I feel bad but I can’t remember all their names now.

[edit] NASA's focus

(2000) On the other hand, it was clear NASA, as an agency, was looking to something else, that although we had the attention of the Flight Control Division, Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz's group, and we had the attention of the Flight Crew Support Division and the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, Jim [James A.] McDivitt now running it, having replaced George [M.] Low, all of that, as far as I could see, everybody was doing exactly what we needed to have done and everybody needed to have done to make Apollo 17 a success. On the other hand, NASA engineers and administration were focused on the space shuttle. They were already looking at that as the next major challenge, and so I suspect that at that level we certainly did not have the level of attention. It didn't seem to make any difference, other than the fact that Apollo 18, 19 and 20 had already been cancelled, in part, I think, due to a lack of interest by NASA, more so, though, due to a lack of media interest, which was translated into a lack of political interest in the country.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) On the other hand, it was clear NASA, as an agency, was looking to something else, that although we had the attention of the Flight Control Division, Gene Kranz's group, and we had the attention of the Flight Crew Support Division and the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, Jim McDivitt now running it, having replaced George Low, all of that, as far as I could see, everybody was doing exactly what we needed to have done and everybody needed to have done to make Apollo 17 a success. On the other hand, NASA engineers and administration were focused on the space shuttle. They were already looking at that as the next major challenge, and so I suspect that at that level we certainly did not have the level of attention. It didn't seem to make any difference, other than the fact that Apollo 18, 19 and 20 had already been cancelled, in part, I think, due to a lack of interest by NASA, more so, though, due to a lack of media interest, which was translated into a lack of political interest in the country.

[edit] Night launch

(2000) Schmitt: The main thing that started first relative to a night launch was that we had to begin to adjust our sleep cycle and basically turn it by twelve hours. We did that over a period of about two weeks. We'd just go to bed an hour, I can't remember whether it was earlier, earlier, I guess, and get up an hour earlier every day for two weeks until we were on the flight plan schedule. Everybody had to do it. It wasn't just us, it was the simulators, everybody was operating on a different schedule to be prepared for what the flight plan was going to require, and that was a night launch. So we had breakfast, I guess, mid-afternoon of launch day, or something like that. It was those kind of things that happened. (2000) But after that, it was pretty uneventful. You don't have a good view of the launch pad going out there. I had gone out the night before to see the rocket illuminated by the searchlights. That is sort of a tradition that I inherited from Bill [William A.] Anders. He took me out for Apollo 8 the night before launch, and it's really an amazing sight, that Saturn V illuminated. Of course, at that point we could get ourselves in very close just because of who we were, and so you had a view that very, very few people, other than the pad technicians, ever got of the Saturn V.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) [For] a night launch we had to adjust our sleep cycle and basically turn it by twelve hours. We did that over a period of about two weeks. We'd just go to bed an hour earlier, and get up an hour earlier every day for two weeks until we were on the flight plan schedule. Everybody had to do it. It wasn't just us, it was the simulators, everybody was operating on a different schedule to be prepared for what the flight plan was going to require, and that was a night launch. So we had breakfast, I guess, mid-afternoon of launch day.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) I had gone out the night before to see the rocket illuminated by the searchlights. That is sort of a tradition that I inherited from Bill Anders. He took me out for Apollo 8 the night before launch, and it's really an amazing sight, that Saturn V illuminated. Of course, at that point we could get ourselves in very close just because of who we were, and so you had a view that very, very few people, other than the pad technicians, ever got of the Saturn V.

[edit] Programmed wrong

(2000) What it turned out to be was that somewhere in the deep dark past of computer programming, a programmer had told the final sequencing checks that the computer was going to do — to look to see if a signal to pressurize a booster oxygen tank had been sent. Not whether it had been received and acted upon, but had the signal been sent. Well, when they went through that particular point where that signal was supposed to have been sent and the tank pressurized, the signal didn't get sent. There was some problem in the computer, didn't send the signal, but the person in the launch control center saw that that didn't happen and just pressed a button and pressurized the tank.

So everything was fine, but the computer didn't know it. So when they went through the final sequence, the computer saw that that signal hadn't been sent, and it said "Hold." So the computer just shut everything down. That's what you want them to do, it's just that it was programmed wrong. Garbage in, garbage out. So what they did, they actually went into the launch computers, tracked down that point and hard-wired around that particular sensor so that the next time the computer went through, it would believe that the signal had been sent. Sure enough, it believed it, and off we went. We were two hours and forty minutes late, but, nevertheless, we were on our way.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Somewhere in the deep dark past of computer programming, a programmer had told the final sequencing checks that the computer was going to do — to look to see if a signal to pressurize a booster oxygen tank had been sent. Not whether it had been received and acted upon, but had the signal been sent.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Well, when they went through that particular point where that signal was supposed to have been sent and the tank pressurized, the signal didn't get sent. The computer didn't send the signal, but the person in the launch control center saw that that didn't happen and just pressed a button and pressurized the tank. So everything was fine, but the computer didn't know it. When they went through the final sequence, the computer saw that that signal hadn't been sent, and it said "Hold."

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) So the computer just shut everything down. That's what you want them to do, it's just that it was programmed wrong. Garbage in, garbage out. So what they did, they actually went into the launch computers, tracked down that point and hard-wired around that particular sensor so that the next time the computer went through, it would believe that the signal had been sent. Sure enough, it believed it, and off we went. We were two hours and forty minutes late, but, nevertheless, we were on our way.

[edit] Recycle

(1999) The training is something that has a life of its own, and you live within that life, and make sure that it gets done. The one thing that you don't want to do is have a aborted launch on a launch pad and have to recycle and come back a month later and go through another month of simulator training. You're ready to go when you're ready to go. And I think everybody felt that way. (2000) So the training cycle was intense. It seemed long. The one thing at the end of it is that you certainly don't want to recycle for another month. That was the first thought we had on the launch pad when we did, in fact, have a delay, was that, well, let's hope that we don't have to go through this for another month. You're ready. It's geared, it was geared through experience and maybe through attitude to reach the peak, your peak performance level, just about the time you were ready to launch. To have to go then cycle back down and come back up for another month later would have been a different thing. You would have gotten into it and done it and then never noticed the difference, but still at the immediate point of being ready to launch, you're ready to launch, there's no question about that.

Schmitt: (Oral History 1999) The one thing that you don’t want to do is have a aborted launch on a launch pad and have to recycle and come back a month later and go through another month of simulator training. You’re ready to go when you’re ready to go. And I think everybody felt that way.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) You certainly don't want to recycle for another month. That was the first thought we had on the launch pad when we did, in fact, have a delay, was that, well, let's hope that we don't have to go through this for another month. You would have gotten into it and done it and then never noticed the difference, but still at the immediate point of being ready to launch, you're ready to launch, there's no question about that.

[edit] Return to Earth

(2000) Schmitt: I don't think so. There's the mission as a whole which stands out. Every day had its high point. I won't deny that. But to make a relative judgment on those is really very, very, very difficult to do, and I really don't try to do that. Probably the least interesting part of the mission were the two days headed back, the first two days headed back to Earth, although Ron Evans did an EVA, which certainly was a highlight of the first day. The second day was a drag. The Earth was, all you could see was a crescent Earth. There really wasn't much to look at. There was a bit of a letdown after having had such exciting days preceding it on the Moon. We had one or two experiments to do. There just really wasn't — that next to last day was not much to write home about.

Butler

Understandable.

Schmitt

But then the last day, of course, you're preparing for entry and the adrenalin is starting to come back, and that's sort of the pièce de résistance, actually getting back into the atmosphere and coming home. By then you knew there was no choice, you were coming home one way or the other, and so let's do it right.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Probably the least interesting part of the mission were the first two days headed back to Earth, although Ron Evans did an EVA, which certainly was a highlight of the first day. The second day was a drag. All you could see was a crescent Earth; there really wasn't much to look at. There was a bit of a letdown after having had such exciting days preceding it on the Moon. We had one or two experiments to do, there just wasn't much to write home about. But then the last day, of course, you're preparing for entry and the adrenalin is starting to come back, and that's sort of the pièce de résistance, actually getting back into the atmosphere and coming home. By then you knew there was no choice, you were coming home one way or the other, so let's do it right.

[edit] Saturn V ride

(2000) Schmitt: Yes. I don't think it makes much difference whether it was first or second or third, but I think everybody felt, whoever rode a Saturn V was tremendously stimulated by the experience. It's a very heavy vibration. Very slow acceleration at first, but heavy, heavy vibration as the five F-1 engines in the first stage, the S-IC, are fighting each other to some degree. You build up, over two minutes and forty-five seconds, about 4 Gs' acceleration. At that point everything shuts down. You drop off the first stage and then you ignite the second stage, the S-II, and you're back on your way, but only at one and a half Gs. So there's a big change, it's from 4 Gs to a minus one and a half, as the whole stack unloads, to a plus one and a half, as you go on on the second stage. And that all happens in just slightly over a second. So that is probably the most dynamically exciting point in the mission, certainly in the launch part of it.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) I think everybody [who] rode a Saturn V was tremendously stimulated by the experience. It's a very heavy vibration. Very slow acceleration at first, but heavy, heavy vibration as the five F-1 engines in the first stage, the S-IC, are fighting each other to some degree. You build up, over two minutes and forty-five seconds, about 4 Gs' acceleration.

[edit] Saturn V staging

(2000) Schmitt: Yes. I don't think it makes much difference whether it was first or second or third, but I think everybody felt, whoever rode a Saturn V was tremendously stimulated by the experience. It's a very heavy vibration. Very slow acceleration at first, but heavy, heavy vibration as the five F-1 engines in the first stage, the S-IC, are fighting each other to some degree. You build up, over two minutes and forty-five seconds, about 4 Gs' acceleration. At that point everything shuts down. You drop off the first stage and then you ignite the second stage, the S-II, and you're back on your way, but only at one and a half Gs. So there's a big change, it's from 4 Gs to a minus one and a half, as the whole stack unloads, to a plus one and a half, as you go on on the second stage. And that all happens in just slightly over a second. So that is probably the most dynamically exciting point in the mission, certainly in the launch part of it.

From then on it's pretty straightforward. You get into orbit, what, in about ten minutes using all three stages, the third stage being the restartable. After two orbits of the Earth and checking everything out, you restart that and accelerate to 25,000 miles an hour and you're on your way.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Very slow acceleration at first, but heavy, heavy vibration as the five F-1 engines in the first stage, the S-IC, are fighting each other to some degree. You build up, over two minutes and forty-five seconds, about 4 Gs' acceleration. At that point everything shuts down. You drop off the first stage and then you ignite the second stage, the S-II, and you're back on your way, but only at one and a half Gs. So there's a big change, it's from 4 Gs to minus one and a half, as the whole stack unloads, to plus one and a half, as you go on on the second stage. And that all happens in just slightly over a second. So that is probably the most dynamically exciting point in the mission, certainly in the launch part of it. From then on it's pretty straightforward. You get into orbit in about ten minutes using all three stages.

[edit] Training

(1999) The training is something that has a life of its own, and you live within that life, and make sure that it gets done. The one thing that you don't want to do is have a aborted launch on a launch pad and have to recycle and come back a month later and go through another month of simulator training. You're ready to go when you're ready to go. And I think everybody felt that way. (2000) So the training cycle was intense. It seemed long. The one thing at the end of it is that you certainly don't want to recycle for another month. That was the first thought we had on the launch pad when we did, in fact, have a delay, was that, well, let's hope that we don't have to go through this for another month. You're ready. It's geared, it was geared through experience and maybe through attitude to reach the peak, your peak performance level, just about the time you were ready to launch. To have to go then cycle back down and come back up for another month later would have been a different thing. You would have gotten into it and done it and then never noticed the difference, but still at the immediate point of being ready to launch, you're ready to launch, there's no question about that. (2000) Schmitt: Training for an Apollo mission, and I suspect it's not too much different for current space shuttle missions, once you're in the queue and you're actually training, that is a highly focused task. In fact, one of the things that is, I think, symptomatic of that, at least from my perspective, is that my memory of day-to-day events and hour-to-hour events is very poor. I have a general recollection of the major flow and things that we did, but you ask me what did we do on a particular day or week or month, I can't recall it unless I see documents that, at least in outline form, give me that information and then I start to be able to retrieve it.

I found that the same when I was in the United States Senate, things were happening in such a compressed schedule that the short-term memory is good when you need it, but it doesn't get seated in the same parts of the brain as long-term memory, as other things do. It takes something else, the Congressional Record in that case, or our committee records, or our training schedules and things like that, to bring back some of the events of that time. Now, in a general sense, we spent about three weeks out of every month in intense spacecraft-related training. In the first six months or so, we were here at JSC [Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas] training in the simulators here, but we very quickly moved down to the Kennedy [Space] Center [Cape Canaveral, Florida] for simulations and flew back and forth every week for that, because their computers, one, were generally kept at a higher state of accuracy in terms of configuration. That was always the case. They were the first ones to be upgraded or to be fixed if something needed to be changed.

Schmitt: (Oral History 1999) The training is something that has a life of its own, and you live within that life, and make sure that it gets done.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) So the training cycle was intense. It seemed long. [At the end of it] you're ready. It was geared through experience and maybe through attitude to reach your peak performance level, just about the time you were ready to launch.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Training for an Apollo mission, once you're in the queue and you're actually training, is a highly focused task. In fact, one of the things that is symptomatic of that is that my memory of day-to-day events and hour-to-hour events is very poor. I have a general recollection of the major flow and things that we did, but you ask me what did we do on a particular day or week or month, I can't recall it unless I see documents that, at least in outline form, give me that information and then I start to be able to retrieve it. It takes something else, our training schedules and things like that, to bring back some of the events of that time.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) In a general sense, we spent about three weeks out of every month in intense spacecraft-related training. In the first six months or so, we were here at JSC training in the simulators here, but we very quickly moved down to the Kennedy [Space] Center for simulations. We flew back and forth every week for that, because their computers were kept at a higher state of accuracy in terms of configuration. They were the first ones to be upgraded or to be fixed if something needed to be changed.

[edit] Translunar injection

(2000) We didn't have an awful lot of time in Earth orbit to look out the window, but we got a few nice photographs at 90 nautical miles. That's pretty close compared to the space shuttle. But still I can remember not only taking pictures, but really being fascinated, as everybody is, by the rapidly changing views of the Earth. Our actual acceleration out of Earth orbit started in the dark and actually went through a sunrise, which we had a good chance to see as we went through that sunrise. That was spectacular, to be accelerating at those rates, about a G and a half, and then see this sunrise out the windows. It was really something to see.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Our actual acceleration out of Earth orbit started in the dark and actually went through a sunrise, which we had a good chance to see as we went through that sunrise. That was spectacular, to be accelerating at those rates, about a G and a half, and then see this sunrise out the windows. It was really something to see.

[edit] Trip to the pad

(2000) Once we got down to the — going out of the suit room and, of course, all the technicians and all the support people were in the hall wishing us well as we got on the elevator. When you see the movies of it, it looks like we were having a good time and that's what I remember that we were having. Of course, we couldn't talk to anybody. We had the helmets on, we were breathing, we were pre-breathing pure oxygen, and so that went all the way down in the elevator, out into the van. And Al [Alan B.] Shepard [Jr.] was waiting for us to escort us out to the van. Charlie [Charles L.] Buckley was there, too, the former head of security at Kennedy Space Center. I pretended that I was trying to get back off the bus, I remember, and you'll see that in the film. Suddenly my head will appear back in the doorway and Charlie sort of pushes me back in. So it was a little joke that he and I had on each other. (2000) But after that, it was pretty uneventful. You don't have a good view of the launch pad going out there. I had gone out the night before to see the rocket illuminated by the searchlights. That is sort of a tradition that I inherited from Bill [William A.] Anders. He took me out for Apollo 8 the night before launch, and it's really an amazing sight, that Saturn V illuminated. Of course, at that point we could get ourselves in very close just because of who we were, and so you had a view that very, very few people, other than the pad technicians, ever got of the Saturn V. (2000) Everything went really just as one would have planned it, as we went out the elevator and out on the catwalk and met the white room crew. Guenter Wendt was waiting for us, as he waited for everybody. They strapped us in and closed it off, and we then went into the final countdown and got to thirty seconds, and everything had come alive beneath us. The gimbals were moving and the rocket, you could feel it. You're lying there on your back, you could feel the engines moving down a football field below you or more, as it prepared for ignition.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Once we got out of the suit room, all the technicians and all the support people were in the hall wishing us well as we got on the elevator. When you see the movies of it, it looks like we were having a good time and that's what I remember that we were having. Of course, we couldn't talk to anybody. We had the helmets on, we were pre-breathing pure oxygen, and so that went all the way down in the elevator, out into the van.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) Al Shepard was waiting for us to escort us out to the van. Charlie Buckley was there, too, the former head of security at Kennedy Space Center. I pretended that I was trying to get back off the bus, I remember, and you'll see that in the film. Suddenly my head will appear back in the doorway and Charlie sort of pushes me back in. So it was a little joke that he and I had on each other.

Schmitt: (Oral History 2000) But after that, it was pretty uneventful. You don't have a good view of the launch pad going out there. Everything went really just as one would have planned it, as we went out the elevator and out on the catwalk and met the white room crew. Guenter Wendt was waiting for us, as he waited for everybody. They strapped us in and closed it off.